This is tricky question. Every year at Christmas I make a shortlist of bikes, and until a few years ago would treat myself to a new bike. But now my shortlist is the same every year, and headed by a bike I already have, in a different color... It ruins my Christmas already to have the perfect bike for me.
Now, that said, the systems approach does open up possibilities. My bike is, for instance, designed from the ground up around the fattest Schwalbe balloons (Big Apple Liteskin 60 x 622). That's one system, comfort, speed, security. It is designed around hub gears and a fully enclosed chain case. That's another system, cleanliness. The hub gears are by Rohloff for bulletproof reliability. That's another system, for a minimal service requirement. There is nothing on the bike, with two exceptions, that requires any service at all. The Rohloff examples is well known, requiring an oil change every 5000km or once a year, whichever arrives earlier, and greasing the EXT click box once every 500km (an over-cautious requirement as I've explained elsewhere on this forum).
The remaining item that requires service is a set of vintage Phillips rubber block pedals I use because they are wide enough to take my number twelves. These have a hole to pump in grease, and unsealed, rebuildable bearings. When I first bought these pedals as new old stock on Ebay, I cleared out all the old grease by running light machine oil through them continuously until it was all gone, then pumped in ceramic grease until it came out the bottom and ran clear, none of the light oil left. They've served several years in this condition, but the ceramic grease has disappointed me elsewhere (for instance in the Rohloff EXT click box) by thinning out over time and not repelling water as strongly as, for instance, the white Teflon grease from same maker, Finish Line, which I used extensively as an all-purpose grease until Anto kindly gave me a tube of Phil's Tenaceous. I do not expect to be able to rebuild these pedals, not because they're incapable but because I have no experience with setting the tension and will probably ruin them as a learning experience. On the other hand, the pedals are in good nick still, running smoothly, so meanwhile I'll clear out the ceramic grease with the proven light oil flow, and pump in Phil's from the outside end until it comes out of the inside end. After that, if and when the bearings give out, with a little luck probably not in my lifetime, I'll rebuild the pedals but it would be nice to have modern sealed bearing pedals stand by to use.
I'm a big fan of Victor Pedals VP-191, a silky smooth sealed bearing platform pedal, very good-looking too, and as a safety feature fitted with reflectors both side. They do have a problem for me in particular, though. The pedal is quite a bit short of the width of my feet, and at the end of a long ride I feel the pedal through the soft rubber soles I tend to wear on my street shoes, which I also cycle in.
So, after considerable thought about expensive replacements (a new yellow frame for my Kranich!) and some even more wasteful (a custom made stainless rack to replace the Tubus Cosmo on the bike now because it is mingy and narrow in the standard mean Tubus style), what I would like to replace is an inexpensive but crucial part of my interface with the bike, the pedals.
One of the great attractions of the VP-191 is that this de luxe pedal is often on sale for as little as 20 Euro in the VP livery and unbranded, and wholesale it is very attractive, so that it is fitted by many, many top European bike makers. You just have to be careful that you don't take a VP-191 branded for one of the big marketers off the shelf without checking the price, because I've seen them as high as 129 euro. For a pedal that gives essentiallly permanent service without any attention, without being noticed for years on end, the VP-191 is therefore one of the great cycling bargains of the last several decades, and still.
So, in particular, I would like Victor Pedals to take the VP-191 and make an extra-wide model, a VP-191-B for "broad", and sell it for the same price or not much more.
That would remove the last item on my bike, short of the Rohloff hub and of course the gear train, that still requires service and/or rebuilding.
VP-191 factory info:
http://www.vpcomponents.com/newen/product_detail.php?id=87 SJS used to stock the VP-191 but now I can't find it on the SJS site. Here's another British store with stock:
http://www.activesport.co.uk/shop/article_VP191/VP-Components-VP-191-Pedal.html?sessid=mP0jMwlM2iju9xZTZEtyIZ16TSslKGgH9wl91DWnAh4GHrJ8tMJdnyd99Joi427I&shop_param=cid%3D609%26aid%3DVP191%26Thanks for the opportunity to indulge in systems-thinking, Dan.
Andre Jute
