3 ms·

Bike parts are, afaik, not standardized at all. It's just that there are like two companies producing 90% of the components, so that there aren't so many differ

• loeg 4y ago
  > Bike parts are, afaik, not standardized at all. It's just that there are like two companies producing 90% of the components, so that there aren't so many different systems on the market. Both of these statements aren't really true. There are lots of bike standards (both in the XKCD sense and sometimes in a few-enough-to-be-practical sense). Not everything is made with standard parts, but the majority of parts on the majority of bikes are. This has little to do with Shimano/SRAM being the two major groupset manufacturers -- components like steerers (standard 1-1/8" at the stem), stems (made by several manufacturers, not two), handlebars (there are several standards for the clamp diameter but 31.8mm and 35mm are probably the dominant two today), bottom brackets (again, several standards, but lots of vendors in this space), etc etc. Handlebars, wheels, chains, pedals, tires are more or less all made to a handful of interchangeable standards, by many manufacturers.