A conversation we have with a lot of customers is about how the size of their bike can impact the handling and performance. This is an issue that mainly comes up with bikes for riders under 5’6″. The problems always stem from trying to fit 700c wheels into a small frame. Compromises have to be made and these compromises are felt by the rider.
The first problem is toe overlap. As the frame gets smaller the front wheel gets closer to the crankset and the rider’s feet. This can result in the toe hitting the wheel in a turn, aka toe overlap. To compensate for this, many manufacturers resort to a slacker head tube angle. This puts the wheel further in front of the bike and causes sluggish handling. If the bike is small enough, you can end up with both problems anyway.
The seat tube is similarly affected. It’s often steeper to reduce the overall rider reach. This puts the rider pretty far forward over the bottom bracket and can cause fit issues resulting in stress to the knee. None of this is good for the rider. Fortunately, there’s an obvious solution: smaller wheels.
While this seems like a no-brainer, it’s historically been a difficult sell to many customers. They have a lot of reasons, but they usually boil down to either “700c wheels are faster” or “My riding buddies will literally make fun of me if I show up with smaller wheels”. While we can dispel the myth of the first one, the second one can be harder to overcome.
The myth of 700c wheels being faster is an old one. There are a lot of factors that go into making a bike fast, and wheel size isn’t really one of them. Bikes that hold the world speed records do it on smaller wheels than any race bike comes with, and this is due to strength issues, not speed considerations. We have an in depth article about wheel size here, and you can read an outside opinion here that tackles this exact myth and explains effectively why it’s rubbish. Thankfully, the rise in popularity of the 650b/27.5″ wheel has made it much easier to sell customers on smaller wheels.
Take a look at the three photos in this post. While these bikes have very similar angles and proportions, they are for three people of very different heights. This because all three use a different wheel size. The top bike is a 700c Bandito, the middle bike is a 650b Bandito, and the bottom bike is a 26″ Phinney Ridge. The great thing is that all of these bikes have a trail of about 60mm, which means they all steer and handle the same. Now people can get a bike that handles properly no matter how tall they are. All this with no toe overlap issues and room for larger tires as well. (If you’re curious about larger tires, click here and here)
So now you know there’s no reason to own a bike that doesn’t handle well just because of your size. There’s more choice in wheel and tire size than ever before so you don’t have to compromise anything to get a bike that works just the way you want it to. As for friends who think they know better, there’s nothing wrong with educating them about their misconceptions. The proof will be in the riding.
In recent years, we’ve seen a rapid evolution in gearing options for bikes of all types. There are new options that have expanded choices for certain riders, and some options (arguably very useful options) have gotten pushed to the side. Rapid changes in “standards” are nothing new in the bike industry, and they tend to cause a lot of confusion for consumers and industry professionals alike. To clear things up, here’s an overview of your options as they stand going into 2020.
The Cassette
Over the past few decades, advances in cassette technology have mainly been aimed at squeezing in more cogs. In the 80s, even the highest-end drivetrains had just six cogs in the rear. 13-26 was considered standard. These days, high-end drivetrains use 11, 12, and even 13 cogs. This has created narrower cogs and chains as well as pushed road bikes to move to a wider rear triangle to accommodate more cogs and disc brakes. These thinner chains and cogs tend to wear out more quickly, however, so that’s been a bit of a trade-off. We’re starting to see some mountain bike drivetrains return to nine (and even seven) speed drivetrains to make them more robust.
As for the actual shifting performance, the woes of the 10 speed era have mainly been ironed out. Shifting is mostly excellent across the board. The new radical shift in cassette technology is range. Driven by mountain bike design, cassettes have ballooned in size. Just a few years ago, a cassette with a range from 11 teeth to 32 teeth was considered a large cassette. These days we’re seeing cassettes as wide as 9 teeth to 50 teeth. That’s a gear range of over 500%. The catch is that those are for single chainring drivetrains, also called 1X. All the shifting is in the cassette, so it needs to have a wide range. The only way to get that kind of range before was to use a triple chainring crankset. Why choose one over the other? Which is better for the rider? Well, that depends.
The cassette on the left has a huge range, but is meant for a single chainring up front. The one on the right has smaller steps between gears and is meant to be used with either two or three chainrings.
