Everyone seems very keen to make assumptions about what I do and don't do, and the kinds of things that I will see and not see. I meet and talk to cyclists every day. Few of them have nothing interesting to say about the equipment they use, but I am genuinely astonished at the things that some folk will tolerate or consider a priority.
I see a lot of bikes that are broken for one reason, but are almost invariably well on the way out for another, or are actually broken. 'I hadn't noticed that...' 'Is that not, normal...?' Well in many cases it is 'normal', normal for that type of equipment....
There are quite a lot of things that you can make work for you, with a little effort, but that doesn't mean that it is the best solution or that it is the only solution. Folk will tolerate different sorts of effort, too. Everything has its plus points and its minus points. We are all different, too; some folk get very excited about new things and become almost evangelical about them. Bully for them, but if the real advantages of that thing are limited in scope and/or relevance, (or requires certain sorts of effort to make it work) then it is as well to consider that in a sober way rather than go off on one when anyone (with good reason) says "yebbut....."
For example..... many years ago I got cheesed off at the rate at which my training bike consumed derailleur transmission parts in the winter months. There are many ways of addressing this problem but I thought an IGH might solve it, in good part because it would use a cheap and durable chain and sprocket rather than a load of more expensive/easily damaged stuff. The idea was that the transmission would tolerate periods of neglect provided I did some maintenance every now and then. I chose about the most complicated IGH then available. Folk said it would be
- unreliable
- expensive
- complicated
- inefficient
- full of the wrong ratios
- difficult to repair
- would let the weather in
and so on. In mitigation of this I had a (simpler) spare internal ready in case the original one let go: however I never had to actually use it. I can report that a few of the possible problems are intrinsic to the device but most of them are not. I guess I made that transmission work for me, mainly by doing fairly simple things. I would not recommend that transmission as being 'better' than any other necessarily, I'd just mention the intrinsic shortcomings (things that you can't change and you need to be able to put up with) and explain what to do if you wanted to avoid the other things. FWIW I rode that gear on chain gangs (so clearly the inefficiency and the bad gear ratios were no real handicap after all), I learned to fettle it, keep it well lubricated, and in fact only three times has it given any trouble whilst out riding, and two of those were when the adjustment was wrong. In quite a few years of use and many tens of thousands of miles I overhauled it two or three times and it consumed about £3 worth of new balls and springs. Even these were not worn, but they were a little corroded (my fault). Eventually it gave me trouble on the road for a third time and this time it was serious; the axle broke in half. But this was after decades of hard use and about 70000 miles or so, during which time it had spared me countless hours of tedious cleaning and many hundreds of pounds worth of worn and broken transmission parts, not to mention accidental damage and breakdowns on the road (of which I had plenty on other bikes). The old axle warned me it was on the way out (there was an unusual noise a week before it broke) and it broke for a reason; I installed an improved version and the experiment continues.....
So I regard that experiment as something of a success; even so I would not recommend the same gear to others in an unequivocal fashion; they may have different needs and preferences, and may have preferred different sorts of 'effort' to me. So I don't wax evangelical about it, just explain the pros and cons as I see them and why. That is all you can do.
I don't think that tubeless tyres are much different to my IGH, except that this technology appears to 'solve problems' that I don't really have and in so doing creates a load of new ones that I am not sure are any more tolerable than the ones I started with. I daresay some folk would say the same thing about my IGH (or indeed any piece of cycling kit); that is their prerogative. What I do take exception to is others getting terribly excited if you hold a different view to them, to the point that they go about slandering you, poking childish jibes, second guessing what you do and don't know. etc. There's just no need for that.
Are we not here to exchange information/ideas rather than trade insults?
cheers