@prowrench is throwing down the greasy gauntlet. There is truth in his words. We already understand the gap between the professional cyclist and us civilians extends somewhere over the horizon. We can ride the bikes, wear nice kit and ride the race routes but that’s about as close as we can get. No one is paying us to ride. We are not Pros. But we can work on our own bikes can’t we?
Please also see the required supplemental reading, All You Bike Pricks.
VLVV, Gianni
You got a new bike a few years ago and something magical happened. You realized that when your legs aren’t languishing under a desk at the office or basking under the blue glare of the television that, by some unknown miracle, they can propel you to astounding speeds on your bicycle. You took heart, rode some more and you got quick. You joined a club, subscribed to every magazine and every blog, you learned The Rules and quickly ascended to the ranks of the initiated cyclist. Good for you!
You, the tinkerer, are one savvy fellow. You have examined the simple steed beneath you and with your god given mechanical prowess turned a few screws, fiddled with some barrel adjusters, squirted some lube here and there and tamed a few squeaks and calmed the wild mis-shifts that embarrassed you in front of your friends. You maintain your bike, your brother-in-law’s bike, your neighbor’s bike and the kids’ bikes from the neighborhood. Fueled with a few small successes and powered by the unlimited knowledge bestowed upon you by YouTube University and several forums you are now an expert mechanic. You can turn a wrench with the best of them…right?
Let me introduce you to an idea that may not have crossed your mind: You can’t.
Before you take offense, lend me your ear and I will try to help you to comprehend the vastness of all that you don’t know. As a professional mechanic of 12 years, I would like to introduce you to the subject of bicycle maintenance repair from the point of view of the greasy handed elitists who you have come to defy and will avoid paying at all costs.
Every morning I wake up, eat breakfast, get dressed and go to work; just like you. When I get to work, however, I am greeted by the aroma of tires and a spacious shop filled with expensive specialty tools and all manner of bikes. From the wobbly beginners’ bike to the bike you wish you had but probably never will, I work on them all, every day. Your hobby is my bread and butter.
I have installed thousands upon thousands of tires and tubes and threaded countless cables through more shifters and brake levers than you can begin to imagine. I have turned a million spoke nipples and skillfully negotiated the careful equilibrium of the perfectly trued wheel more times that you have tied your shoes. I remember to meticulously check the tension of every nut and bolt on your bike with precisely calibrated torque wrenches: a thought that you wish had occurred to you and a tool you wish you had. I wrap handlebars with confidence and great care so that the tape overlaps with an even, artful twist and tightens as you grip it instead of unraveling after your first few rides. I obsessively position every component just as it ought to be because every bike deserves to be in tip top shape and it is my livelihood to make it so.
I know you think you understand how your bike works. How hard could it be right? There is nothing hidden. Your bicycle sits before you baring all and yet you could take your bike to your neighborhood shop right now and they could find a thousand things wrong with it and just as many ways to charge you in order to fix it. There is a reason for that and the explanation is on its way.
It has taken me years to hone the skills involved in my craft. I can hear when your rear derailleur hanger is out of alignment by a degree or two and that has only come after listening to thousands of derailleurs ticking away in my work stand. You may as well be stone deaf when it comes to that. I know that dropping your front derailleur a millimeter or so and twisting it out just a hair will help it decisively slam and lock your chain to the big ring in the blink of an eye. You might as well be trying to pilot a spacecraft through an asteroid field with a blindfold on. The mechanics at your local shop have paid the price for the precious knowledge which you have supposed could come so easily. Rather than beleaguer you with further examples of how I am right and you are wrong, I will endeavor to make the process of outsourcing the sacred task of maintaining your bike a smooth and painless one.
Bridging The Gap
Successfully communicating with your local mechanics will be key to finding happiness in this process. Mechanics are a fickle bunch and if you haven’t figured it out by reading thus far, some of us might be a tad egotistical and maybe a touch insecure. I will do my best to set you up for success as you repent and and take your bike in for its first much needed, legitimate service.
First, take everything that you have come to know about working on bikes and stick it in your pocket. Mechanics know how to work on bikes and they don’t care much for hearing what you think it entails. From the moment the mechanic lays eyes on your bike, seeing your terrible attempt at wrapping bars, your grossly over lubed drivetrain or the hack job that you did running and ugly web of too long or too short cables and housing all over your bike, he will know, and it will go without saying, what it is that you have been up to. Don’t be too proud of your work because it will only result in heartbreak.
Second, bear in mind that time and expertise are never on closeout and it will cost you to have the pros lay their hands on your beloved bike and resuscitate it to full health. It will be important for your mental well-being to consult with your cohorts and settle on a mechanic that everyone can agree bills repair work fairly and is worth the money that you’ll spend. Since you have been maintaining your bike, you have been letting basic things go through the cracks. The mechanic will want to fix all of these before you get your bike back so your first visit could cost a small fortune. Take heart though, because once this is out of the way, subsequent visits will consist of simple adjustments mainly and will be relatively inexpensive.
Thirdly and most importantly, be kind. I provide whatever service is due to every customer based on what they pay, even if they treat me like scum. For the nice customer however, I always go above and beyond. As the owner of my shop always says, “It is nice to be nice to the nice”. Kindness is currency but even more importantly, currency is currency. A little gratuity goes a long long way at the bike shop. Cash or beer are customary.
Taking your bike to the shop can be a hard step for the committed and self-assured home mechanic. Before the sum of what you don’t know piles up and results in your untimely mid-club-ride death, consider my words and come to the light! Hang up your mail order toy toolset and take your bike to the pros. You deserve it. Your bike deserves it. A-Merckx.