The rear derailleur has traditionally been used to fine tune your gear selection. Adding more cogs, like having eleven instead of nine, allows for smaller jumps between gears and therefore more control over the gear ratio. Large jumps are made by the double or triple chainring, then the rear was used to find a gear that was “just right”. The new selection of wide range cassettes have much bigger jumps between cog sizes. For some riders this can be frustrating when they can’t shift into a gear that feels perfect for the terrain they happen to be on at the moment. For other riders, this isn’t much of a big deal. They value the simplicity of using a single shifter and will either push harder or go slower when they can’t get the gearing perfect. There seem to be plenty of both types of riders so having multiple options is a good thing.
Chainrings
Chainring configuration has also seen a lot of change recently. We see three major shifts: an expansion in gearing options for double cranks, the emergence of “one-by” drivetrains, and the so-called death of the triple.
Double Chainring Drivetrains
a modern 46/30 “sub-compact” double crankset
Not so long ago, there were essentially three choices in front gearing for double cranks. The traditional choice, suitable for racers and the manliest of manly men, was the 53/39-tooth combo. “Compact” gearing, 50/34-tooth, was initially rolled out as an alternative to triple cranksets and effectively became the industry standard with its more forgiving gear range. Finally, cyclocross ended up with its own chainring standard of 48/36-tooth.
Compact gearing worked well for a lot of riders, but never really lived up to its intended purpose of replacing triple cranks. Triples offered the option of getting ridiculously low gear ratios, but the compact double’s 34-tooth small ring (smaller rings mean lower gears on the front) wasn’t actually all that low a gear.
Enter the All-Road Bike. A growing number of cyclists today want a bike that can go back and forth between paved roads, forest service roads, gravel roads, and single track. That’s a lot to ask and also part of what’s fueling all of this drivetrain evolution and mutation. While the 46/30 has become semi-standard on bikes like this, combinations as low as 42/24 are available. Higher gears are sacrificed for all-terrain capability. Many see it as worth the trade off, but drivetrains may not be done evolving just yet. The recently released GRX series from Shimano will shift an 11-42 in the back while keeping a compact double 50/34 in the front. That’s a lot of range and it’s developments like this that lead people to pronounce “the triple is dead”
The 1X (one-by), or Single Chainring Drivetrain
A modern “one-by” drivetrain
Like a lot of recent developments, the 1X drivetrain comes from the world of mountain biking. Riders who were pushing their mountain bikes to the limit over rough and varied terrain wanted to simplify things and take one variable for failure out of the equation altogether. The front derailleur was seen as the best part to go because when it did malfunction, it could stop a rider in their tracks. Thus, the 1X was born. It’s a little more complicated than just removing the derailleur. Chainrings were redesigned to retain the chain instead of letting it go for shifting. Rear derailleurs had clutch mechanisms added to keep the chain steady over bumpy terrain. This is also where the ultra-wide range cassettes began to develop. Mountain bikes need gearing that’s able to shift to a very low gear and do it quickly. Off-road terrain can become suddenly very steep and having just one control that moves the gear quickly and surely has been great for mountain bikers. They can make huge changes in gear ratio without the fear of dropping the chain off the chainring.
This drivetrain configuration has made the jump to all-road and gravel bikes now, for some of the same reasons. There’s something to be said for simplicity and dependability when your bike is covered in mud and you’re trying to make it up an 18% grade made of soft dirt. The trade off is the range, but cassettes that go from 10 to 50 teeth mitigate that aspect quite a bit. A 500% range is nothing to sneeze at. The disadvantages have to do with the cassette, as I discussed above. Big jumps between gears are not for everyone. Still, for some, the 1X fits their needs exactly. From a builder’s perspective, we just see it as one more tool in the toolbox for making someone a bike they love. It seems to be sticking around and we’ve met more than a few that don’t want to ride anything else.
Triple Chainring Drivetrains
Tales of the triple’s demise may be premature
Well, what about the triple? It’s death has been pronounced before, back in the 80’s. Back then, the triple (a crankset with three chainrings) fell out of favor on road bikes and was relegated to touring bikes and mountain bikes. “Compact” cranks with 50/34 tooth rings, the thinking went, provided plenty low gearing. It was only a few years before manufacturers again figured out that people still wanted to climb big hills on their road bikes without having to stand and mash a big gear, and the 34-tooth ring just wasn’t cutting it. Triples returned to full range of road groups. This is because no other configuration can match the gearing range of a triple drivetrain. That’s still currently true. A triple with a 53/39/28 chainring combination paired with an 11-36 cassette has a high gear of 122.3 inches and a low gear of 21.5 inches. That’s a range of 568%. That means the triple is still king in that category.
