WheelNut profile

I really enjoyed this article! Nice to see the cost comparison at the end. I used to do some drifting back in the day just with janky cars and tires sourced from the local tire shop's discard bin in the dead of night. It was still expensive with such junk cars. Biking has an amazing cost to adrenaline ratio.

That is exactly what I was thinking too. Then I remembered that Unno is part of Cero Design. http://www.wearecero.com/ 

Even still, how in the world could the bicycle side of the operation be profitable at 50 frames per year? The employees there must only spend a small fraction of their time working on Unno products. The suspension development costs alone would outstrip the profits from 50 frames. It is a mysterious world...

You should use an abrasive hacksaw blade (or an angle grinder with cutting disk) when cutting through carbon rather than a toothed blade. It gives a much smoother cut and won't tear the fibers out. Also, wear respiratory protection as carbon dust is supposedly very bad for your lungs.

Absolutely. It is a very niche thing. Anyone who built such a drivetrain would have to be able to make a profit while moving a small number of units.

Absolutely. It is a very niche thing. Anyone who built such a drivetrain would have to be able to make a profit while moving a small number of units.

Its definitely true that changing a cassette is one of the easier tasks in the hierarchy of bike mechanic'ing. It's still an extra thing to do though. Some people won't mind. It just depends on your propensity to enjoy wrenching on your bike. The thing is that the more you dig into life with 8 speed rather than 12 speed more and more people are eliminated from the ideal candidate for 8 speed column and the ideal spectrum for using 8 speed becomes a pretty niche group. Nothing wrong with a niche group of people though! Maybe a small manufacturer like Ingrid could release a nice high quality low cog count drivetrain to satisfy those who want that extra simplicity. More choice=more better.

Sure the data makes sense, but for the MAJORITY of riders buying something with inherently broad capabilities is a better value. It's like with electric cars where battery range (corollary to gear range) is a huge selling feature because people want the capability whether they need it or not. Sure the 80km battery range of the Chevy Volt is statistically fine, but it doesn't matter because WHAT IF. People feel totally comfortable buying a 400km range Tesla. Sure a 120km range Tesla would be cheaper, handle better, have lower battery replacement costs, etc. The thing is that people feel totally comfortable buying a 500% 1x bike, but not a 300% gear range 1x bike.

Also, swapping cassettes is a pain in the ass.

One other interesting thing was the recent Cycling Tips chain test in which they found that the SRAM XX1 Eagle 12 speed chain was BY FAR the longest wearing chain out of the many chains in their test. It beat out 10 and 11 speed Dura-Ace chains by a wide margin. Keep the dang thing clean and lubricated though! That'll make that expensive cassette last way longer.

Mountain bikes are not designed with front derailleurs in mind anymore. There are way to many compromises in design when you have to accommodate an FD, so you're not going to find a FD compatible frame anywhere these days (not a new bike anyway).

There is certainly a place for single speed and low gear count setups. I guess the implication that was odd to me in the article is that one to nine speed gear trains are possibly "the future" which seems regressive to me. That being said we did get rid of the front derailleur not so long ago, which temporarily removed some of the range available until we got to larger rear cassettes. The set of compromises that we make in component selection is always a balancing act between many things like weight, cost, pedaling efficiency, muscle efficiency, bike maximum capability, intended terrain, etc. If this set of compromises was simpler then there wouldn't be such a wide breadth of bikes available.

(Trigger warning: Anecdotal evidence ahead) I personally think rejecting 12 speed is non-sense. It makes the bike so much more usable and dynamic in its range of capabilities. I certainly would never want to go backwards just to shave off 100-200g from the rear of my bike. Weight savings is typically a fruitless as far I'm concerned. My bike plus gear total weight is about 95kg, so 200g is 0.2% of the total weight. I'll take a 0.2% increase in weight to allow me to ride further uphill and faster on the flats. I haven't seen many instances of broken derailleurs, premature chain or cassette wear on my bike or my riding friend's bikes (mostly SRAM). Perhaps in some parts of the world there are trails that destroy these parts more often though, but I don't ride there.