I’ll go first: Front mech

Borrowed a mate’s road bike for a Sat AM ride.
His gears are all over the place.
Why – even when following a book on bike maintenance – does it feel like the Krypton Factor x 10?
It’s just not happening. Have had a few beers which prob hasn’t helped.
Just Youtubed it – looks so easy! Will have another stab tomorrow night. Sat ride could be aborted at the 11th hour 🙁

Next…

FD, RD and then brake caliper/pad/disc alignment in that order.

Bearings! Has stopped me in my tracks with my bike rebuild.

just tonight i have literally screamed cutting brake hoses. and sworn. sworn a lot.

Bleeding Avid brakes

Also fitting pads into Avid brakes!

APF

Changing the sprocket on my Rohloff. Doesn’t matter how many times you read the manual, watch the videos.

There was blood, sweat, lots of swearing and then sending it off to be done. Grrr makes me mad just thinking about it.

Internal cable runs. It’s always nice when the accessible areas to help steer the cable/hose in the right direction are left jagged. Cue cut fingers, blood, more swearing (a fair bit of which was certainly inventive) and general bad feeling towards the designer. I seriously thought about glue on hose guides.

Derailleurs and canti breaks also make the list

Anything that requires fitting a tool into a space that’s been designed too small/awkward/inaccessible for said tool, step forward front mech cable clamp bolts hidden behind swing-arms, bolted cable stops under the top tube that nearly touch the down tube, and chainstay mounted calipers with rear bolts masked by seatstays.

+1 for fitting avid pads. Trying to get the pads to clip in to my old juicys was one of the most frustratingly annoying jobs I’ve ever done on my bike. The first one would usually go in on the first or second attempt, the second , pure random luck if the bike fixing gods were smiling on you or not.

I often find fitting new saddles a three handed job, dependent on your seat post clamp design, which can lead to much swearing and crawling around on the kitchen floor looking for the bolt

Oh, and bleeding formula breaks – much therapy needed after owning those

When I worked in the shop I used to hate replacing internal cable & housing runs on zestys as it sometimes involved dropping the forks from the head tube.

But the single most hateful job was any task that involved the bikes owner constantly nattering away to you/distracting you with how rad he was riding at the weekend as you try and repair whatever his cock-handiness had done to the bike/component in question

Bleeding rear XT brakes for the millionth time this month and still the lever comes back to the bar*/feels spongy*/lacks power*/is ok for one or two rides*

(*tick all that apply)

Mudguards

Changing and retightening an ebb….

My mate set off to do this the evening before a race…
Simple release tension, AU bugger can’t get the bb out… Re fir swap out have beer, refit setup, nope that’s in the wrong way round about 2 hrs later and it’s all back together with the plastic spacer sat on the table.. Spacer fitted to toolbox, another beer cracked…

Front mechs have there moments.
Setting up Avid BB brakes can be a challenge too, many an expletive has been used there.
Shimano cup and come bearings I don’t like either, mainly as I know the theory and know exactly how easy it should be yet can never quite get it right.

Simple one, but getting mtb bars perfectly straight since the move to long travel forks. Much harder to achieve, and i never feel like its quite right.

It’s all fairly easy if…you have the right tools. My bike tinkering teeth were cut on BMX bikes. 1x large shifter 1x6mm allen key and a pair of pliers was all you needed. Fast forward 20 years and i need multiple allen keys, mutliple torx keys, cable cutters, rubber gloves, syringes and tubes, chain whips*, headset press* starnut intaller* and that’s before i even attempted to replace the 3 different BBs i had. Needed three different tools for that happy task.

*didn’t buy these – easy bodge and i’m sure i’ve left many one time tools out.

I used to wonder why folk would constantly swap/change parts/bikes on here. I think it’s partly due to wanting to use the ‘special’ tools enough to feel they weren’t a complete waste of money.

Replacing Avid BB7 pads.

Setting up gears.

Why is it that adjusting gears is so much harder than installing them?

Undoing quick links with cold hands. Especially if the chain is not sparkling clean. Should take seconds, has been known to take minutes and a lot of swearing.

