I will add this and then pass onto another subject. In the mid 90s I had the oppurtunity to go to Cannondales factory in bedford, at the factory they put the cranksets through various stress tests. At that time, they joked that there cranksets lasted 300,000 cycles on the stress machine outlasting shimano LX and XT, etc. by over two times the cycles. Now the real joke was, the cheapie shimano cranksets lasted over a million cycles before they just pulled the one off the machine, they figured it was a freak incident...they threw another on the machine and it did the same performance. Then again, there's the incidence of the recalls of all the cheapies in the late 90s. Once again, as someone said earlier, every great company through history had periods of greatness and failures.
Classic content, regarding the C-record crankset discussion. The C-record crankset I had mentioned a few posts ago that cracked, Cracked just as described by Jan, along the panto...for a Bianchi crankset on my beloved Bianchi bicycle! The one I replaced it with doesn't have the Bianchi name.
Walt Skrzypek Falls Creek, Pa
On Wed, 28 Aug 2002 11:27:45 -0700 (PDT) Tom Dalton <tom_s_dalton@yahoo.com> wrote:
Grant, I swear I'm not making it my mission to pick on everything you say, but... Another reason low end parts don't break as much is that they aren't ridden as hard or as much. At a given weight (a big assumption) a high quality part will last longer. Tom Dalton Bethlehem, PA Grant McLean wrote: What a struggle product managers must have.......
Professional riders have always wanted lighter weight, and don't care how long parts last or how much they cost, because they never buy them. Paying customers want the same parts as the pro's to make themselves appear authentic, assuming that the "top of the line" parts are best for their own long term use. As a retailer, I can tell you some recreational riders are bigger weight freaks than the Pro's.
Farther back than Super Record ti parts, high-end bike parts have been used other than as they were intended: for racing. Why should any part designed for racing last longer than one Tour de France.... or one stage of the Tour for that matter?
Most lower end parts don't break, so if you want parts that last, don't buy parts that push the envelope.
Grant McLean Toronto, over flowing landfills, Canada
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