Salamandrine 

Too much hate man. There needs to be a companion thread. What component do you love, even if most people hate it?

I'll start.

Huret Allvit
Simplex Delrin anything
Bridgestone 'self centering' brakes - OK not hated so much as ignored
Campagnolo Record sidepull brakes

ShannonM

PowerGrips. My usual verbosity and prolixity fail me, leaving me unable to describe how awesome these things are, nor how deeply and viscerally most people hate them.

--Shannon

79pmooney

Quill stems. Makes adjusting the bar height so simple. No torque wrench required, No headset to even think about, No spacers to chase. You can ride a slammed stem today and raise it 2-3" tomorrow. Change the bar height out on the road. (Yeah, you might have to "convince" the stem to loosen with a rock to the Allen key but those rocks are usually not hard to find.) You have to really work at over-tightening and doing any harm and too loose (unless absurdly so) doesn't matter Plus they look so much cleaner than any threadless stem.

squirtdad

makes sense, humboldt counter culture and such (kid just graduated from HSU (surviving the end of football) , is staying in Arcata and doing his own business.

squirtdad

plus the don't look fugly

ShannonM

I've been using them since the 1990s, in San Diego suburbia, so does that make me counter-counter-cultural?

Or just a weird guy who likes weird bike stuff?

--Shannon

scarlson 

Biopace. Saved my knees.

Short cranks. Also saved my knees.

Time ATAC pedals. Wanna guess what they did?

cudak888 

Internally geared hubs.
Heavy bikes.
Heavy bikes with internally geared hubs.
Dockless bikes.
Heavy dockless bikes.
Heavy dockless bikes with internally geared hubs.
Electric assist systems.
Skinny tires when everyone else is on 650Bs.
Campagnolo Triomphe.
Campagnolo Victory.
Campagnolo Grand Sport rear mechs.
Stainless steel rims.
CLB-2 centerpull self-energizing brakes of many deathsisms.
Soldered-end Raleigh brake cables.
Stem shifters (on bikes with North Roads)

Remind me to build a heavy, pedal-assist dockless bike with an internally geared hub, 700x19C tires, stainless steel rims, soldered-end brake cables, stem shifters, and a combination of Campagnolo and CLB brake components.

-Kurt

Drillium Dude

Best. Derailleurs. Evah





...and these pedals are pretty bad-ass, too:



DD

Drillium Dude

Provided a place to rest your feet?



DD

Drillium Dude

Whew! We can still be friends

DD

70sSanO

Rapid Rise rear derailleurs.

John

bikingshearer 

Power Grips are great on my commuter (1967 Paramount). I still want SPDs on the others, but for being able to just hop on and go a mile or three to the BART station or to downtown, they couldn't be better.

seypat

Please forgive me, but what is a dockless bike?

nlerner

Took this one out yesterday. Mostly I thought about how much better it would shift with a Shimano Crane. Sorry for the hate!

cudak888 

A share bike that doesn't require a dock. Most of them are some form of modern 3-speed roadsters. You can see a few of them at the Bike Share Museum (link in my signature).

-Kurt

J.Higgins 

Reflectors. I have a drawer-full of them in case someone wants one, but I typically just take them off and toss them in the rubbish bin.

Fahrenheit531 

The two-bolt Campy seatpost.

rustystrings61 

The humble Weinmann 999 Vainquer centerpull, that fell from being the pinnacle of bicycle stopping power on all the top non-French, non-Italian performance bikes to being identified with junky campus 10-speeds with steel rims. Not as Gallic-cool as the M.A.F.A.C. in all its Froggyness, but works shockingly well with good cables and housings and pads.

27 x 1 1/4-in tires at 70 psi - so pbbbbhhhht to all you bike magazine writers of the 70s busy cramming skinnier, harder tires for everything! And for all you people whinging about tire selection, all you really need to know for 27-in is Panaracer Pasela. Try them and be surprised at how flexible they can be on all sorts of surfaces. If they were good enough for Ian Hibell ...

French/metric dimensions - there IS a subtle difference with a French bike, one worth the hassle of looking a little bit harder for replacement parts.

