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

  • @Chris I suppose I have - misunderstanding is one of my specialties. You are correct about there being plenty of people who are not dedicated to their chosen craft or profession. It's too bad, but completely true. I wouldn't call most of those people professionals, though.

    As far as doing the work yourself, for most jobs there isn't going to be a huge difference in feel between the way you do it and the way I do. Cables are either routed and tensioned properly or not. There isn't really middle ground. Now, whether they were greased before running (assuming a non-teflon housing sleeve), are cut to the proper length, are stretched before final adjustment, and are silent are something else. Can you do this? Probably. The real skill comes in to more detailed things, like bar tape (wrapped tightly, in the proper direction, evenly , and taped off properly) and loose bearing adjustment, which take countless repeats to get "just right." It's not that most people don't have the ability - it's that they don't have the patience to build the skill to get it right in the first few tries.

    I hope the new shop is the real deal and earns both your trust and respect. VLVV!

  • @Marko I'd get that to a BMC dealer and have them weigh in.  Sometimes on other brands that I have experience with, cracking paint does not always constitute danger.  Carbon fibre is often more flexible than the paint on top of it, so cracking may appear in the paint over time.

  • @prowrench A good idea for sure. A point of clarification - the crack is on the aluminum lug. This bike has alu lugs which is perhaps a bit more concerning than a crack in cf.

  • @ped My experience with neutering canines in extremely limited.  I would almost certainly botch the job.

  • @Chris I believe you have misunderstood my intention here,  The tone of the article surely comes across a pretty brash.. and I very well may be a fucker, but my customers' bikes have always left clean, quiet and dialed to the nth degree.  If you think for a moment that I would stand behind the counter and explain to my customers why I should work on their bike and they shouldn't, you are mistaken.

    This article airs a decade or grievance with homus mechanicus; the club guy who comes friday night demanding immediate service for his Saturday ride because he is all thumbs and has somehow botched his whole drivetrain.  Are you that guy?

  • I absolutely agree with everything said in this article.  Normal people simply can't fathom the amount of experience and intuition that good professional mechanics have, which might be why some think they know better.  I am aware that a good professional mechanic will do a much better job working on my bike than I will, but here is what has scared me off:

    A friend and I took our bikes in to a LBS to have some minor work done.  Being a mechanical engineer, I am a bit of a nerd and after looking at all of the bike-candy I went over to watch the mechanic and check out all of the cool specialty tools he had.  What I saw next has scarred me.  This man was tightening the seatpost clamp on a carbon seatpost...without a torque wrench.  I asked him if he had a torque wrench and he responded he could just feel it.  Anyone who is familiar with the failure characteristics of carbon fiber will understand why I did what I did next.  I immediately turned around in horror and blasted out of the bike shop with my beloved steed and swore to never have anyone but myself service my bike ever again.

    This admittedly was a bit of an overreaction, but I will leave with this warning.  Make sure that the mechanic fixing your bike is like the one writing this article and not the one tightening sensitive carbon components without a torque wrench

  • Great points all around, however as already noted, availability of quality mechanics is not a luxury all of us have immediate access to. In a previous life, wrenching at the LBS for a few years taught all the basics. As life progressed, and with the acquisition of a nice selection (read necessary) of the Park catalog, it became normal for this now amateur wrench to evolve from the Olmo steel, thru the Vitus rage, the noodle 2300 (but hey, it came fully loaded with the cutting edge Ulterga STI!), SpecialEd aluminum yada, yada, yada...to the full carbon rigs. And 4 (including the Park, at the time cutting edge, TW1) torque wrenches.

    While I have a great relationship with the nearest, quality LBS, current demands of life mean rare visits. But like others have noted, these ARE just bikes...but SirFrank, how did you feel when your trusty companion Cervelo took its last journey? Sometimes it is about the bike.
     
    Wrench if you must, but trust is earned not assumed.
  • @frank If I had as many quid in the bank as a certain popular american female bike racer people around here seem to be so thrilled with, yeah...I'd likely be a little more talented at uphill sprints. Funny how having money buys you time to do other things. You know...like ride a Fucking Bike. But...we've had this discussion. And we've all agreed not to ever speak of it again.

    I really would be curious to know how many pros do anything with their bikes. Very top level guys likely never need to.

    An interesting piece here: http://bicycling.com/blogs/boulderreport/2013/08/09/the-demise-of-the-shadetree-mechanic/

  • Reverence where due, but no further.

    Take the time to get it right, or take it to the shop.
    If that Park tool will never come close to paying for itself, take it to the shop.
    When you are in over your head, stop what you are doing and take it to the shop.
    Do not expect immediate service if you take it to the shop.

    Other than that, I've got the requisite tools, skills, and apparently bad attitude necessary to wrench, clean, and preen my own ride.

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prowrench

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