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Practical Cycling.

Captain Caveman

Well-Known Member
V.I.P Member
Start with the bicycles...

The most ideal bicycle depends on what ones cycling needs are, but for a start, one needs one that can take a pannier rack as if one is going to carry things, the rack (Rear carrier) is essential, and before one goes and buys any bike in the hope a rack will do its job, a word about the very most basic principles in bicycle geometry with a traditional diamond, or similar style frame is that the longer the frame wheelbase is, the more stable the bike is when loaded up with panniers so the bike will be easier to control, BUT we also have the shorter the wheelbase is, the better the bicycle will accelerate. Shorter wheelbase bikes are more twitchy and have steeper geometry frame angles. The shortest wheelbase bikes apart from specialist bikes for certain tasks such as bicycle polo are usually time trialing bikes, which are only built for max speed on a short distance (E.g. 10 mile, 15 mile, 25 mile etc) or racing bikes which have a slightly longer wheelbase but still too short to be practical other than the afternoons ride when all one needs to carry is oneself, but neither of these are built to carry anything else.
Then we have the purpose built load carrier, he traditional touring bike, with its stable longer wheelbase and frame designed to still be efficient and comfortable and yet not overly heavy. In other words, it is not ultra lightweight, but is not as heavy as a mountain bike or a heavy beach cruiser. (All bikes which have their place, but one will find them overkill when it comes to ones actual needs. Is like buying a large SUV to pull a little 2 birth caravan when a medium sized or even some smaller cars will be all one needs! Some of the older mountain bikes will work fine as a heavy duty all-round tourer as the geometry used in the 1980's was actually somewhat similar to touring bikes. By the time the early 1990's came along, geometry changed, but still not too bad apart from them being a little too heavy. Don't bother with any full suspension bike unless one is confining oneself to tow a trailer. Some racks are available for them BUT they are a compromize and will not handle heavy weights.
Now there are bicycles that were in between racing bikes and tourer and were known as sports tourer. These were made for those who could only afford to buy one bike and wanted to do a time trial or race on the weekend, but also used their bike for commuting. These bikes have disappeared. Touring bikes hardly exist today as markets are fashion lead. I suppose audax bikes are the closest to sports tourer, BUT audax bikes are not designed to carry any racks. Sports tourer are designed for racks BUT will be twitchy to ride. (Most racing bikes sold as racing bikes from the past on the cheaper end of the market had sports touring geometry and NOT racing geometry, as they recognized that most cyclists would not race, but wanted a bike that felt as if it could race, and sports tourer can actually race, though a racing bike is better if one is racing. Racing bikes do not have any bolt holes for fixing carriers to).
Carriers. Older carriers had three point frame fixings. Then came four point frame fixing carriers. Later still, one had wide type carriers for use on disc braked modern bikes. Unless one has a disc braked bike, avoid these wide carriers as they are too much of a compromize, and actually a compromised design with disc braked bikes where one does not really have an option. My choice would be to use rim brakes and here is why. Brake blocks are always available in all good bike shops without the need to order as there are only three or four types of rim brake block designs. So one does not have to order in the hope ones bike will have working brakes again in the next few weeks or even months like one can be left with if one has disc brakes, as when I left the cycle industry there were over 40 different disc brake pad designs, and when I last had a chat, they say it is now hundreds, which means they have to order the right one, and some are no longer available. Is crazy to be honest, and manufacturers can basically charge what they like knowing one has no choice but to buy from them! We never had this issue with rim braked bikes, so if one has the choice, get a rim braked bike and buy some spare brake blocks anyway, (They are cheap), and one will be set for a fair few years!
There is a nice type of bike I have not mentioned which is also generally good at load carrying and that is the hybrid bike. These do come in different types as some are basically 700c wheeled mountain bikes (Almost pointless. Why not get a mountain bike?), and others at the other end of the hybrid term are basically flat barred racers which are no good carrying things.
Now another bike built from the offset for carrying loads are workbikes often made for businesses and industries which can carry huge weights, but at a slower pace. Great for heavy loads but usually lack gearing for steep hills and also are going to be heavy so not quite so suitable, though the odd lighter weight traditional style bike is going to be ok.