Steel cottered cranks - they're really NOT so hard to service, and when equipped with steel chainrings they last a long, long time!

Shimano Lark and Eagle derailleurs - I mocked them growing up. I remember laughing behind the back of Rick, a guy who had completed Bikecentennial on a pieced-together Motobecane Mirage with a Shimano Eagle someone had cut the guard off and drilled out - but now I may do that to one and see what happens. They run forever and blend the best features of Simplex and Campagnolo in a derailleur that Keith Richards can use when he goes riding with the cockroaches and Betty White after the Apocalypse.

Velo Mule

Cottered Cranks. It is a bit odd for my saying this since I don't have a bike with them now, but I have in the past. Some of these are all steel cranks are well designed a fairly light. Some were downright elegant. Being that they are all steel (yes, I know there were some alloy versions) they wear like ....... um....... steel. The problem with cottered cranks is getting the pins out and if the pin gets mangled finding and filing a new pin.

Having worked in a bike shop when there were plenty of cottered crank bikes to be serviced, you learn that the key thing is to have the right tool. Not a hammer. In the shop it was a VAR tool. Nowadays, that tool is precious. But there are other tools that do a good job of extracting cottered crank pins. Once you understand how to deal with them, they can be pretty good.

nlerner

Carbon forks.

BFisher 

Campagnolo NR and SR rear derailleurs: Way too much fuss over these based on Berto's attempted assessment. They are not only fully functional, but also lightweight, beautiful, and durable.

Ashtabula cranks: Simple and Strong. Service with an adjustable wrench and a screwdriver. Heavy? Yeah, but they aren't for high performance.

Cottered Cranks: Not that difficult to work with if you have a good press, and they look way, WAY nicer than almost any alloy crank.

Campagnolo Record Sidepulls: I run mine with regular old Campagnolo brake pads and get excellent performance. Don't know what the haters are doing wrong. They are very good.

Oh, almost forgot, Skinny Tires: Love 'em. Widest tire I run on a roadie is 32, and have no desire to go wider. Funny how balloon tires got derided but everybody wants them on their roadies now.

T-Mar

I liked the Huret Allvit too. While not without its faults, it shifted very well. When taken as as complete system with it's parallelogram front derailleur and stiffer shift levers with more leverage, I thought it superior to the more common and better rated Simplex Prestige.

I'm also anther advocate of the previously mentioned Shimano Rapid Rise derailleurs. Like SunTour's top-normal front derailleurs, using the spring to assist the upshift makes more sense and you quickly adapt, though if you're a collector constantly switching between bicycles with different systems, it's pretty easy to find your self in the gear.

When I first joined the forum, I seemed to be the only person who appreciated SIS and STI but gradually others have warmed to these products.

One series of Shimano innovations that others have been much slower to warm up to, are those of 600AX and Dura-Ace AX. They shifted great, the Dyna Drive cranks were super stiff and the Dyna Drive pedals incredibly stable. The pedals were also the easiest cup and cone design to adjust. Seven speeds on a freehub was also great. The brakes were a bit of a disappointment in performance but aesthetically I thought they were little jewels, on par with Huret Jubilee derailleurs and much better looking that Campagnolo Delta. Then there was the scalloped headset (actually introduced on EX). They were so easy to work on with the dedicated wrenches, that did not slip. Ironically, it was the less innovative aerodynamic styling of AX which is its legacy, eliminating flutes and engravings in favour of smooth surfaces and inked lettering, and heavily influencing the design of secondary components such as handlebar stems, seat posts and brake levers.

niliraga 

+1

Once I'd worked out how they do what they do, and how to rebuild them, they're unfailingly strong, stiff and self-centering. also, I think they look cool & old school sciency with the little ball joint housing in the casting, and the aero versions (with canted arms) can be really useful when your cabling is coming in at odd angles. (eg. rear brakes on some mixtes)

ramones71 

Biopace chainrings. They were standard equipment on both of my late 80s Schwinns and I love everything about both of those bikes.

Campy branded dork-disk on my all-original Raleigh Competition G.S. I cannot bear to take anything that says “Campagnolo” off of the bike.