Things about Bike Equipment that annoy you. - Page 3

Guess what, Sunshine: the upper end, pricey stuff is marketed to the people that will pay for it. If you want it, get a better job, get more of an education so you can get a better job, save your money, get a loan, sell some unneccessary stuff, or summat. If Sora or Tiagra are all you need, why piss and moan about what you don't need?

Boy, I would love to see my wife's face if I walked into the shower with my helmet.... She would be cracking up sooooo bad, she would have the camera out and on the phone to mom, sister and neighbors in 2 minutes.
All the while I would be telling her "Honey! This is SCIENCE!".


"Re: Things about Bike Equipment that annoy you."

We can fly to the moon but we still don't have tires and tubes that don't flat.

lw

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Why are you being so combative? Is life not hard enough without someone coming along and rubbing your face in the dirt? Hes obviously educated enough to come up with a good idea that economically speaking, is feasable. I took economics in College and I understand what hes saying, hes right in a sense. If a company dedicated itself to making a high quality product, at large volume, they could sell it at a much better price then if they divided their resources and sold each item at lower volumes.

However, their profit margins wouldn't be as nice, because, they would not be providing goods at every price along the..erm..market line. (Yes, thats not the correct terminology, forgive me, economics is definately not my major, I just did well in that class..) That is to say, that people who want to spend less, won't have that option, and people who want to spend more, also won't have that option. Thus Shimano would lose some of its customer base but the middle margin would be happier..but happier doesn't mean better profits..

Anyway, please, he is just proposing a theory, its a nice one to think about at that. Even if its just talk, talk is where everything starts. If we just sat around and 'accepted' the way things are and didn't 'piss and moan' there would be no progress in this world. In fact, America wouldn't even exist. Afterall, the American revolution grew out of a bunch of people "pissing and moaning" about taxes.

Err, and as far as being on topic..aside from prices, I also hate creaking and such noises. A good drivetrain is a silent one..and its so hard to keep them that way..Oh Yeah! And I HATE flat tires! lol

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Gameing, Anime and Bicycling...what more do you need from life?

- Glass on road, cars that speed up to pass only to slow and cut you off on a corner, price of bike clothes, more flexibility and choices in cassette makeup, that fact the bike bug digs in hard and its hard not to stop tweaking.

bonjour tout le monde. Nice to meet you all.

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The price of good bicycle road tires.
You can easily spend $100.00 for 2.
They'll last maybe 3,000.
Compare that to dollar per mile with a car.
That's kinda crazy. Keeping in mind the bicycle typically is a one passenger machine.
Other than that, it's all good.

Good luck with your project.

Roger that.

But more seriously, I hate non-maintainable cartridge bearings. I just replaced a cartridge BB in my vintage steed with a slightly used Campy Super Record unit, and I'm totally blown away by how stiff and smooth it is.

the way that I resemble an overstuffed sausage when in cycling clothes

The obsessive need for carbon. Why do we need carbon cranksets. What do they really do that a nice alloy crankset won't? Plus you need to be carefull with torque and glued in bushings are just begging to come lose after time. And very expensive to boot.

Carbon composite frames, yes. Carbon fork spacers, get outta hear!

What bugs me the most is knowing that my 2 bikes wheels cost more than my 4 car wheels.

And to add to what was previously posted about R&D, the reason bike stuff costs so much is bc there is lots of R&D that goes into the bikes/parts, but a relatively small population of customers. Ford spends more time in the wind tunnel designing a car than cervelo (or any company), but their costs of this development is spread out over a much larger population, hense decreasing the cost per item. does a cervelo P4 cost 4500 to make the frame? absolutely not, Im willing to bet their bottom of the line aluminum frame costs less to produce, but not only are you paying for the frame and labor to make it, you are paying for everyone that did work on the design for the 5 years before it came out as well as the marketing and the fact that it has the giant P4 printed on the frame.

Simply put, if you dont like the price of the parts, stop spending $200 to save 50 grams. the only reason companies charge so much is becasue idoits (myself included) will pay for it

No, the reason that stuff costs what it costs is that that is what people are willing to pay for it.

Nope, cost of making these is probably 300 bucks or so.

Ah, see, there you go! The "P4", that's the ticket.

We see things eye-to-eye on this. I am one of these idiots, too...

Same goes for component groups, too, and handlebars, stems, seatposts, sadlles, etc., etc.

Component groups: The cost of a Dura Ace over a 105 group, to Shimano, must be of the order of 50 bucks, yet people happily shell out another grand to get the high-end group over the low-end one.

And don't even try to stop and think about why it is that people pay a hundred bucks or more for an alloy stem. It's completely ridiculous. That stem cost the manufacturer a few bucks!

I bet the original poster has probably graduated and is back living in in his parent's basement.

After all, 3 years have passed since he started this thread.

Whether something costs too much compared to its cost of production is something I am not concerned with. I know how the market works. I know how expensive R&D can be. I know how expensive CF molds can be. I know the manufacturer needs to make money. I mean, making money is a company's raison d'être, ain't it?

I do hate when others tell people what riding should be about, what kit is necessary, what shouldn't exist, what's "bling", and how things were better and cheaper in the old days. I hate that people think they need to tell others that adding another gear is a waste of money. I think it's a waste of breath and energy to go on about there being no necessity for CF, about the expense of Ti, about how aluminum, according to the wive's tales, rides like a buckboard, and how steel is real. I think 98% of the people commenting on frame or kit materials have zero technical knowledge and are talking out their asses.

As for equipment hates. I hate it that I don't own an olive drab Speedvagen road bike. I hate it that I don't yet have a 12-27 cassette for Campy 10s. I hate it that I don't have more Giordana Forma Red bibs. I hate it that I don't own a set of the new Zipp 303's, with the wider tire bed. I hate it that I don't have my own workshop in the house. I really hate it that I don't have the newest Cycling Passion calendar. Otherwise, I'm pretty damned chuffed.

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Pain is Fun
I cut my fingers off
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Yup, it's a recurring topic on every bike forum on the internet. It's prolly better to keep adding to one thread instead of opening a new thread every time someone's panties get all twisted up because of the cost of some bike bit(s). This single thread can serve as the "History of Kvetching" and be used to instruct children.

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Sex is horrid
Pain is Fun
I cut my fingers off
One by one