Gears

Gears on a bicycle; it’s an odd thing. They have been around for more than a hundred years and yet still they are shit.

After more than a hundred years of engineering, gears in cars will last for 200,000 kilometres or more without servicing.

Gears on bikes, on the other hand, need servicing every 1,000 kilometres or so and the major parts, the chain and chain rings, often need changing every 10,000 kilometres. This is because the drive-train is a chain that is shifted from one cog to another to make a gear change, which leads to uneven wear all over the place.

This system survives because bikes have such a weight constraint on their engineering. An extra kilo on the gears is like 10 kilos of fat on your arse; I am not sure why but it’s something to do with unsprung weight versus sprung weight (the legs being the springs). All the alternatives to dérailleur gears that have been imagined all weight substantially more.

Bike engineering has also got stuck in a rut; there has been little incentive to figure out a system that works properly when there is so much money to be made by polishing the turd. And also when there is so much money to made made by selling the wear parts.