Here at The Bike Lab, I am seeing a trend. A trend that frankly doesn’t set well with me, just so you know up front where I am coming from. This has been creeping in for years; non-serviceable parts. I feel that it started on the lower end products. (Most notably with cranksets) Parts were thrown out when damaged or worn. The cost to repair them, (if that was even possible) being more than it cost to simply bolt a new bit on. Usually the higher end, performance products were serviceable. However; all that looks to be changing, and changing soon.

Will things like Chris King’s serviceable bottom bracket become an anomaly in the bike industry?

Let’s take a look at one bicycle part that has undergone this very transformation over a period of years. The “lowly” bottom bracket. Once a serviceable and completely adjustable component, the “serviceable” bottom bracket could be kept going for several seasons with regular maintenance. (Certainly, it wasn’t always taken advantage of, but it was possible. An option, if you will.) Then there came the sealed bottom bracket “cartridge”. A little known fact is that the first Shimano units were actually adjustable. (I happen to have the tool to adjust them with in my tool box.) With the unit now sealed, and the adjustability still there, it may have actually been an improvement upon the previous bottom brackets, but things took a turn for the worse after that.

Somehow bottom bracket stiffness became an issue and the pipe spindled “Octa-link” bottom bracket was born. Hmm…….a lateral move, at best. Independantly of Shimano, a group of component makers developed the”ISIS” standard, which increased the spindle size and decreased the bearing size of bottom brakets. Oh yeah, and these units didn’t last long, and were not serviceable at all. Throw it away and replace it.

Then the two piece crank with outboard bearings hit the market with bottom bracket bearings that didn’t turn as freely and were again short lived/non-serviceable. Where did we go wrong here? Fortunately, Chris King stepped in and solved the puzzle. They made a bottom bracket for two piece cranks that actually spun freely out of the box, was reasonably priced, and came with a five year warranty! What is more, they actually made it serviceable. With tools that work for it even. Genius!

All this to say that in a world where the bicycle touts itself as being the green solution. The “Earth Friendly” alternative is about to aquire the “throw away” culture mentality where many parts on a bicycle will not be serviceable. That’s right folks. Even high end, performance parts. The price? Even more expensive at the onset, and at what cost to our environment?

This is unconscionable behaviour from an industry that on one hand promotes itself as “the solution” to our environmental and health issues and then proposes to introduce high end product that has a short life span and is unserviceable to boot. If anything, we as an industry and as fans of the bicycle should be pressing for just the opposite. We already have too much of this going on with many bicycle products in use now.

While the bicycle industry is certainly responsible to some degree, we as riders are responsible as well. We should make our voices heard if we care about this sort of thing. We should spread the word about sustainable cycling products, and we should vote with our dollars. If we don’t. we will get what the industry thinks will sell, and apparently they think that we don’t care if we can fix our components when they are worn or damaged anymore.