Isn’t it nice to know that you can take your bike into any bike shop and get it fixed? Even if you’re in Mexico, France, Italy, Montana, or even India? If they don’t have the part to fix your bike, they can easily order it and have it fixed in a day or two. Well, it wasn’t always that way. You see, in the 1970’s the International Standards Organization (ISO) spent years of painstaking work involving over 30 nations to develop standard sizes, thread pitches and specifications for common bicycle parts like bottom brackets, hubs, freewheels, head sets, etc…
Before the ISO endorsements were made, each country had its own standards. Even within a country, you could find different standards for different manufacturers. A bicycle made in France used different parts all around than a bicycle made in Italy or the United States. This made life difficult for both the bicycle dealer trying to help a customer, and also for the customer who had purchased a bicycle with standards not common in their area.
While rifling through my 1970’s Bicycling magazines, I found an article on this while the standards were still in development, and it brought to mind many situations that are occurring now in our industry today.
While we have always tried very hard to manufacture our bicycles using standard size parts and specifications to make things easy for our customers, many manufacturers are now veering far from the ISO standards in an effort to create what’s called ‘proprietary’ parts. These are parts designed specifically for that particular frame. It can be something as small as the part that holds the rear derailleur to a carbon frame, or something major like a specific bottom bracket that’s only available from that manufacturer.
I think people should be aware of proprietary parts as they can make life difficult for the customer, as well as the bike shops trying to help that customer. This is especially true for the cyclist touring foreign countries.
