Favorite discontinued cycling product

[martl]

Originally Posted by 72gmc

Saddles and shoes!

I have about 4-5 Flite Titaniums on various bikes and in boxes, but unnecessary they still show up on eBay frequently. I also have two sets of Keywin pedals and several pairs of Dura Ace SPD 7410. I'm good!

I will be screwed when Cinelli discontinues the "Kaleido" tape.

[El Chaba]

Every rare once in a while, some product that was discontinued comes back in a way that is not disappointing. There is a French cyclist who has gone way down the rabbit hole and revived the Ideale brand of leather saddles; he was able to locate a number of now elderly former employees who gave him techniques, processes and secrets behind the production of leather saddles. All of this came very close to becoming lost knowledge. In any event, you can buy a brand new Ideale mod. 90. When I found about his journey, I knew that I needed to get one for my Singer…You can search the subject on YouTube and there are a number of great videos….just seeing the old tools and machines that he has collected for the shop are well worth the time of viewing.

[TheseGoTo11]

Originally Posted by AngryScientist

Pretty much everything I have any interest in cycling related is now discontinued. Sigh.

This.

[thwart]

A two-fer.

Panaracer Competition SX tires (best clinchers ever)… and Campagnolo Nucleon wheels.

[72gmc]

… and 10-speed Record …

[bikinchris]

Originally Posted by 72gmc

… and 10-speed Record …

I'm guessing this is a bad idea, but IF I owned these companies, when I made a new group design, I would keep the old design around as long as it would sell. or at least offer a once a year opportunity to get on a list to buy an old group.

[Mark McM]

Originally Posted by MikeD

I compared to topo maps and ridewithgps. The Avocet 50 compared favorably. What have you got?

Cateye did indeed make an altimeter bike computer. https://yarchive.net/bike/altimeter.html

You need to get off this idea of counting small changes in altitude with a barometric (pressure) sensor. Even on a level course, there will be small variations in atmospheric pressure and that "noise" would be counted as fake elevation gain without filtering such as what the Avocet 50 has. You should read what Jobst Brandt wrote who designed and patented the product.

Circling back to the "accuracy" of the Avocet 50 altitude gain function vs. modern computers:

Topographic maps and RideWithGPS may not final say for altitude gain. In fact, RideWithGPS says that altitude gain measurements from baromeeters may be more accurate than from their mapping database. From the RideWithGPS FAQ:

Rides and routes are not directly comparable, because they are slightly different files.

• A ride is a GPS recording of an activity, which calculates elevation gain and loss from the barometric altimeter of the device (phone or GPS computer) used to record it. These recordings are more accurate than the available estimated data sets on routes.
  
• A route is a planned activity for GPS navigation. These include elevation gain and loss estimates calculated with an elevation dataset built into our Route Planner. Because of how this data was collected, routes may have less accurate elevation data.

But even still, I was wondering how the Avocet 50 altitude gain function compared with modern computers and to RideWithGPS route data, so I went to fire up my old Avocet 50, and compare its measurements to a Garmin Edge 840 and a Wahoo Elemnt Bolt 2 on the same rides.

Unfortunately, the Avocet 50 batteries were dead when I went to do the first ride (the Avocet 50 is a known battery eater, and can go through several pairs of batteries a year). But I could still compare the Garmin and the Wahoo to RideWithGPS. The numbers for the first ride were:

Ride 1:
RideWithGPS route planner: 2614 ft
Garmin Edge 840: 2684 ft (+2.7% compared to RWGPS)
Wahoo Elemnt Bolt 2: 2415 ft (-7.6% compared to RWGPS)

I had fresh batteries in the Avocet 50 for the next 2 rides:

Ride 2:
RideWithGPS route planner: 1955 ft
Garmin Edge 840: 2034 ft (+4.0% compared to RWGPS)
Wahoo Elemnt Bolt 2: 2007 ft (+2.7%compared to RWGPS)
Avocet 50: 1840 ft (-5.9% compared to RWGPS)
(Note on Ride 2: The top of one of the hills that was on a private road that was not in the RWGPS database, so the RWGPS altitude gain was probably a little lower than it should have been.)

Ride 3:
RideWithGPS route planner: 1972 ft
Garmin Edge 840: 2059 ft (+4.4% compared to RWGPS)
Wahoo Element Bolt 2: 1892 ft (-4.1% compared to RWGPS)
Avocet 50: 1440 ft (-27.0% compared to RWGPS)

Overall, the altitude gain of the Garmin was a bit higher than RWGPS, the Wahoo was a bit lower, and the worst of the bunch on the rides with all 3 computers was the Avocet. The different performances may be related to the nature of the rides: Ride 2 was shorter with just a few bigger climbs, while Ride 3 was over twice as long with more but smaller climbs. The Garmin and Wahoo appear to be able to handle both types of climbs, but the Avocet falls down when the climbs are shorter (as would be expected with its primitive hysteresis algorithm).

[shinomaster]

I'm sure this has been mentioned but speedplay X2 pedals.

[cash05458]

Originally Posted by reuben

Winning Bicycle Racing Illustrated

Loved that mag...just checked actually and I still have an old winning board game out in my shed...terrible game but pretty cool stuff!

[chrisroph]

Time Impact pedals.

[cyan]

Not sure if it's discontinued but pretty hard to find these days: aftermarket carbon rim brake fork for direct mount calipers

[BdaGhisallo]

Originally Posted by cyan

Not sure if it's discontinued but pretty hard to find these days: aftermarket carbon rim brake fork for direct mount calipers

Were these ever not hard to find? Who even made them at any scale?

I tried to find one about 8 years ago for a build I was doing and had to give up as there was nothing out there even then.

The only lead I had was the fork that Gaulzetti had for their custom builds.

[BdaGhisallo]

I always thought the Oakley RadarLock XL sunglasses were a fantastic product.

They started the whole big lens thing that is now commonplace and the Lock feature made taking the lenses out for cleaning a total cinch. They were truly awesome.

[91Bear]

Originally Posted by martl

I have about 4-5 Flite Titaniums on various bikes and in boxes, but unnecessary they still show up on eBay frequently. I also have two sets of Keywin pedals and several pairs of Dura Ace SPD 7410. I'm good!

I will be screwed when Cinelli discontinues the "Kaleido" tape.

https://carsoncitybikeshop.com/cinel...RoC1zAQAvD_BwE