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Grease points already have a standard: zerk fittings, but many car parts don’t have them anymore, so you end up replacing all of these “sealed” “lifetime” beari

Grease points already have a standard: zerk fittings, but many car parts don’t have them anymore, so you end up replacing all of these “sealed” “lifetime” bearings/joints entirely because they dried out and creak away. Would be cool if a bicycle bottom bracket or hub had those fittings. I volunteer at a bike co-op and between the generations, there’s been a toooooon of “standards”. Frequent mixes of imperial and metric. A French/Italian/British bike may have the opposite threading on parts than you expect. Different widths of spindles and wheel dishing and spoke lengths and oh my! How many mm wide would you like your tire? And will it even fit? Can you use that 700C accessory on your 27” or are you SOL? If we didn’t have a boneyard of bikes to scavenge from/strip for parts, we’d get nowhere. Then the corrosion issues when you “upgrade” to an aluminum seat post or stem on a steel frame… I guess part of this problem is the durability of bicycles. Cars probably have the same problem but their lifespan is a lot more limited. Lots of (small s) specialized tools out there because the manufacturer never intended for you to actually take the thing apart. Every design of freewheels required a different tool to remove. Definitely assembled several Frankenstein-bikes in my lifetime where you’ll need a rather diverse set of tools from different generations of bikes to eventually repair!

Melatonic 4y ago
Bicycles have actually gotten much easier to work on but I totally know what you are talking about. Bottom Brackets are actually the one thing I now refuse to work on (too many god damn specialized wrenches just to open and close them). Cartridge bearings are so much easier but as you probably know not really repairable (I have a late 1980s touring bicycle that I regreased the bearings and it rides better than new) but also crazy easy to just swap out. Nobody uses 27" anymore and everything being 700C (even many mountain bikes now with the "29er" trend) makes it all definitely better.
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  New bicycles won’t have 27” wheels, but they’re still out in the field and manufacturers still mass-produce 27” wheels and tires. But if you want fenders, you’ll have to struggle through mounting a 700C set. At least the tubes are backwards-compatible.
kqr 4y ago
Don't get me started on bicycle wheels. My wife and I both had wheels nominally of the standard size (28 inches). Guess what -- standard 622 ("28 inch") tyres did not fit either of our bikes, but her wheels were too small, and mine were too big! So we have two different bikes both ostensibly of the standard size, but both differing from it in different directions! (Yes, I have looked it up on Sheldon Brown's bike tyre sizing guide -- there are two different sizes that are almost the standard size but not quite, one too small, and one too large. So this is not just our bikes that were faulty, these weird sizes are out there.)

Melatonic 4y ago

Bicycles have actually gotten much easier to work on but I totally know what you are talking about. Bottom Brackets are actually the one thing I now refuse to work on (too many god damn specialized wrenches just to open and close them). Cartridge bearings are so much easier but as you probably know not really repairable (I have a late 1980s touring bicycle that I regreased the bearings and it rides better than new) but also crazy easy to just swap out. Nobody uses 27" anymore and everything being 700C (even many mountain bikes now with the "29er" trend) makes it all definitely better.

Scoundreller 4y ago
New bicycles won’t have 27” wheels, but they’re still out in the field and manufacturers still mass-produce 27” wheels and tires. But if you want fenders, you’ll have to struggle through mounting a 700C set. At least the tubes are backwards-compatible.

kqr 4y ago

Don't get me started on bicycle wheels. My wife and I both had wheels nominally of the standard size (28 inches). Guess what -- standard 622 ("28 inch") tyres did not fit either of our bikes, but her wheels were too small, and mine were too big! So we have two different bikes both ostensibly of the standard size, but both differing from it in different directions! (Yes, I have looked it up on Sheldon Brown's bike tyre sizing guide -- there are two different sizes that are almost the standard size but not quite, one too small, and one too large. So this is not just our bikes that were faulty, these weird sizes are out there.)