Standard Issues
Aren’t standards great? They help make everything easier for everyone. Take disc brakes for example, any 6 bolt rotor will fit with any 6 bolt hub, any IS brake will fit with any IS mount fork. Two years or so ago this was the way it was and everyone was happy.
Well, I say everyone, but anyone who has spent an hour shimming out their brakes to stop disc rub or trying to get a sheared off disc bolt out of a hub was less than over-joyed.
When people started to step away from standards there was a split of opinion. Postmount disc mounts solved the shim issue and meant you could upgrade to bigger or smaller discs with a simple adapter. Center Lock has solved the sheared bolt problem with a cassette lock ring answer. The problem was these weren’t part of a standard and there could be compatability problems for users.
But now it seems like the industry is adopting these un-official standards, Postmount disc mounts and brakes are everywhere and Center Lock is one of the little innovations that remind you of just how clever those guys at Shimano are, and with DT now incorporating it into their hubs it shouldn’t be long, I hope, before others follow suit.
So, what standards are going to fall by the wayside next? Hub spacing and headset diameters are undergoing changes, how long before we’re all running 150mm hubs and 1.5″ headsets?
Sometimes standards make everyones life easier, but at the expense of innovation.
Is it a price worth paying?
January 23rd, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Have you Alan at Hope how clever those damned Japanese are?
Hope moved from a 6 bolt mount to a centre-lock disc mount system between 1993/94, which they moved on from again when the current 6-bolt ISO system became standard.
The other expense of non-standardisation is keeping old parts and bike running in our increasingly throw-away society. Fortunately Hope still support their old designs - but will big companies like Shimano? Or will we be forced to upgrade to a new expensive groupset for the sake of one old/broken - and cheap at the time - part?