So why are so many people willing to declare the triple dead? A triple chainring drivetrain requires a bit more setup and adjustment, but just barely. A lot of people soured on triple shifting during the ten speed era I referenced above. During this time, manufacturers decided to make triple shifting “indexed” the way shifting in the rear was. One set movement of the shifter moved one gear with a click. Well, that didn’t go well at the time. The fledgling technology resulted in a lot of mis-shifts and dropped chains. It really wasn’t fun for anyone. By the time the problems got ironed out, the compact double appeared and people steered away from the triple altogether. And yet, the triple still refuses to go away. Certain riders still insist on one because they love the combination of range, flexibility, and adjustability. Up until recently, it was still the only way to get truly low gears on a road bike. That aspect may have changed, but we’re not ready to count the triple out just yet. A lot of our customers ask for it and we’re going to continue to provide it as best we can for those customers. In the end, we believe it’s worth keeping the option available. The mountainous climbs and long descents of the Pacific Northwest might have something to do with that choice.
We’ve put together a chart to help visualize what the differences between these options are in a linear perspective. Here, you can see not just the range, but what the jumps between gears look like as well. (Thanks to Logan for the chart and his input on this post)
I hope this answers any questions you might have had regarding what’s going on with bicycle drivetrains these days. Currently, we have more options than ever before and that’s not a bad thing. It helps us hone in on what will be best for each individual customer, and as a custom shop that’s exactly what we want. We’re not going to say goodbye to the triple anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean we won’t say a warm hello to the new developments out there.
One purpose of this blog is to take a fair look at how current trends are shaping the bike industry and bike design. How we see things is greatly influenced by our long experience as bike builders, and here we try to be as fair as we can.
Today, we’re going to take a look at the Thru Axle vs Quick Release debate that has been steadily providing snarky comments online for at least the past few years. First, a little history.
Traditional quick release dropouts have a slot that the hub axle slides into. A quiock release skewer then clamps the wheel in position.
The quick release skewer and axle system was patented in 1930 by Tullio Campagnolo. He came up with the idea when a misbehaving wingnut cost him precious time during a race. Using a combination of a hollow axle and a skewer with a cam lever on one end and a nut on the other, racers became able to change their wheels in seconds. It went on to become the standard wheel attachment system for road bicycles, and the overwhelming majority of bicycles come with quick release skewers to this very day.
One thing Tullio never got to see in his lifetime was a modern full suspension mountain bike with disc brakes. The combination of suspension forks, disc brakes, and the ever more punishing demands of downhill mountain bikers proved to be too much for the quick release system as it was designed. The legs of a suspension fork really like to move independently of one another, which led to broken axles, dislodged wheels, rotor misalignment, and poor tracking of the front wheel during turns. This changed about ten years ago with the invention of the thru axle system. It linked the two ends of the fork in a new way which stiffened the front end, improved handling, and prevented mechanical problems experienced with quick release systems. Sounds like a win in my book. So what makes this controversial? This is where the disc brake equipped road bike enters the picture. (The use of disc brakes on road bikes is it’s own controversy that we will not get to today, thankfully.) Disc brakes work great for mountain bikes, so lots of people decided they’d be great for road bikes as well. The disc road bike has proliferated and is now one of the hottest selling types of bike in North America and Europe. Along with this change came a call to also bring the thru axle over from the mountain bike world. This brings us to the question we have today: was this an improvement for road bikes?
Thru axle dropouts form complete circles that the axle must be inserted through. One side is threaded for the axle to screw into, securing the wheel in place.
Road bikes use a rigid fork that doesn’t experience the same issues as a suspension fork on a mountain bike. It does, however, have similar forces to deal with in relation to the disc brake itself. When a disc brake is applied to a moving bike, the fork blade it’s attached to experiences a large amount of torsional force, which basically means it wants to twist and flex in ways that rim brakes don’t cause. The fork blade has to be beefed up to accommodate these forces or it can fail during hard braking. The thru axle is supposed to stiffen the entire fork and mitigate some of these forces. Benefits are said to include better brake rotor alignment, better handling, and less flex-related rotor rub. The reality is that while these things are true, the amount of improvement is marginal and the majority of riders wouldn’t notice the difference. That’s not to dismiss thru axle, but to say that while game changing for mountain bikes, thru axle is a minor change for road bikes.
