June 2012 BoTM 'Dead End Special' - Nominations Please

[yeti-man]

Botm this month skidded right off the track in to the ditch...

it's pulling a big tarmac skid, on a nos white porc, of anal retention.

I'd say it's the most entertaining, 10 pages so far have had me in tears of laughter..

 

[24pouces]

I'd like to enter my 1990 Ibis Mountain Trials.
It's dead end is the 24" rear wheel, some manufacturers used this between 1987 and 1992. After this period, there was a longer break until the 2000s when some Enduro's used a smaller rear wheel. Today, this design seems obsolete (Am I right?).

Build thread here:
http://www.retrobike.co.uk/forum/viewto ... 06#1552106

I fall in love.

 

[Tazio]

i tried ally forks on mine and it ended up as 16 kg the same as my workmates kona fire mountain

There was something wrong with your mates Fire Mountain then. My 92 Fire Mountain with no lightweight mods was about 28lb or or 12.7Kg

 

[john]

Will have to sit down and read through the entire thread, looks like some good stuff and entries thus far. Also some interesting debate.

What myself and the mods intend to do is go through the entries prior to the poll going up. Think most are on the right track though. Either way the next special BoTM will be something straightforward like 'Two wheel special' or somesuch.

 

[FluffyChicken]

Also worthy of mention is a fork with a removable crown which we no longer see - well not in single crown forks.

I wouldn't call it a dead end, more a transition.
They still look the same and other than bolts turning into glue or welds. It's not as if the principle design has ended. Same as the brace.

which is of course the hard problem here, elevated stays live in large groups, just in a different movable form, but is that for the same reason ?

2 wheel drive on the other hand.. that branch didn't take off and stopped.
Saying that Electronic Gearing has struggled to take of for many many years, but suddenly it's not a dead end but a rapidly shooting branch, who know what tech. will come along and make 2 wheel drive have a rebirth.

I liking this month for the interesting stuff being banded about. Makes it well interesting rather than just pretty.


EDIT:
I'd like to see a Rocky Summit posted up.
Set out to solve 'a problem' of chainsuck as they said. By taking a steel frame, elevating the stays, then adding two bomber style downtubes to stop the flex problem and only adding half a pound of weight , yep supprised that didn't last more than that year and there wasn't a mass copy of the design myself.

 

[MiniNinjaRob]

I might have something special for this month..... ;-)

(starts tinkering in cellar......)

 

[andrewl]

Also worthy of mention is a fork with a removable crown which we no longer see - well not in single crown forks.

I wouldn't call it a dead end, more a transition.
They still look the same and other than bolts turning into glue or welds. It's not as if the principle design has ended. Same as the brace.

I'd argue that the removal crown on a rigid fork only really came about so that fork blades could be changed i.e. the original Bontrager fork.

The concept of changing fork blades to turn a fork to your riding style and weight is to me is a dead end down a side track especially as rigid uni crown fork pre date them and as still widely in production.

I'd call it a transition with respect to suspension forks but a dead end for rigids.

 

[FluffyChicken]

Also worthy of mention is a fork with a removable crown which we no longer see - well not in single crown forks.

I wouldn't call it a dead end, more a transition.
They still look the same and other than bolts turning into glue or welds. It's not as if the principle design has ended. Same as the brace.

I'd argue that the removal crown on a rigid fork only really came about so that fork blades could be changed i.e. the original Bontrager fork.

The concept of changing fork blades to turn a fork to your riding style and weight is to me is a dead end down a side track especially as rigid uni crown fork pre date them and as still widely in production.

I'd call it a transition with respect to suspension forks but a dead end for rigids.

Dead end for rigids... but as you say its use came about (probably) due to a transition of using both. I know PACE put it to its best usefulness here in the UK. Which is er a transition not a dead end imho. It evolved.. was used well, worked but then not needed anymore. No abrupt stop more phased out.
Not it evolved then just didn't work and never to be seen again.
To me that's a bit like saying 6, 7, 8 speed are evolutionary dead ends. They're not they where useful, worked and evolved into something else.

Straying in to three different concepts there.
For suspension only
For rigid only
For the rigid to suspension transition.

anyway, it was nice to be able to just change a stanchion and not having the expense of chaining the whole top half if one buggered up.
It was also (some designs more than others) useful for the Standard/OverSize/Evolution headset phase. Just changing the steerer tube and/or crown was much cheaper (in an era of things costing more relatively speaking) and easier for the manufacturer and certainly us RetroBikers

I'm not with the 'modern' crowd so don't know how the effect of the multitude of headset standards effects people or if people chop and change their forks as upgrades. But they are certainly much cheaper, relatively speaking, for a good pair of forks so probably not as much an issue or buying styles are different, the ability to easily sell them on ?

I guess it boils down to how you define a dead end... differently to me.
A dead end to me is when you go down a path and it failed to evolve past that path, none of it's "DNA" is carried forward, no branches where formed from it.

Take the crown mentioned in the picture as an example. (trying to remember what the hell we are talking about)
That style crown developed, rigid forks could be changed, then used for suspension forks (RS) crown evolved into the MAG20 then 21 crown. (boltless versions used on some quadra forks, commonly oem and not bought aftermarket, seen as 'cheap')
Similar bolt style then used for the judy, judy crown evolved into boltless helped by the dropping of 'standard' and 'evolution' headset, move to ahead 1-1/8" and a new 'standard' being out there no need for 9 different crowns, this changed shape... and to what we have today. Clear evolutionary path.

 

[FluffyChicken]

Top routed cable translated to BP front mech by a roller on the brace between the chainstays.

That was a necessity in the transition to top tube cable routing, it was needed before the top pull front mech evolved.

While I don't agree with most the rest of it as dead end either.

BoTM is just for fun of course (sort of, ignoring the prize) and seeing the interpretation of how to class something as dead end (same if people don't agree with me).

RetroBikers are a dead end.

 

[Nader]

...
BoTM is just for fun of course ...

that's right, but BOTM of this month is really not a BOTM and has become a discussion thread!

RetroBikers are a dead end.

this is not true and doesn't related here! ...I'm still alive