@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
@gravity bob
That's fine, but you should slaughter your own meat.
@Chris
Road bikes are a relatively small proportion of the work that gets done in an LBS. Bread and butter is commuting bikes ridden a lot and cared for very little, and Sunday rides for people who want a bike to ride on sunny days and are surprised when it doesnt' work.
The time consuming ones are mountain bikes, with suspension servicing - consider that there are a number of fork, shock, brake and component companies that are hell bent on changing their products every five minutes.Im sure you could service a Cannondale lefty fork, but doing it in a way that makes money for yourself and/or the shop is a different story. The easy money is in fixing up shit that people have tried to do at home, while the tricky stuff is customers wanting to change their set up because they can - for instance setting up a single ring set up with FSA afterburner cranks with aftermarket rings, or lightening Ksyriums by rebuilding with different spokes.
When I worked with Bretto in WGTN I had a customer who insisted on speaking German to me who wanted a 40 spoke touring wheel built with wheelchair spokes (DTSWiss Alpine 3) and a white industries tandem hub. When preteen twats use the acronym "FML" I get all nostalgic about that guy.
It's not rocket science but there's more to wrenching than road bikes, which are relatively simple.
@ChrisO I didn't see a tool for that in the Park catalog...
@Marko
That's the classic "two turns past stripped, back it off half a turn" No torque wrench? There could be a slight hint of delamination within the lay ups. Some carbon repair guys use a ultrasound machine to check the carbon layers.
If living dangerously, measure the crack now and after a few rides. If the crack lengthens, time for repair/replacement.
@sthilzy I use a torgue wrench. I think it's just fatigued. I've had consistent problems with seat pins and this bike. First there was the Orchilles pin, then I put a Alu one in and that got warped some how (fucking weird seeing an alu pin get pinch marks), now this. Strangely, each new pin I've put in has had a different tolerance. I had a carbon cyrano that was too small, an FSA and Easton that fit but broke, a ProVibe alu that warped, and now this alu cyrano that was tight. It's a flawed design.
I'll measure some cracks by putting some marks on with a sharpie. Then again, the VMH and I are having the twins ultrasounded next week. Maybe our doc is a velominata and wouldn't mind scoping the frame for me.
This has to be a joke so i wanted to put some humour back in to it.
You have trued more wheels than times i have tied my shoelaces?
I am 31, I have tied my shoelaces on average twice a day, everyday for the last 26 years...
So - That's an average of 730 times a year.
730 X 26 = 18980
I have tied my shoelaces 18980 times in my lifetime. so far. At 60 Years old this figure will have increased to 40150 times.
It is not possible by any stretch of the imagination you have trued this many wheels.
Basically, like some mechanics i have met before - You took a sharp intake of breath, exhaled slowly and made something up. Insufferable, egotistical mad man.
Spaceship, asteroids, front derailleur??? Are you on the EPO?
Why would i let someone with this mentality touch my bike, complacent, cocky and so full of your own self importance it's unlikely you would give customers bikes the attention it deserves.
I will keep replacing my own tubes, and tuning my own gears (a job completed six monthly to be safe) and go to a bike shop with problems i am unable to fix. Where I will have to trust that someone like you will make the best job of it possible.
SPACESHIP, ASTEROID BELT, BLINDFOLD...
ACE :)
@Marko
I would bring in the frame and ask as straight faced as I could. Maybe some liquid Belgian persuasion.
There's nothing quite like a two-wheeled grease monkey who overstates his ability compared to others to repel me from crossing the threshold of any bike shop (unless it's a warranty issue) to get any spannering done. With the probable exception of Di2(!) bicycles are pretty basic: you don't need to be a PhD Engineer to figure it out: push/pull lever one end - bit moves commensurate amount at the other end, adjust tension to make it move where it supposed to - how hard is that? Yes, I do have a torque wrench and know how to use it ...something else not especially hard. I admit to having a good mate who handles wheelbuilding (in exchange for beer, naturally). So, to sum up: would I take my trusty steed to a spotty teenage bike shop mechanic who spends 99% of his time tinkering with £99 wonders to do something I can happily and confidently do myself? -no thanks. Of course, if you really haven't got a fucking clue then leave it to the spotty kid in the bike shop. May Merckx have mercy on you soul.
@ChrisO
Well, you should, once or twice anyway, just for the hell of it.
I'm fairly big on the division of labor--we get a lot of cool stuff out of it. But even Adam Smith, somewhere in The Wealth of Nations, says that ultimately it makes us idiot pinheads who can't even wipe our own asses without assistance from trained and accredited ass-wipe consultants.
Well said. I couldn't agree more. A tray of beer at Xmas goes a long way..!