Shimano Bicycle Museum Review | Hacker News Reader

Shimano Bicycle Museum Review

inrng.com

315 pointspietroppeter84 comments

For those in the Bay Area I highly recommend the Marin Museum of Bicycling. They have an absolutely incredible collection and walking through it you can actually see the bicycle evolve from the direct pedal to today's designs. Truly wild to see some of the dead end evolutionary branches. Steering mechanisms, gearing, early chains, brakes -- people tried so many crazy approaches.

It was founded by a lot of the original mountain bikers so it has a lot of the evolution of mountain bikes as well.

On my list for next time I go there, planning to bike the Eldridge Grade track with my Marin Eldridge Grade 1995 MTB.

PS: running https://www.vintagemtb.org retro mtb event

Also we have some partnership with a similar MTB museum in Arnhem (NL), definitely recommend paying them a visit, they have a big collection, I found the first Marin Madrone Trail 1986.

https://mountainbikemuseum.nl/

The treadle-style powertrain kind of blew my mind.

There's a fun, two-story Bicycle Museum in Pittsburgh as well. Huge collection, though not much narration.

I live in the Bay Area but cannot find that museum. USdefaultism?

I think Sanfranciscodefaultism is fairly reasonable considering what website we’re on. But yeah there’s like 5 “Bay Areas” even in the US

Love that this is on Hacker News! INRNG has some of the best commentary about professional cycling online, as well as book reviews and travel pieces around famous climbs and races. If you are a fan of professional cycling, it’s a must-read.

I’m building a non profit cycling website, perhaps you are interested: https://cyclohub.cc

It is still in the early stages. i want to gather news from across all channels and make a place for cycling fans, without all the ads.

Also check out my dad’s biography at https://championwillpower.com

Great to see cyclist fans on here!

I like the concept of pooling news together with the rankings. Everything is in dutch so I cannot comment on the content, but I think it is a good idea.

However, what I think is missing in online cycling is something better than pcs for live races. At the moment, there is no central place when you can follow all races (not only WT) understanding what is currently happening. At most you get a feeling of the groups there are and the distances, but even that is many times not accurate (e.g. in PCS they say "peloton" when it is a group of 30 people).

Of course, doing this is not easy and time consuming...

the daily digests on the "HUBS" section are already in English, and you can sign-up for automatic message (per e-mail or push notification). I'm considering translating all news headlines into English using AI. working on that.

And yes, proper live races would be great with content from people along side the road as well. Currently i think sporza.be is best in this (live race report), but it is all in Dutch.

Thank you for your feedback!

hey I am building this! check it out and let me know what you think. Still in the early days and lots to improve on, but we are trying to improve the experience for cycling fans!

https://radial.racing/

What I'd really like to see is a spoiler-free mode.

I can watch a race on catch-up, but if I'm doing that then I can't open PCS to check profiles or standings/time-gaps until I'm fully caught up

We have that! It is not perfect but is improving. By next season we will have catch-up mode too so you can tune in when you can and get caught up on the major events that got the race to where it is

I grew up in Idaho, so I know well the pains of trying to follow the sport from another timezone

I've given the app a go, but one thing I'm wary of is how much bluesky stuff is in - and that's likely to have race spoilers too

It's a shame Lucas' cycling blog isn't on that platform, that's a great source for news and updates

We will be labeling spoilers from bluesky as well before next season starts so they stay hidden. Work in progress but it should be getting better at a pretty quick pace!

Exactly this.

On top of that, when catching up it's great to have an indication of _when_ to start watching a race. For that I've been using the info provided on the HowFarOut[1] Twitter account.

[1] https://nitter.click/HowFarOut

We are looking at ways to indicate ahead of time when you should start watching (and sign up for push notifications) as well as ways to do this based on what is happening in the race (crosswinds alarm!)

Wanted to say thanks for making this app, makes following races so much easier rather than looking at estimated finish time and setting alarms every day of a tour lol.

So happy to hear that! There is a lot more I plan to do to make it better. I feel like what we have now is just the bare minimum. Looking forward to next season!

I understand there's probably just not the data in API you're pulling from, but it'd be cool if smaller races like the Philly Classic could also be tracked in your app. When you're at the race, it's a little hard to find where the peloton is at a given time so I was using your app to try to find it, but no such luck.