About gears and gearing. Two trains of thought, as basically it is not necessarily the number of gears, but rather the range of the gears that one may look at here.
The first train of thought is to have a wide range of gearing. Obviously to avoid massive jumps in gears, the wide the range the more one ideally needs inbetween, though one need not go too silly, as with deraileur gear systems, cramming too many cogs onnthe rear wheel means thinner cogs and thinner chains and chain angles increasing in angle (Especially if a single chainring near the pedals is used, which only does one thing! Increases wear so one will be wearing out transmissions in no time. Why cycle trade are doing this! Even professional mountain bikers don't like them but have no choice due to sponsorships. Is a fashion gimmick designed to increase trade, and those bikes will never be as efficient as older bikes with only a few cogs on the back. Why? The wider the rear axle and wheel are, and the more angle on the chain, the less efficient the drive will be. (WHY ONE SHOULD NOT BE TEMPTED TO TAKE AN OLD BIKE AND BEND THE FRAME TO FIT MORE GEARS! As bikes with 8, 9 or more cogs on their freehubs will have heavier frames which are stiffer and stronger to compensate, so ones older frame will be far less efficient with having more gears than if one had left it as it is. If one wants to widen them slightly to a seven cog freewheel when it was designed for five, it is the best compromize, but don't go beyond there. The actual old single speed bikes with their narrow hubs and frames had the most efficient drives of all as the chain angle is direct and straight.
But now we come to the next train of thought. One only usually uses a few gears on a ride. If a hill is too steep, and one only comes across a steep hill once or twice on a typical ride, why not go for less gears and maybe a hub gear instead. True, deraileur gears or single speed are more efficient than hub gears, BUT hub gears (If one has a low number of gears such as 3 for example will outlast anything else. To make it more practical,ma 4 or 5 speed may be better, but take it from me who owns an12 speed hub gear, and has tested bikes with 8, 9 and even more than my Sachs 12 speed, there are a lot more moving parts in there. The more moving parts, the more friction AND the smaller the individual parts are, so the more likely they are to go wrong. My 12 speed Sachs Elan hub gear as an example still works. Yet, out of all those hubs they made, I do not know of a single other cyclist who has one that still works, and these were only made around 25 years ago, if that!
Yet, the old 3 speed hubs... Not a lot went wrong with them! Pawl springs rusting through due to neglect where they were stored in damp conditions without being used, so the internal oil didn't get to keep the springs oily is the only real common failure apart from bent axles or the internal changing plates threads going where the toggle chains screwed into. Apart from one hub which was totally ceased solid as had no oil (Total lack on maintenence) and the bike had been left outside on its side in the rain for years by the look of it, so one could say it was totally neglected, and apart from the odd issue such as mentioned above, the 3 speed hubs we serviced made by Sturmey Archer just went on and on and on! Toggle chain replacements as those wore and broke were the most frequent part needed replacing, and they lasted a few years in use before they wore. Hub gears, as long as one keeps the gear numbers low so there are less moving parts inside, and they last. Only downside to the longer lasting designs is a lack of gearing range.
 
I've ridden bikes a lot for most of my life, and as you say it's important to choose the right bike for what you want.

Much of my riding was as a form of transport in cities, riding to work. In that situation what I wanted was something light and fast, easily thrown around. The old ten speed racer was what I had but just the cheap specials from large department chains was all I ever needed. When I lived in Melbourne I used to ride 17 Km each way to and from work, up hill and down dale, Melbourne's a very hilly city. The gears were important there.

In Adelaide it's very flat and the old three speed hub gears were preferred. That was all that was needed and they were so much more reliable and so much less trouble than external sprockets and derailers. I also much preferred the internal hub back brakes, just pedal backwards to brake. You need to look far and wide to find those things these days though, and they're probably not cheap either.