I also wouldn’t write off the quick release just yet. It still has the advantage of being a lighter weight system overall. It’s easy to use, easy to replace parts, and you can find compatible parts all over the world. Disc brakes and thru axles carry a weight penalty that’s easily avoided with a traditional rim brake road bike with quick release wheels. Weight seems like less of a concern for new bikes than it did just five years ago, but I doubt that applies to everyone. The good news is you still have the choice, no matter how you choose to roll.
You may have noticed I haven’t said anything about the rear axle. That’s because it makes even less difference than in the fork. Results seem to be about even as far as performance in road bikes goes.
So what should you do as a consumer? As far as I can tell you’re good either way so don’t be overly concerned about it. If you’re thinking about a getting a bike, either quick release or thru axle will work fine. I do believe that most of us will end up with a thru axle bike eventually. I think it’s here to stay at this point, but you’ll still have a choice for some time to come. If you’re the type to get the newest version of things you probably already have thru axle and love it.
I can tell you what that means to Rodriguez bikes. As a builder that specializes in steel, thru axle represents some new challenges. The fork is actually the easy part. There’s a larger variety of forks on the market than ever before and we’re happy to use whichever one is best going to suit your needs when we build your custom bike. The rear triangle is more of a challenge. We’re happy to build a frame with thru axle dropouts, but it does take more time than traditional dropouts. Alignment needs to be maintained throughout the build and there’s less margin for adjustment. When building a frame, time definitely equals money, so thru axle frames will be more expensive. They will also be heavier, even with the lightest thru axle dropouts we can find. We wish that wasn’t the case. Our favorite thing is giving our customers exactly what they want and we wish all of these options were equal in both weight, time, and cost. That said, we’re a custom shop. We always find a way.
For something invented in the Victorian era, bicycles sure do change a lot from year to year. New materials, engineering advances, and the changing demands of riders keep the bicycle in a constantly evolving state. Economics can also play a role in this, for good or ill. Bicycle manufacturers need to sell bikes to stay in business. This can lead to some design decisions whose sole purpose is to drive future sales. This is called planned obsolescence. The idea is that the design will be obsolete within a known time frame and the manufacturer will be there to sell you a new model just in time. You see this in lots of electronic products, like cell phones or pop stars.
How do you know the difference between an improved design versus one designed to become obsolete? This can be tricky, even for those of us doing the manufacturing. Some real advances, like hydraulic disc brakes, seem here to stay and a benefit for many riders. It gets trickier when you look at bottom bracket designs, axle standards, or headsets. Of the dozens of designs out there, which one is going to stick around? Is it the right one for our customers? Should we switch now and risk pouring resources into a passing fad? Should we stick to our current design and risk falling out of step with the industry? This is the position many small builders face regularly.
Those of us at Rodriguez like to think we have a leg up on this question. After all, we’ve seen lots of designs come and go over the years. A lot of the time we can tell if something is going to be a lasting change because we can see how it’s going to play out over time. Or it’s possible that we just think we can and we’re guessing like everyone else. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
The advent of carbon bicycles has thrown a lot of these questions out the window. Does it matter if the design is any good if the bicycle itself is only designed to last a few years? Those of us building in steel or titanium are often expected to use the same components as carbon race bikes even if no one has any idea if the designs are going to stick around. (For example, the new T47 threaded bottom bracket design might eventually become the accepted standard for non-carbon bikes, but it’s hard to know now how that’s going to shake out until it does.) These can be difficult decisions. Some companies avoid this question for the most part by sticking with older designs and a classic aesthetic. We build a lot of high performance bikes that use state of the art components and sometimes it’s difficult to strike the balance between longevity and cutting edge. We’ve always built our bikes to last a lifetime and we don’t want that to change. It’s part of our ethos as a company and we still make the wrong choice sometimes.
When you come to Rodriguez for a bicycle, know that we’ve considered all of these decisions quite deliberately. We will try and build you a bike that meets your needs and will keep meeting them for the long haul. In a culture of disposability, we want to be the thing that stays true, year after year.