Totally agree and this will be solved in time! I am actively working on this now

We’ve interacted on r/peloton before - your father is a giant and I am glad the biography is out. :)

Ah great! and thank you for your kind words.

hey, I'm also building something for cycling fans, maybe we should connect? seems like we are thinking about similar problems! https://radial.racing/

kristo at radial dot racing : )

edit: I'm also in NL too

great! I e-mailed you

This is kind of underselling some important details:

For those who don't recognize the name, he is the brother of a top professional cyclist, Matteo Jorgenson, who just last weekend played a key role in the US winning the world cycling championship road race.

haha that is true thanks for the assist there

How do you plan to finance the infra and moderation?

infra, for now, is relatively cheap. Eventually i hope the community will contribute to maintain the website. Moderation will be interesting, hopefully partial automated, partially by the community, partially my own time.

it is truly my intend to keep it ad free and true platform for the cycling fans.

I registered a non-profit company to make sure those believes are captured and part of the website.

Second this - I've been reading it for years, and it goes beyond "who won" and has a lot more in-depth analysis, including the business side of cycling.

I visited the Shimano Bicycle Museum two years ago and it was a delight. Their new museum is even better than the one they had about a decade ago (smaller building inside the large Daisen Park nearby).

When I purchased the ticket I was offered an English version of the history of bikes presentation in the main hall. I politely declined, but was later politely approached with a piece of paper handwritten with a time the English version would play. I attended and was so glad I did. It was a beautifully presented showcase of bikes across history (with individual bikes in the room being thoughtfully-timely lit up as the video described them).

Really worth going. And I super love Japan and the way I've been treated wherever I went. I've been to Japan about a dozen times now over the last 20 years - it's my favorite place to be.

Aha! maybe this is the time to finally resolve a question that has bugged me for years.

In Europe up to about 1983-ish I don't recall anything other than European manufacturers. For example, your commuter bike would have had a 3-speed Sturmey Archer gearbox inside the rear hub and your fancy road bike would have had Campagnolo (if you could afford it: they were infamously expensive).

And then out of (what seemed like) nowhere Shimano shows up with all these innovations. Index shifting, non-circular chainrings, cassette freewheels, 7-speed or more blocks.

Was there a reason that Shimano suddenly showed up in Europe with all these innovations?

Europe is big. From a German POV Sturmey Archer were exotics, and allegedly not that good compared against anything (well maintained) by Fichtel&Sachs. I don't even remember what was on my early road bikes anymore, but certain it was neither Campagnolo or Shimano.

Later on I rode Campagnolo, they were reliable and easy to maintain. Anything Shimano I cursed and avoided like the plague. Because that was sensitive shit, not good to maintain, and degraded fast. It was like it was made to be thrown away after few uses, just to save a few grams.

All that aside, this gave you a real advantage: https://connexchain.com/en/ :-) They were called different at the time, just Wipperman maybe, but didn't really matter.

You just asked your dealer for the good chains made in Solingen, and got these.

In Germany, Fichtel & Sachs was big in this area. However, the two heirs of this company was Gunter Sachs and Ernst Wilhelm Sachs thought that maybe being a playboy, center of interest of tabloid and the jet-set was more worthwhile than doing a constructive role in the board. And later the AG (shareholder company) was sold and sold and sold. It belonged to Mannesmann (originally in steel, but later into telecoms), Bosch, Siemens, ZF ... Often, companies loose their identity in this process, as bookkeepers take over. Also, the buyers usually slaughter the company they bought to refinance their acquisition. As part of that the bike parts were sold to SRAM in 1997.

Fichtel & Sachs (actually Ernst Sachs) invented the "Rücktritt" (is that back pedalling brake in english?), bike freewheeling and the combination of this, the "Torpedo Freilaufnabe". That one was so good that it was one of the first things the chinese copy-cats replicated. Copying as the highest form of attribution ...

However, the company diversified quite early, e.g. they made "Wankel" motors, one cylinder motors, hitches, shock absorbers etc. By 1980 the bike parts were just a rounding error in their accounting --- partially also due to the high amount of the car industry in Germany, where they were a supplier. And still, they bought other bike part suppliers.

