The suspension

Imagine this: You usually ride alone in the car. And then you take two people with you. Before the trip, you take the suspension pump out of the trunk and adjust the pressure of the car suspension. After the first pumping, all passengers must get in and then get out again, if possible without causing the car to compress. Then you can read off the negative suspension travel - and if it doesn't fit, you can repeat the pumping up, getting in and getting out as you wish.

This is exactly how - and no differently - suspension adjustment is done on mountain bikes these days. What seems laughable on a car is a sad reality on a bike. Well, there is an Auto Sag system from Specialized. It would be nice if this system could be extended to the whole industry. After all, correctly adjusted suspension delivers x times more performance on the trail than slightly wider hubs à la Boost, for example.

Brake bleeding

If you read a tutorial in a bike magazine on how to bleed brakes, the story is done in five minutes. But the work is always carried out under laboratory conditions, the brakes are usually brand new. Nowhere is there any trace that the bike has ever seen a trail. In reality, it's a different story: If brakes need bleeding, they have already been through thousands of Elevation losses. Bleed nipples are difficult to open, the pressure point adjustment does what it wants, slave pistons may already be leaking.

The result: You apply a syringe filled with brake fluid, the air escapes, but the brake fluid runs down at every nook and cranny and leaves a passable mess behind. Without a doubt, it doesn't always have to look like this. But more plug and play or plug and bleed would be nice. Bleeding without having to add new brake fluid: That would be a dream.

The internal wiring

It looks nice and tidy: The cables disappear into the head tube and only see the light of day again just before the derailleur, brake or motor. On a mountain bike with internal cabling, however, a simple defect can turn into an orgy of work. For example, the brake line of the rear brake, which can only be replaced if the mid-motor is removed, is particularly fun in the workshop.

Another highlight: once the work is done, everything looks nice and tidy again - and the customer can hardly imagine that the engine had to be removed for this. The willingness to bear the costs for this is therefore likely to be manageable. Manufacturers would do well to develop systems for internal wiring that are uncomplicated and easy to use. Today, the opposite is the case.

The bottom bracket

SBB, that's the old military motto - and it also applies to mountain bikes. "Search until you find" is the motto when the customer complains about cracking noises on the bike. This could be a loose bidon holder screw, a pedal that is not correctly tightened or saddle rails that tend to crack. However, it is often bottom brackets that emit notes that can be perceived as extremely disharmonious. With modern BSA bearings - i.e. bearing shells screwed onto the outside of the frame - the procedure for eliminating the cracking is usually simple. Crank out, bearing out, bearing seat cleaned and greased, bearing and crank back in.

Pressfit bearings are a completely different story. Here, "nomen est omen" is often not "nomen est omen", as there are more than often bearing seats that are not precisely manufactured. In these imprecise seats, a bearing simply cannot work without cracking. It would be more than desirable if the bike industry could return to bolted bearing seats for bottom brackets.

System integration

There are manufacturers who have taken the bike a long way forward with independent and creative ideas. For example, the system integration between shoe and pedal - keyword clipless pedal - is one of the most important developments for sporty cycling. However, system integration on a small scale can be really annoying: Exactly this shock mount only exists once, only this headset fits in this frame and this fork only fits together with exactly this hub. In such cases, the product is usually only fun at the moment. After a few years, when you are looking for spare parts, the fun often stops. This is because the manufacturer only used these special parts for a short time and then removed them from the spare parts catalog.

The banana product

The product that matures with the customer is particularly fun. For example, the chainring is fitted with a locking ring that does not hold. The suspension fork is fitted with seals that are great for Californian conditions, but soon give up the ghost in a harsh Swiss winter. The spokes on the rear wheel simply break over and over again. The result of this banana strategy is recalls.

Some manufacturers pass the lion's share of the recall work on to the bike stores (informing customers, replacing parts, possibly providing a replacement wheel). And these manufacturers then like to take the cake again: for the effort of the bike store to straighten out the product banana, there is a bidon as compensation. Or ten francs. Or, it's not that rare: There is no compensation at all for the specialist retailers who have to pay for the manufacturers' banana bucks.