As I got older I tried a more mountain bike style thinking of the comfort from fatter tyres, etc. This was a bad choice, it was so much heavier than what I was used to that it was a chore to ride and I started riding less and less.

These days I've got an electrically assisted bike. You still have to pedal but only just. It doesn't go all that quick but that's fine because I'm not as young as I used to be and I don't bounce that well any more. I bought the particular model I'm using because of all the racks that it came with, and it's got fat 26 inch rims. Only three speed hub gears, I'm in Adelaide again and we don't have much in the way of hills. It's an incredibly bulky and heavy thing but there's an electric motor doing most of the work so it's all good.
 
Once one has selected or defined the type of bike to be practical for ones needs, frame size and frame materials come into play.

I much prefer quality steels such as the good old fashioned manganese molybdenum alloy in the steel branded as Reynolds 531 here in the UK. Is what was used in formula 1 before carbon fibre took its place, and carbon fibre, being a compromised material is not ideal, but though 531 has a few smaller issues, as it needs to be either silver soldered into lugs or brazed to form a join as it can't in itself be welded, it is a strong long lasting durable material that is lightweight and flexible, and the real expert frame builders can build frames to take advantage of this flexible springing, where if they get it right, the frames performance increases, as the flexes in the bottom bracket area can (If done right) spring back to help one right in the "Dead area" of ones pedaling stroke.
And 531 is also a comfortable lightweight material to ride!
Failing that, a chromolly steel where an alloy of chromium and molybdenum is added into the steel is a somewhat cheaper alternative, and can be found badged as Reynolds 500, Reynolds 501 (Which is stiffer than 500 so increases performance but gives a harsher ride as the material has had additional heat treatment to give it its stiffer quality). Is also badged as Tange or (And I am less familiar with this next brand in the UK), as Columbus, but I think Columbus also use manganese molybdenum as well in their range? Different steel tube manufacturers do try different formulas of alloys, and those who know one brand such as Reynolds, will know what is what. (The only real Reynolds tubed bike frame I would avoid is Reynolds 753 as it is very lively for the first year or two of cycling, but the steel then ages and feels dead, and turns energy absorbing instead of energy giving. Was only used for a while with professional cyclists with almost unlimited budgets. The only other Reynolds frame I would say is not going to really do anything special is Reynolds 453 (Think that was it. Started with a "4") which is just plain old carbon steel. It is fine and long lasting but is going to be no real different to any other budget steel framed bike...