“The bicycle is a curious vehicle. Its passenger is its engine. ” ― John Howard

Shimano make great fishing tackle especially reels, from applying their expert gear-engineering skills from bicycle manufacturing, plus is an outdoor sport.

I love that they share product names between cycling and fishing (e.g. the mid-priced range of reels and cycling groupsets are 'Ultegra')

Shimano reels are the best I dumped Penn and switched everything over. I’d like to add a Talica to the collection.

I love their group sets and a 1x11 blew my mind during covid. I was always used to 3x setups and I don’t think 1x’s were around when I was a kid.

1x11 is a fairly recent thing. Came out in the last ~8 years, really. I was hesitant about going 1x, but did on my gravel bike (1x12) and it's a nice way to cut complexity, weight, and improve maintainability. That's not to say the era of the front derailleur is over -- I think they've still got their place on road bikes.

Came out in 2012 with SRAM MB group (XX1). The main invention was the narrow-wide chainring, before that there was no any advantage in 1x as you still needed a chain retainer in the front in lieu of the front derailleur. So it's fairly recent but not 8 y.o. 1x12 is already 10 y.o.

They started with reels! Bikes came after.

IIRC, they specifically started with freewheels because they arent that different from a reel in how they work.

I like the Shimano MTB stuff, usually I'm all in on the XT level stuff. I did have some XTR cranks back in the day, but they had this cool dark grey color. I especially like the XT disk brakes and their clipless XT trail pedals.

I do too -- on the road, I've migrated over to SRAM, but my hardtail MTB still runs a mix of SLX/XT/XTR. When I buy a new MTB next year, I may or may not stick with Shimano. We'll see.

switched from SH51 single-release to SH56 multi-release and clipless became worlds better.

Also everyone should try di2.

I live in Osaka, I did not know this existed so close by, I should go visit.

History of Kharkiv Bicycle Factory in Ukraine.

https://uk-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/%D0%A5%D0%B0%D1...

Praiseworthy because "Timo Noko" is mentioned as a customer. Those bicycles were good but dirt cheap, maybe even 1/10 of Raleigh or Shimano.

Shimano never sold complete bikes.

Although, fun fact, there are complete bikes badged Shimano. The neutral support bikes in the TdF are Canyon Ultimates from 10 years back with Shimano branding. The TdF is full of such truth-bending in the name of sponsorship, see also Lance climbing on a Litespeed with Trek branding.

Yes the same way Mavic were carrying Mavic branded Cannondales a decade or so ago.

Nowadays they use the 2021 version of the Canyon Endurace CF SL 7. And the Shimano neutral support team is used in most World Tour races, not only in the Tour de France.

The Shimano neutral support team has a list with the materials each team is using, so they can quickly get the correct bike from their car and hand it to a rider if needed. You can see an example of the list here [1]. For example, you can see that they know the pedals used by each team.

[1] https://images.vrt.be/width1280/2026/04/13/db02d167-1a93-4c5...

I had a feeling it was all the world tour races, but I didn’t want to speak out of turn. I think the only equipment they account for is the pedals, since you’d need them to match to be able to pedal at all. I know they have a few sizes of bikes and on top of that a dropper seat post in every bike to adjust for height.

The dropper is the reason they stick to older models.

Spa World in Osaka is also worth a visit if you're in the area. For reasons beyond my understanding, Osaka happens to have _several_ bars serving ridiculously good absinthe cocktails.

I had a Shimano bike as a teenager and it was great, the breaks were amazing and I loved riding it until it got stolen right in front of a bank security guard. I still think about the bike.

Shimano never sold complete bikes.

You probably owned one of these retail store bikes who were often plastered with various shimano stickers for being equipped with their cheapest tourney transmission.

Interesting but nothing on that bike felt like it was the cheapest, still one of the best rides I had even 20 years later.

While at the very lowest end of the spectrum some of what we call bikes are really bicycle shape objects, you don't need an expensive bike to have a good time on the bike.

While on holidays, I once rented what looked to be a very cheap alu road bike, with the lowest end shimano transmission, heavy wheels and low end tires. My regular road bike at the time was a Festka custom road bike whose total price would have been north of 8k€ with much more gears and gear range, better brakes, super supple tubular tires. Yet I had the time of my life on that cheap rental bike. You said it, you were a teenager. It was the right bike for you at the right time of your life and it was probably even easier for you to enjoy it if you didn't have any point of comparison.