Tapping the lower bolts back on my forks. Always think I’ve released the lowers, undo the bolt fully to pull them off, and find one or both of them is still connected.

Tubeless on my new bike 👿 . It’s the first time its caused me problems.
Setting up and tweaking the rear mech. I still haven’t worked out how to get it perfect, yet I can bleed brakes and rebuild forks.

Fitting the hard plastic chainstay protector to my commencal meta v4, even with the video guide.

I’m happy to bleed brakes, adjust mechs and set up tubeless, but the one thing that makes me want to punch a panda is threading internal cable routing.
It makes me froth like a demented honey badger after a line of Coke and a vinderloo.

Removing a tyre in the pouring rain and freezing cold even though it falls off the rim without 20psi in it in the workshop/garage/kitchen/living room if the missus isn’t home.

Internal cabling, obviously.

Taping bars, if you’re a perfectionist.

Anything and everything on other people’s bikes that they’ve brought round for you to fix for them.

Bleeding formula brakes

I’ve still not managed to do the rear one properly

Mudguards +1.

I like taping bars, it’s good therapy.
If it goes wrong, just take it off and do it again. No harm done.
Eventually, it’ll be something that even just for a moment, is utterly perfect.

🙂

Mounting/adjusting saddles, **** hate it. Can never get the things sorted without fully undoing all the bolts and then no matter what I do I can’t seem to get the saddle to sit quite right. When I do I find that something had snagged and when I sit on it the whole thing loosens off. Brings me out in a cold, angry sweat just thinking about it.

getting the inner tube caught in the bead of tight fitting road tyres followed by a large bang 2 miles down the road 😳

Must admit the Avid BB7s irritated me for being overly complex to change pads. Odd as once the pads are in they’re a doddle to set.

Anything involving removing forks, mainly as I always try to get by leaving the levers on the bars and there’s an inevitable tangle of bars, cable, me and bits of headset bouncing into the corner of the kitchen, picking up every bit of cat hair on the way.

Removing the pivot bearings from my Orange Alpine. Spent hours trying to bash them out with a hammer until the bearings disintegrated in the frame. Thank god they don’t need replacing very often.

I’d expect that Orange post reported for deletion… You can swap the bearings with your beware hands in a swamp….

I really struggle to install/remove rear wheels with the bike in the stand 😳 upside down (the proper way!!!) it’s easy peasy 😀

^I always leave the levers on the bars when dropping the fork out. It’s fine as long as you take the front brake calliper of the fork lower first. Just let it hang over the front of the head tube.

My favourite annoying job is setting up brake pads on old fashioned cantis. You need five hands.

Servicing a hub, cleaning the cone to watch one of the ball bearings disappear down the plug hole.

Wheel truing, once you start, you can’t stop. Ever.

Cup and cone hubs. Tighten, check, won’t spin, loosen a gnat’s cock, check, flaps around , tighten half a gant’s cock, check, won’t spin, throw against garage wall. Repeat.

Installing gears in easy as long as you set the rear derailleur limit screws before you put the chain on and fit the cable. Nip up the cable with the derailleur in the smallest cog and then BINGO, you’re pretty much done. A bit of B-tension adjustment to ensure the upper jockey wheel clears the largest cog and you’re ready to ride.

Alfine sprocket Removal, I expect there is a special tool that makes this job easy. Annoyingly, doing without is just not quite impossible…which means I wont be buying the tool. Instead I’ll stand there for hours trying to tease that bloody snap ring off until finally it fires off across the garage. Then I’ll spend another few hours finding it and another few hours getting it back on.

Fitting chain guides.

Getting the chainline right on 1×11.

Bar tape is about the only one which really irritates me – because I am too much of a perfectionist, and it’s a subjective thing rather than being right or wrong. Even stuff like front mechs which are hard to dial in precisely don’t result in anywhere near the same level of angst.

Rapid rise. There’s not much on a bike I can’t do, but I will never succesfully adjust a rapid rise mech.

Oh and B-screws. But nobody understands b-screws, so I just do what everyone else does, fanny about with it at random til it’s not obviously terrible.