This makes me crazy, and I wish I were more articulate so that I could explain the many reasons why.
In a nutshell, here goes.
Tullio Campagnolo rode bikes. He raced bikes, in fact. He's riding over a freezing mountain pass in some 'spring' race in Italy, between World Wars One and Two. It's pissing down rain, and as he goes up in altitude, the rain changes to sleet and then to snow. He flats.
He fumbles to change the tire, his frozen fingers working the wing nuts that secured the wheel. "There has to be a better way" thought Tullio. Of course, he thought it in Italian.
After the race, when he had regained the feeling in his digits, he set out to develop a better wheel retention system. He invented a simple, elegant way to securely hold a wheel in the dropouts, but one that would allow nearly instantaneous wheel changes. It used a hollow axle instead of the solid axle and wing nuts that were the state of the art. It was lighter. Closing a small lever against an eccentric cam secured the wheel. He called this invention the quick release.
It didn't need adjustment, once the correct tension was set - a simple operation - the wheel could be installed and removed many times with no further fuss. Because a certain amount of force was required to close the cam-actuated lever, it couldn't vibrate loose or spontaneously come undone. It was slick.
Fast forward fifty years, to the bike boom. Non-racers and non-enthusiasts are now cycling. Shop owners are busy, too busy to show new riders the proper operation of this simple and elegant device. Riders don't understand its operation, and don't close their quick releases properly. Some are hurt very badly while riding their bikes when the wheels separate suddenly from the fork.
Lawyers get involved, and hire engineers who say "the design is poor.'" "Its operation is not easy!" they cry. The solution is to modify forks with 'lawyer tabs' or 'lawyer lips' which serve to retain the front wheel even if the quick release - a simple mechanical device - is not properly fastened.
The lawyer lips have an unintended consequence. They defeat the purpose of the quick release, making a quick wheel change impossible. The quick release must now be adjusted every time the wheel is removed or installed, since the lawyer lips prevent the quick release from being used in its intended 'set it and forget it' mode. In essence, they exacerbate the problem.
In steps Clix. I just found out about them today via Ed Pavelka's otherwise excellent RoadBike Rider newsletter. It's a good thing their system is foolproof, because fools are so ingenious. Now we have to learn to use a new system, one that requires tools (at least initially). I'm stocking up on old fashioned Q/Rs, since when Q/Rs are outlawed, only outlaws will have Q/Rs. I'll be teaching classes in their operation, too. Should take about five minutes.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
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7 comments:
I think it would be a lot safer if all wheels were attached to forks by big axle nuts that can only be twisted by a special wrench that can only be legally purchased/owned/operated with a permit. That way, we eliminate the possibility of the user failing to close the lever, while simultaneously having the secondary retention device fail.
Another possibility is to make the front wheel an integral part of the bicycle, such that it never comes apart. Got a flat tire? Get a new bike. Seems silly right? I thought so, too. A frustrated mother brought her child's bike to me today with a flat tire. Until she learned from a local gas station attendant that my shop is in her neighborhood, she had planned to simply buy her boy a new bike, one that didn't have a flat tire. She was surprised to learn that flat tires can be repaired, and at a reasonable price.
You've got to be f'n kidding me.
My favorite bit from the Clix press release is this: "The problem occurs when the rider spins the quick release lever like a ‘wing nut’ until it is tightened, rather than operating it properly like a quick release cam. This gives the impression that the wheel is safely fastened when it is not."
Which, translated, could mean that it's the lawyer tabs that are at fault - if you've filed them off, you can remove/attach the wheel without having to spin the nut.
F'n lawyers.
F'n Safety Nazis.
Taking knocks is part of life. I guarantee that anyone who's ever lost a wheel due to not fastening a QR properly doesn't do it twice.
Digging around the Clix site, it doesn't actually look that awful.
Well, 'cept for the fact that it'll become a new de-facto standard when there's no need for a new de-facto standard, and all the old-skul QRs and forks will get shucked to the scrap heap, and we're one step closer to living our lives in safe, temperature controlled, padded cells.
"of course, he thought it in italian" and many, many others have me crackin up here at work! and who says you arent articulate?
First time I heard the names lawyer tabs or lawyer lips for those nubs. We just "denub" our forks with a file and our quick releases are able to do their jobs again.
I take a file to mine also, but it sure seems like most of the folks I ride with don't.
I was assembling a Rivendell Bleriot a couple days ago, when I noticed a big warning tag hanging from the brake hole on the fork. The tag said that it was not to be removed by shop employees, and it went on to describe how the fork was not equipped with lawyer lips, and about how the q/r should be operated properly, etc, etc. Of course, I removed the tag so I could install the front brake. I don't think it's true with all Bleriots, or with all Rivendells, but many of the bikes sold by that company are still lawyer-lipless.
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