Originally Posted by
illdthedj
are you kidding me? maybe not for you considering you are 16 thousand posts deep and have been on here for 6 years, but front/back gears and both derailleurs on top of the shifters are a bunch of components that you would need to be knowledgeable about in order to install on your build yourself on top of maintaining and tuning.
if novice rider A buys a track bike, and novice rider B gets a geared road bike, B would need to know about everything A needs to know on top of everything ive previously mentioned. and i think its safe to say gears/derailleurs/shifters are some of the more complicated components on a bike.
Not really, they're just different.
Changing a flat rear tire for example - probably the most commonly needed service on either style of bike. With a SS you have to deal with chain tension and aligning the wheel straight in the frame and keeping the right side of the wheel from walking forward when you tighten the axle nuts. On a geared bike with vertical dropouts you have none of that.
I'm thinking that the issues we're used to aren't problems because we're comfortable dealing with them but the ones we aren't so used to are big deals.