Aluminum framed bicycles generally give a harsher ride, and they too are VERY different in performance when comparing one to another. Some cheaper aluminum frames feel as dead as an ordinary heavy cheap carbon steel. Others are brilliantly lively though harsh to ride. While aluminum is a material that does age with use, so one should not really expect it to last a lifetime (Usually a max of 20 to 30 years) as old aluminum can become brittle... As an indicator, stay away from frames with poor warrantees such as just 2 years in some cases! (Unless there is a flaw, aluminum usually lasts at least five or ten times that, BUT do be aware that unlike steel, which as long as it has been kept rust free and protected both externally with paint, and internally via spray oils, it will last ones lifetime if it has no structural flaws, aluminum frames do go brittle with age. (Old cyclists will tell you about aluminum bike parts which can fail as they age. Some last 50+ years. Others less... but steel does tend to last many times longer in use before it eventually fails.. Another difference is that with steel, if one sees a crack, one can cycle back home by taking it easy and monitoring the crack. However, with aluminum, if one sees a crack, by the time one has seen the crack, it is usually too late as the material tears. Aluminium goes quick once it has developed a flaw.
Other common materials like carbon fibre are, in my opinion fragile. I have seen a fair amount of carbon fibre frame failures which is a lot in comparison to the limited numbers sold. Have also seen a few aluminum failures which actually, is not a lot compared to the volumes of sales, but there again, aluminum have generally very short frame warrantees so I maybe less likely to have seen these return. I don't think so though as most customers would have either wanted new frames or new bikes, somI will say that aluminum bike frames do last. I would not hesitate to ride a 25-30 year old aluminum frame!
Carbon fibre tends to go through either being crushed where the wheels join the frame or if something has been overtightened. Is this that I do not trust the material, as the nuts and bolts need to be torqued so that they barely hold themselves in place! Something I did not like at all! And also, one has to be very careful what oils and greases one uses with the material as use the wrong oil or grease and the fibres start to give way and ones frame is broken.
BUT one really good thing with carbon fibre is one can repair broken frames using fibre glass car body repair techniques. Does not always work as it depends where the frame has been damaged, but it is an option, so there are positives, though as a material from a mechanical point of view, there are too many compromizes.
Also carbon fibre bikes will not be designed to take panniers on the back... So as a bike frame material to be practical, I would give it a miss. At least aluminum and steel do offer more of a practical bike frame for carrying loads.
I have seen plenty of steel bike frames fail, BUT even though I have seen this, the way they fail and how they fail, one can still ride them home. And steel frames are normally repairable. Is a material that is so tried and tested over so many years, and there are so many steel bikes out there, some of which are older than the oldest human alive, and still function well. Is a good material. But get a quality steel frame if one can. Buy secondhand to get quality if one needs to. Bring string and a tape measure as one needs to check the frame is straight. If it pulls to one side or another when riding, first check the forks as bent forks are the usual culprit. Then check the frame. Hold string tight from the back of the frame where the drop outs are to the center of the head tube. Measure the distance between the string and the seat tube. Repeat on the other side. Both sides should give the same measurement.
One can usually tell if a steel frame has had a head on collision as there will be cracks in the paintwork near the head tube. Actually, as long as the metal underneath has not fractured or cracked, and the head tube angle has not altered, it should be ok, but any doubt walk away. The cracks in the paintwork will look like several thin lines all parallel next to each other. Tell tale sign the bike has hit something! Usually forks will have been replaced. BUT I have seen frames like this still go on and on for years! So if it rides straight and the metal itself along with the lugs or welds are OK... But best avoid if buying unless price is cheap.. BUT if it is ones own bike, as long as there are no actual cracks in the metal or welds and the joins are tight if it has lugs and the frame is straight, then it can go on for years! Steel is friendly like that and very visually telling if there is a problem.
I like steel!

Titanium is another material one may occasionally come across. Is a strong material which is drawn thin to reduce its weight and can make bike frames to be almost as light as a carbon fibre bike. A titanium frame feels like a lightweight steel to ride but has a "Fresh air" feel to it as has lots of go. But I have had titanium handlebars that had a slight dent fold in on me as they really draw the material out very thin. (I was not riding with the bars, as I was going to take them off a scrapped bike to use them on one of my bikes, and decided not to when the flaw was discovered).
Owners of titanium bikes have reported they can easily dent as they are thinly drawn, but they do seem to be ok. I have tried two if I recall, and they rode really well. Like I said. Was like riding fresh air! BUT, I still have reservations as one comes across so few titanium bikes out there. Is it the ultimate material? Or is it a material one should avoid? Time will tell! One thing though. In Russia, due to them having little iron ores but they did have titanium ores in some areas, one could find kiddie bikes made from titanium, and if it is durable enough for kids to use it, then it should be fine! :D
(There has been many a mountain bike made from the material, and mountain bikes often take a thrashing offroad! So that does give one some reassurance! But as always, check before one buys!)
 
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I went everywhere by bike for decades. I'd never been fit until I resumed riding after a brief period with a car. I don't like exercise just for its own sake, and city riding was a fine sport to distract from the fatigue while saving me lots of time and money. Ivan Illich calculated that by the time someone drives downtown, finds parking, walks from there to the destination, and works enough to pay for the expenses, they have averaged a fast walking pace.
If you want a true understanding of bike materials, and a great deal more, read J.E. Gordon. He makes it easy by telling the stories of how engineering was discovered.
 

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