Categories: Guest Article

Guest Article: What You Don’t Know Will Eventually Kill You

Indian Bicycle Mechanic. photo: Sue Darlow

@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.

prowrench

I have been on bikes my whole life. I used to ride cross country mountain bikes until about 6 years ago when I fell head-over-heals in love with road cycling. I have worked in bicycle shops for around 10 years now as a mechanic and I love working on bicycles as much as I like to ride them.

View Comments

  • I've done things. Dumb things. Things I'd rather not discuss.

    I also got my new bike back from its 30-day tune-up (at a premier shop in Portland) with the asymmetric chain on wrong side out and with a loose headset. A noticeably loose headset. The service manager was quite responsive, but still. Somebody was wrenching stoned.

  • Man, this article reminds me of the time I did some part time wrenching in a bike shop in Terre Haute. A woman bought a POS from an outfit called Service Merchandise where it had been loving assembled by monkeys with only an adjustable spanner on hand. She suspected it wasn't right and seemed offended when I told her how much it would cost to get her bike fixed. I think when I used the phrase "you have been sold a death trap" might have worried her. (Headset loose, brake pads not hitting the rims and a host of other issues were obvious.) Amazing how it could actually be sold to be honest.

  • The advice I always gave when a mom or dad brought the bike that the kid had worked on in - "Hide the ViceGrips and WD-40."

    One of my favorites though was when a customer brought in a bike with a flat;

    "I just bought a brand new tube from you and it's already flat."

    "Did you make sure that what ever made it flat in the first place wasn't still in the tire?"

    You silently smile to yourself as you see "realization" slowly creep into their brains and yet they always say "Yes."

  • @mike

    With regard to the Lezyne pump removing the valve, the trick is to unscrew the adapter head off the pump line, to release the pressure, before removing it from the valve, its the pressure in the line from the pump that binds the valve core to the adapter

    Lezyne now offer a replacement adapter head with a built in pressure release for their older pumps as its such a common problem.

    Just to be clear - you are saying leave the hose attached to the pump itself but screw the head off the hose, leaving it on the  tube valve, then remove it separately?

    Plumbers tape. Do you mean around the removable core then screwing it back in? Or just around the outside of the valve stem?

    I am not a pro mechanic.

  • I always get a good laugh when I'm out cycling and a car goes by making an assortment of sounds which it should not be making. Damn, if the bicycle is not Silent, I try to sort it out immediately. I would never, ever drive some road unworthy cars people pilot around. I guess they do have that whole metal box thing to protect them from pavement, but some sound as if they might explode at any moment.

  • As a professional mechanic myself, I can see where @prowrench is coming from.  I work on aircraft for a living- can't pull over on a cloud if something breaks- so I know a thing or 2 about precision and doing things right.  However, to talk down to someone who tried something and failed-even if they didn't know it yet, is wrong.  In fact, it should be rejoiced.  If everyone did everything correctly, you would soon be out of a job.  And you have to admit, doing tune-ups all day everyday would get very boring if you didn't go "WTF?!" atleast once a week.   And lets not forget, you too, were once inexperienced and clueless.

  • "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."  Arthur Clark. 

     

    The same Pro bike mechanic that looks down at his clients attempts at being self-sufficient will at some point bring his car to me for service and I will get to listen to him go on about what he did or did not do and what he thinks is wrong with his car.  He might also call me to repair the HVAC system on his house or install a roll cage in his race car.  I am a paid Pro in the above trades as well as in welding and machining. 

     

    For every well trained seasoned bike mechanic there are at least 3 fresh faced scrubby chinned guys that are doing the job for the love of cycling or the love of money or a mix of both. Does anyone strive to achieve a career as a bike shop mechanic? I would bet that few do as it pays little. One reason it pays little is the fact that most of the work is quite simple to do and can be mastered without many years of training or elite intellect. Sure there are some more complex tasks such as shock rebuilds and the like but the vast majority of the work is stone simple work for any reasonably handy person with some basic training and the tools needed.  SOP for most independent shops is a skilled shop owner will hire a bike loving young guy or gal and train them.  The budding mechanic learns on client bikes not at some school for pro bike repair.   Just as some Pro shop mechanics are not tops in their craft some of us that visit the LBS to purchase a bike or parts for said bike are not stupid ham fisted hammer swingers.   Some of us spend the time to learn the systems of the bike they ride and maintain them well.  These are the people the Pro wrenches don't see much.  We are riding, wrenching and purchasing the odd part from time to time. I have had every system on my road bike apart for service and after 8500 kilometers it works better than they day I took it home. When I purchase a set of derailleur cables and don't ask how to install them I don't need to be told they are hard to install and I should bring the bike in before I work on it.  I don't go around spouting off that the Pro wrench work assembling and testing my bike was lacking.  It was and I somewhat expected to be.  The Pro putting it together was unboxing and assembling bike #4 of the 6 or so he had to do that day.  My focus is on one bike the one I bought,  his on many things.

      Just as the clients come in all forms so do mechanics.  The difference is the client is paying for a service, not to be talked down to or have his bike languish for a lack of a "relationship with the shop". 

     

    Just as you can laugh and shake your head at what bike shop clients do to their bikes, some of us can laugh and shake our heads at what bike shop mechanics do.   But we don't.  Well, some of us don't.  Skip that, we do laugh but we don't go spouting off allover about it.

     

    Rule #43 applies to all.

  • @wiscot

    Man, this article reminds me of the time I did some part time wrenching in a bike shop in Terre Haute.

    Wiscot, I am sorry to hear you lived in Terre Haute at one time. Seeing as how you were employed, you were not doing time at the federal penitentiary, I'm guessing. Did you work at TH Cycling at 7th & Springhill? I myself only escaped there 5 or so years ago after 18 years of exile (job, you know). Glad you made it out alive!

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