Bikes - unreliable as hell?

[thermidorthelobster]

I used to think Land Rovers were unreliable, but that was before I took my £550 2-year-old mountain bike in for repair and found not only had a stupidly designed little rubber bung fallen out of the brake lever, but an oil seal has gone there as well, and they quoted me £100 for a new lever!

I've probably done 100 miles on this thing, and despite this paltry amount I've had to service it, lubricate it, calibrate the gearchange, etc.  And it thanks me for all my effort by breaking.

I'm beginning to think bikes are massively overpriced, underengineered lumps of junk!  I could have bought a car for the same price which would have probably done 10,000 miles without any problems.  This isn't the first time this has happened to me.

[Bush Tucker Man]

I used to think Land Rovers were unreliable, but that was before I took my £550 2-year-old mountain bike in for repair and found not only had a stupidly designed little rubber bung fallen out of the brake lever, but an oil seal has gone there as well, and they quoted me £100 for a new lever!

Yes, I know.
My old MTB (Pace Research) had hydraulic brakes too, but they were rim-brakes - not disc>
They were simplicity itself & user-servicable.

I'm beginning to think bikes are massively overpriced, underengineered lumps of junk!  I could have bought a car for the same price which would have probably done 10,000 miles without any problems.  This isn't the first time this has happened to me.

My 'run of the mill' road bike (training/commuting) has; as far as I can remember owes me (in 10 years +)
2 pairs of tyres
inner tubes
brake-blocks
mudguards (stay mounts corroded,so they flapped about)
chains & cassettes (maybe 4, or 5? chains)
bar-tape.

Only 'consumables', & it's been ridden hard too, in all weathers, covering perhaps 10- 15,000miles as well?? (even allowing for 4 years off the bike too!)


My Dyna-Tech titanium is 14 years old & owes me even less!!

[wormster]

When you stop and actually think of the mechanics, derailleur gears on a mountain/race/road bike are the most inefficient way of changing ratios, all that chain slack, torque and frame flex, is just loosing mechanical advantage, not to mention sapping muscle power.

In reality its better to go with an enclosed affair for your gears (a la Sturmley Archer) with an enclosed chain running in some form of oil bath.

A few years ago a fiend of mine hand built a back wheel for his bike that had a 7 speed hub gear, it took him 3 days to work out the spoke lacing alone!! Once he'd done that the rest was plain sailing so to speak a 3 ring front chain wheel eventually got grafted in giving him 20 odd gear ratios.

None too shabby, the only problem was that the whole transmission rig was let down by a shonky, flexible frame, which when you consider it should not happen considering you have 2 triangles reversed against each other. It'd be better to have a solid beam running from headstock to rear axle and hang/brace bits off that.

I've always maintained that leading link front forks (like you see on enduro/motocross sidecars) have the edge over telescopic front forks, because they give a constant wheelbase, even under severe breaking, whereas telescopic forks radically shorten the wheelbase under reely heavy breaking. The trade off is one of weight tho (leading link is heavier, with NO flex/dive, whereas teleforks are lighter but without adequate bracing can flex/dive)

(sorry its going a bit away from pedal cycles here and more towards motorbikes, but having ridden and campaigned both I feel a bit justified in getting on the soapbox).

YES modern mountain bikes are a bit of a rip off I do agree, but on the other hand DO YOU see yourself riding a pedal cycle that has "sensible" bits like I suggested in the second paragraph?

Personally not me it'd be too bloody heavy and cumbersome, what we're left with is the result of about 100 years or so of compromise engineering, the only advances are getting made in materials technology rather than in basic design concept.

(PUTS SOAPBOX AWAY) I thank yew.

[boss]

just dont run brakes, i dont :lol:

[carbore]

Its one of those annoyign things, id guess it just takes time and time is money.

I am in the middle of sorting out a car trailer I bought off ebay, allegedly recently serviced but all the break cables are corroded and the pull rod is bent/rusted. Now even allowing for learing time (never done it before) it still takes quite some time to strip anything and put it back togeather.

The really annouing thing is that ona cheap bike if you dont do the work yourself its allmost a cheap just to buy a new one.  No wonder the environment is in trouble if everytihgn is disposable.

[jonny ramrod]

were they hayes brakes..???

[thermidorthelobster]

Yes!  How did you guess?   :-.