Cycling Room 101: Cycling Technology That Should Never Have Been Invented

[quixoticgeek]

Carbon fibre can be recycled by pyrolysis. Whether it is, in the case of bike frames, is another matter; but I doubt if most metal bike frames are actually recycled either.

The ones fished out the canals in .NL certainly are...

J

[phil dubya]

Integrated one-piece handlebars and stem on shop brought bicycles, especially on hybrids.

[Mr Larrington]

One of the Sprockettes was railing against some piece of New! IMPROVED!! shite handlebar tech in Battle Mountain last year, on account of it meant the bars couldn’t be turned sideways which in turn meant she couldn’t take her #1 bike to PBP coz it wouldn’t fit in the flight bag/case.

[vorsprung]

SKS mudguards
  - the fittings are difficult to fit and not that reliable.  Better systems do exist

carbon fibre seatposts
  - second failure out of two owned last week.  They seem to get a deep mark where they join the seat tube and then it's just a matter of time.  It's a shame coz i like the "split pin" flexi ones

press fit bottom brackets
 - I agree about the bottom bracket remarks above.  I have 4 lots of specialised tools for removing different types of bottom brackets.  I am bemused why the sealed UN-52 units seem to be out of vogue.  The best tool for removing a press fit BB is a sledge hammer

[Cudzoziemiec]

Integrated one-piece handlebars and stem on shop brought bicycles, especially on hybrids.

When I was a teenager, an elderly neighbour gave me his old Philips roadster. I think it was from the 1950s. Sit up and beg, integral steel mudguards with carriage lining and a white patch on the rear, etc. That had a one-piece handlebars and quill stem.

[canny colin]

Two wheeler bikes , dangerous wobbly things . Three wheels should be the limit ,but not all ways in contact with the ground 

[cycleman]

Incompatible groupsets. Infact all component's should have some ability to mix and match
The bicycle used to be made to last and simple to repair. The only real improvements have been in lighting and hub gears. (Old retro grouch  )

[hubner]

Yeah I was going to say indexed derailleur gears.

[grams]

If you need a so-called “safety bicycle” to feel safe you shouldn’t be on the road.

[Kim]

Yeah I was going to say indexed derailleur gears.

They made a lot more sense in the 6-speed days, where it was easy for a friction shifter to be between gears.

A modern $manylots-speed derailleur transmission really doesn't want to be between gears, so works surprisingly well with a friction shifter.  Which cycleman uses to good effect.

Indexed front derailleurs, while sometimes necessary, have always been a work of Stan.

[Karla]

Carbon fiber is the perfect bike material 

[paton]

Yeah
https://twitter.com/sticky_bottle/status/676915464208048130

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wqrg_QhW_ac

[joy of essex]

Large parts of London's cycling infrastructure and LTN 1/ 20.

[grams]

Large parts of London's cycling infrastructure and LTN 1/ 20.

I like that this comment could equally come from a vehicular cyclist fossil or someone who wants proper Dutch infrastructure and not the weird hybrid shit TfL often builds.

[joy of essex]

Proper Dutch infra would be wonderful.

In London or in my home borough of  Waltham  Forest there are small stretches of it; but as for the rest, it's a bodge job.  What infra we have has been built to please LCC and their cycling separatist fundamentalists,  it does little to promote real active travel.

The heart of the problem is that there's not the space in WF to put in Dutch level infra in that doesn't cause a conflict between cyclists, pedestrians, and bus users. But LBWF and LCC are in denial- see their response to the complaints about floating bus stops

As for me, I am a pragmatist.

[Arellcat]

If you need a so-called “safety bicycle” to feel safe you shouldn’t be on the road.

To be honest, I'd rather take my chances falling off a safety bicycle than an ordinary.

Shimano's Dura Ace 9-spd bar end lever is the cause of, and the solution to, most of touring cycling's problems.  High single pivot swing arm suspension can also go in the bin.

[Karla]

Yeah
https://twitter.com/sticky_bottle/status/676915464208048130

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wqrg_QhW_ac

You really need to define an acceptable level of resource usage which you won't complain about, before posting those sorts of pictures. 

"I won't buy a CF bike frame (that could carry me thousands of miles over many years for 2kg of material)" is getting worryingly close to the "I need to kill myself right now" level of puritanism.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Yeah
https://twitter.com/sticky_bottle/status/676915464208048130

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wqrg_QhW_ac

You really need to define an acceptable level of resource usage which you won't complain about, before posting those sorts of pictures. 

"I won't buy a CF bike frame (that could carry me thousands of miles over many years for 2kg of material)" is getting worryingly close to the "I need to kill myself right now" level of puritanism.

How do you propose it should be recycled?

[Cudzoziemiec]

Currently, carbon fibre waste or other fibre composites can be recycled using four types of technologies. There are two main types of carbon fibre waste. The first type of waste is virgin carbon fibre offcuts of the product generated from dry fibre and the non-used expired material, which are also called scrap. The second type of waste is the reclamation of fibres from carbon fibre-reinforced composites (CFRC). Figure 2 shows all types of recycling processes for both scrap and the composite type of carbon fibre waste.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9324376/

Where you can actually take your broken CF frame as an individual is an exercise left to the zealous reader. It would be great of some type of WEEE-like legislation were in place.

[De Sisti]

The useless workshy twat who forgot to specify a dropped kerb here…

If you're local to it, could you report it to the council/highways department to sort it out?

[quixoticgeek]

The problem with carbon fibre, isn't the 2kg of carbon fibre frame the end user ends up with, it's the many multiples of that waste produced in manufacture.

J

[Cudzoziemiec]

There is no argument that carbon fibre is environmentally friendly and exhibits a longer life cycle. However, carbon fibre consumes almost 14 times more energy in its creation compared with steel. This significant energy-intensiveness has led to huge emissions of greenhouse gases. Therefore, the recycling process could be one of the best ways to reduce this environmental impact while meeting global demand for this material in industrial applications.

From the same source I quoted earlier (same paragraph even).

[ElyDave]

Ahem, pyrolysis and turning it into e.g. SAF is not much of a solution, its still fossil carbon emissions (just recycled carbon) and likely to take a lot of additional energy to produce that fuel.

A lower energy reuse might be shredding and throwing into a road surface?

[nextSibling]

* Press fit bottom brackets (a convenience for the manufacturer, not the end-user)
* Rim-driven generators
* 'Mini' (short) v-brakes for use with regular drop-bar brake levers (that still require the blocks to be adjusted within a couple of micrometers of the rim surface to be useful)
* Hi-vis anything (scant robust research suggesting it makes a significant difference)
* Any kind of apparatus for charging devices from a hub generator (just carry a battery/power pack and avoid the faff)
* 12-speed anything, or even 11 (or 10?), for that matter
* 'Solid'/'airless' tyres
* 'Dumbell' multi-spanners
* Bickerton folding bikes
* Short mudguards
* ...that'll do for now

[sam]

* Press fit bottom brackets (a convenience for the manufacturer, not the end-user)

The dumbing down of the bottom bracket.