The actual ride matters much more than the actual bike one is riding it on. People tend to obsess too much on equipment in the cycling word, even more so these days when online cycling medias are constantly reminding peoole how much watts them would save by using this over that.

They also have a museum in Singapore, which I highly recommend.

No rods or reels? As a Shimano fishing enthusiast, I feel slightly underrepresented here. :)

As a cyclist, the first time I saw Shimano fishing rods took me by surprise too, although it makes (some) sense. Lightweight tubes, smooth bearings, mechanical spinning things are common in both industries. Also amuses me in the same way when I see a Suzuki outboard motor or a Honda lawnmower.

Yamaha is another maker of various things:

Maker of electronic keyboards, outboard motors, jetskis, motorcycles, pianos, drums and guitars.

The logo appears to be 3 tuning forks.

Mitsubishi race cars and heavy mining equipment.

Bridgestone bicycles.

Just scored a 1992 RB-1 earlier this year. Had to order some parts to restore it to factory-correct, but it'll be rebuilt this weekend. Great, great bikes. Lusted after one for a long time.

Honda started as a motorcycle. Making excellent tiny engines, it made sense to sell them as components to those who need portable combustion power. I used to work in a factory building pressure washers that used Honda.

Branching out from there in to tiny automobiles came later. It likely helped them be experts at high RPM low displacement, which ultimately won out vs what the American engine makers were doing at the time.

There is a dedicated museum in Sakai as well apparently:

"Shimano Reel Museum (Sakai, Japan): Situated in Sakai, Japan, the Shimano Reel Museum offers a unique look at the history of fishing reels, with a particular focus on the innovations of Shimano, one of the world’s leading tackle manufacturers. " https://oldfishingluresandtackle.com/fishing-tackle-museums-...

I'm going to Japan in a few weeks and was contemplating visiting this. I'm an avid cyclist and bicycle activist. However, not a big gearhead. What kinds of cyclists is it aimed for? Is it worth a detour?

The article literally says what's in the museum. What more do you want to know lol.

If you didn't understand my question that is ok.

Sorry for an unprompted response, but if you’re enjoying cycling and willing to do detours, I’d suggest to check out cycling routes themselves. There are some amazing designated roads that are insanely nice and fun to ride when the weather is around 15-25c.

Is there a list you’d recommend? Or a good routes website for Japan or that area in particular?

Shiamani Kaido is the most famous one. Gorgeous views across little islands and bridges. Lake Biwa course is easier, and it’s neat during fall. There are a bunch of japanese cycling route websites if you wanna go through big list of possibilities.

There’s a bunch within Tokyo area as well, but obviously different vibes.

I was there two days ago - I'm not the most museumy person, but it's worth it if you're already in Osaka for other things or really want to see a wide range of bike history in the flesh. We were the only people there, so it was a serene experience.

I actually wish they would cover more of Shimano's history - they were too neutral imo

https://www.moosfietsen.nl/museum.html also has a nice collection of old bicycles!

Also in the Netherlands, https://velorama.nl/collectie/

I'm a fairly enthusiastic road rider, and while I'd never trade the tech on my modern bike there's a beauty to those early derailleurs that is lost in modernity.

By coincidence I was oiling my Shimano Tourney and hour or so earlier. There's something satisfying about well made engineering.

3 years ago, I visited this museum during my cycling trip across South Korea and Japan. the staff were so friendly

I hope there's an exhibit on the first generation ten-speed dura ace group set, which was a legitimate jump ahead in capability and precision when it was introduced in 2004. Everything since then has been refining some of the same.

I think Shimano become famed with "self-centering" derailleur some 50 years ago?

Before that you had to watch gears all the time.

I remember tinkering with my Ukrainian gears to make them more loose in "Shimano style".

https://uk-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/%D0%A5%D0%B0%D1...

Apparently Dura Ace was introduced in 1973!

https://www.shimano.com/en/100th/history/products/14.html

I think it has always been the premium top-end of the Shimano product line? For me the most iconic will always be the 7700 and 7800 series, first generation of 9 speed and then 10-speed integrated brake/shift levers. In the era before the shifter cables moved under the bar wrap following the lead set of the first-gen SRAM Force.

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