I know as well as any of you that I've been checked out lately, kind…
Peter Sagan has undergone quite the transformation over the years; starting as a brash and…
The Women's road race has to be my favorite one-day road race after Paris-Roubaix and…
Holy fuckballs. I've never been this late ever on a VSP. I mean, I've missed…
This week we are currently in is the most boring week of the year. After…
I have memories of my life before Cycling, but as the years wear slowly on…
View Comments
@Aaron Thanks for the kind words!
Point of the article is well taken. Don't be a dick. Know your limits. Pay for value. Revere bike tech and keep it Holy. Appreciate the skill of others. Acquire knowledge.
But yeah, I'm sure Evelyn Stevens puts in buttload of time maintaining her own bike(s). Lotsa grease under those finely manicured nails she had done at the spa, I'll not bet.
Odd, isn't it, that the ones who say, "Yes, this article has merit, there's more to maintaining a perfect bike than first meets the eye..." are mostly the people who have been around for a while and the, "...this guy is a full shit of bike snob who thinks hes working on rocket ships instead of bikes..." folks all have [4] next to their names.
I am a veterinary surgeon, skilled with a scalpel to a reasonable level. Put a spanner in my hand and you're just asking for trouble. The torque wrench I recently bought sits in it's case, pristine, only having been stroked several times, and not used in a functional way at all. How hard could it be to replace the BB30? Once it became apparent that not all BB30s are created equally (and I thought it was a standard), it was straight down the LBS with the ceramic bearings and carbon fibre cranks proferred humbly, nay, shamefacedly for installation.
So, just as I wouldn't want a mechanic to remove my mutts nuts, I feel the reverse also applies.
great article
@DwtnBkln
Bullshit, plain and simple.
Not only am I not evil (I'm trying really hard though!), nor "an evil," but I will take as much or more care in working on your machine than you do. Not only is it my job, but I consider myself a professional and am judged by my work. If I did not take great care in what I do, my customers and the shop's owner would recognize it and I would no longer be employed.
For those that bring me their beaten-down old junkers and dump them in a heap on the floor, I will admit I do not devote the greatest care or attention to detail - the owner of the bike does not wish for me to do so, and is not prepared to pay for the service. For those who care enough to occasionally clean their rigs, who take the time to ask questions and acknowledge that they would not only like for their bicycle to function adequately, but run properly, I spend as much time and effort as I do on my own bikes. I want their bikes to run perfectly. My reputation depends on it, and it's a thrill for me to see someone screaming down the road on a well-maintained, whisper-quiet machine and know that I had a part in making it happen.
I'm a pro. It stands for professional. I will treat you and your bike professionally. If you observe Rule #43, you'll get great service, and maybe even learn something when I explain what happened to your bike to require my attention. If not, then don't bother. Go ahead and fix it yourself, and good luck.
Thanks, prowrench, and VLVV!
Well said and well written. As a former bike mechanic (first got the job at 15 1/2 years old to support my racing habit) who has done all of the above, I find great pleasure in helping and teaching friends to maintain their own bikes including doing wheelbuilding clinics (in exchange for food & wine...) and full teardowns. I now have friends who are proud that they built their own wheels and can true them in a pinch. How cool is that? :)
In our shop we had a sign (bear in mind this was the 1970s...) Labor: $10 per hour. If you watch: $20 per hour. If you help $40 per hour. It's reads like a joke (although an updated version is now adopted by my local shop Bicycle Odyssey) but not really - watching or helping means explaining and that slows things down. A lot. But it can be well worth it and if the shop was quiet, we, of course would never actually charge those rates because we knew we were building loyalty with a customer.
Similarly as a racer (Junior then Cat. A - now known as Cat 1.), I enjoyed huge coaching privileges in the early 1980s in So Cal being coached by Eddy Boryczewicz (aka Eddy B.) and Eddy Merckx who came over one summer - I think 1981 more or less gratis. When they said, you asked no questions, you just did. And everything they said to do worked once you had figured it out. Think about that: Eddy Merckx Velominatus Supremus comes and does coaching in California essentially for travel costs. He fixed my pedaling style (my nickname was pretzle legs) with a couple of definitive recommendations which felt awkward and then felt oh so perfect. "Put your seat up 1 cm. & rotate your left cleat out." Yessir.
The Velominati should be an accessible (if somewhat secret) society - it may be difficult to attain, but we should all go out of our way to help others.
Cheers - Tim
I was riding downhill today at about 75 kph on a road bike I maintain myself, when I was overtaken by a car which sent a shockwave in the air, it was promptly picked by one of my mechs... it was maybe the RD with that tenth of degree deviation in its hanger or perhaps the sub millimeter misplacing in the heigh of my front, but as soon as that happened, my whole bike started resonating and send a woeful roar. To make a long story short, my bike imploded, killing me on the spot.
I can tell you things on this side are pretty grim, so definitely have your mechs finely tuned by a Priest of the High Church of Bike Mechanics. BUT beware! there's plenty of impostors out there who say they fix bikes for a living, but DON'T BELONG TO THE CHURCH and most importantly DON'T KNOW EVERYTHING.
If you have your bike fixed by one of them, you'll surely meet an untimely end, just like me.
(Based on a true story)
@oldnslowly
This. Really if you have any mechanical aptitude and you have the tools and time and patience and common sense then it's just not that difficult. Most people probably don't have the right tools and the time. Fair enough, but rocket science it ain't.
@eightzero
and every other pro works on their own bike? I think not. Do you have a picture of ms Stevens on a dartboard at home?
@Jamie
some of us have been visiting this site for years and just don't post much.