Standard? What's Standard?

Last year's addition of the Giant Defy Advanced carbon frameset offered SO many advantages. And one problem. The seatpost. In a well-meaning effort to boost aerodynamics, Giant gave the Defy a proprietary aero seatpost. What's the big deal, you say? Well now I've got no way to secure it in my Park Tools workstand. The Park's clamp only handles round profiles. And the rear brake cable runs externally beneath the top tube. Crap.

I check the Park web site - no, they don't have a retrofit clamp. Too bad, IO love Park's stuff. These guys are hands-down the industry leader for bike-related tools, in my opinion. On a recent visit to my favorite local bike shop, Aberdeen Bike & Outdoors I see a Trek with an aero seatpost clamped into a Bontrager adapter. Sweetness! But, of course, the Bontrager model was made specifically for the Trek Madone - I'm guessing the bike uses a Bontrager seatpost.

So, I turn to my friend Google. And sure enough, they do make an adapter. A little eBay search and I have one on the way for around 30 bucks. Problem solved. But even this system requires four different inserts depending on the Giant model you have. Wow!

Bicycles have become fascinating beasts. While standardization was always a little sketchy, it's become even more so. A quick Google search reveals no less than four standards for bottom brackets. And this is just the current crop. Someone will invent five more new ones, plus have to support legacy standards that aren't in this current crop. The bottom line is that buying a new frameset or putting new cranks on a bike you have will require a new bottom bracket (as was the case when installing Profiles on my mountain bike.

I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to run a bike shop service department. I spent a lot of years growing up working in shops (mostly for the discounts, not for the money...). You could use a pretty standard set of tools to work on 99.9% of bike problems. I think I had two sizes of spoke wrench and maybe three freewheel pullers. A single crank puller worked for most scenarios. I can only imagine what the investment today would be.

My clients in the tool and die industry work with a pretty common set of standards - US, Metric, and JIS. The Society of Automotive Engineers was created at least in part as a standards body. ISO and NSF set standards for quality and food safety respectively. I wonder why no one has proposed this for bicycles?

Just my random musings, the result of a lifetime spent around bikes and working on them. For me, my problem is now resolved (or will be once my adapter hits US shores from somewhere in Korea).

-Sean-