"They don't make 'em like they used to"

DavidBelcher

Popped into a local bike shop last week to price up some jockey wheels for my 'cross bike; mentioned to the guy behind the counter that I needed the sort with the little adaptor washers that work on several makes of mech as it was an old Mavic 840; his view of this bit of kit was "from when they made bikes to last"! Thought new jockeys - and maybe a new chain - were needed as the top one tended to rub on the bigger sprockets when in low gears. However, I later had the bright idea of taking my other (damaged, but not as old) 840 from the spares box, and donated the two main springs to the mech I was already using, figuring that the existing ones had lost some tension after a good 5-6 years of off-road use - the old Mavic stuff allows you to do this as everything is held together with Allen bolts & circlips and can be serviced at home with basic tools. For less than an hour's work, and not overly fiddly at that, the problem with the derailleur was cured without spending a single penny - hooray! Shame that newer stuff tends to built as throwaway rather than serviceable by the average cyclist (plus, I quite enjoy tinkering with any small problems that crop up). Mavic parts always tended to be very expensive in their day (however, the mech in question was acquired as NOS for 20 quid as the shop only had the one left!), though I guess the trade-off was their longevity and service-friendly construction.

David

pliptrot

How right you are. I am always amazed how folk are prepared to spend serious money (and not everyone gets city bonuses, so it probably IS serious) on bikes and consider them - and their component parts - to be virtually disposable items. Read on this forum how many folk consider 8 years to be "ages" for a frame to last. Can you imagine 15 years ago buying wheels which you couldn't take to any LBS and get them rebuilt with new rims? Fast forward to now and that virtually impossible with factory wheels. But hey - they cost more so they must be better, right? The cycle industry has taken us all for a ride, IMHO. Mavic went to the dogs when acquired by Adidas, I'm told, as it was about that time that real choice in rims and hubs went out of the window. And it's a similar story across the industry...

dennisn

I'll second those comments.

Dennis Noward

aracer

Burn the witches!

pliptrot

Aah, but our steel frames and sturdy components will survive your fires.....

aracer

Only goes to prove you're witches.

DavidBelcher

pliptrot wrote:

How right you are. I am always amazed how folk are prepared to spend serious money (and not everyone gets city bonuses, so it probably IS serious) on bikes and consider them - and their component parts - to be virtually disposable items. Read on this forum how many folk consider 8 years to be "ages" for a frame to last.

As if that wasn't enough, the cantilever brakes on the same bike are Modolo ones from the mid-80s(!!) - still great apart from the unavoidable need to change blocks and cables now and again. Cantis that work well with Ergopower or STI levers are quite hard to come by, so I'm hanging on to them for as long as possible!
Both hubs (Hope front, which is yet to need service of any sort, and Campag 8sp Record titanium rear) are now on their second lot of Open Pro rims. With patience, perseverance and persuading bike shops to get things how you'd like, rather than being flogged this month's throwaway widgets, it's still possible to treat a bike as serviceable rather than disposable. A lot of the bits on my 'cross bike are top-end stuff from the likes of Campag, Mavic, TA or Middleburn, so I'd prefer keep them going as long as I can rather than shelling out a fortune on a season-after-season basis. Ditto the frame, which is a nice Fort steel one (Columbus Foco) with a Sintema carbon fork - acquired S/H 3 years ago and might need a repaint in 18 months or so, otherwise sound.

David