This is why I dont have any mates , makes life so much less stressful 😉

Had a guy in store who was complaing he’d had five punctures on his road bike since he bought a tube from us, I asked him what pressure he was running them at and he said he didn’t know. I checked and they were about 55 psi and all his punctures had been snakebites. I explained why it was happening and he bought a new tube and left happy. Some people’s basic knowledge is non existent.

When i worked in a shop, the general customer view point was if they’re spending more, it should be less likely to break, then if it did break, since it cost loads, it was the shops job to suck it up.

So many of us are buying the equivalent of F1 components (which are usually backed up with F1 mechanics when used by our “heroes”), then expecting to get VAG service intervals.

Maybe shops should do a better job of explaining “this fork is the MTB of McLaren F1, if you’re not prepared to dervice it every 10-24 hours of riding, may I respectfully suggest this Golf GTi, or possibly this Skoda Roomster?”

Still they need some folk who want to pay £900 for a fork.

OP, you’re “mate” sounds like a first class pr**k, sorry.

Maybe bike parts are poorly designed? If hydraulic actuators on industrial equipment and agricultural machinery needed servicing as often as Fox forks then nothing would ever get done.

Yes there is some allowance that has to made for something to be as light and responsive as possible but most things stink of poor design.

I’ve got a mate like the OP who helps me with some spannering on my bike, he’s very helpful and normally spots faults on my bike that just don’t notice, I’m pretty useless like that, anyway although it’s annoying having a broken bike I don’t get pissed off with my mate for spotting faults, I thank him instead for saving me from a potentially nasty accident. I always get nervous when he starts checking my bike over now.

That reminds me he needs to bleed my brakes

Maybe bike parts are poorly designed? If hydraulic actuators on industrial equipment and agricultural machinery needed servicing as often as Fox forks then nothing would ever get done.

Yes there is some allowance that has to made for something to be as light and responsive as possible but most things stink of poor design.
Open bath Marzocchi’s .Massive service intervals,bomb proof and great damping.No one bought them because they were 10% heavier than Fox.You bring it on yourselves.

Maybe bike parts are poorly designed? If hydraulic actuators on industrial equipment and agricultural machinery needed servicing as often as Fox forks then nothing would ever get done.

But that was my point, hydraulic actuators on those are not the same as F1 parts. What the majority of us are buying (being sold) are F1 parts, in an effort to feed the beast. How many of us 40+ blokes carrying a few extra pounds really need the same levels of Performance from our bikes as Peaty, Gracia or any of the Athertons?? None, but we’re buying into the hype without recognising (or choosing to recognise) the service teams behind the scenes maintaining these products for those guys and girls. They’re serviced so regularly because there is so much investment/reputation/reward/livelihoods riding on it, they need the pinnacle of performance. At Penmachno, Llandegla, Stiniog, Cannock all that’s riding on it is a slightly oveweight bloke having fun and not wanting to hurt himself so that he can get back to work in one piece on Monday morning and earn enough cash to pay for some more toys.

We’ve got McLaren tastes and Skoda money.

We are not buying “f1 parts”. Not in the slightest. Sorry but that is a load of rubbish.

We are buying mass produced items. They make thousands of everything, not a handful where parts need to be turned around in a week to get onto the car for a race.

The lifetime of a lot of bike parts is dreadful. They are overpriced and poorly engineered.

Similar applies to buying and selling between friends and family.

If you aren’t prepared to accept that something might break a while after you bought it you really need to expand that to the logical conclusion that you don’t really trust the friend/family member and if you buy things from people you don’t trust, frankly you have it coming anyway.

Mech hangers in particular are misunderstood just like the fuses they are analogous to. They’re meant to break. Beefier ones are *not* an upgrade. Usually if they break it’s because you did something stupid.

TBH I admire your patience. I think if I’d been working on a mates’ bike and this happened, I’d have put anything not still on the bike in a bag and shown him the door.

A bit of gentle p1ss taking about ‘breaking my bike’ for a while is one thing and ok if good natured, but full on hissy strop like this…

The lifetime of a lot of bike parts is dreadful. They are overpriced and poorly engineered.

Light, Cheap, Strong…

My stuff generally lasts pretty well and when it breaks I can usually see why. This stuff all has service requirements. Don’t oil your mech pivots: stops shifting. Jetwash your frame instead of using a brush or sponge: Bearings dead in double quick time. Use whatever scraps of brake fluid you had in an old bottle: unbleedable due to water contamination gassing in very small system under use.

F1 is probably overkill as a comparison, but I bet there’s a lot of expensive bikes that don’t even get cleaned properly after a hammering.

Ignoring even doing simple maintenance properly or whacking stuff up ‘Yorkshire Tight’ regardless of correct fitting is what kills most parts, not poor design/evil manufacturers.

Legend has it Shimano sent a team to the Peaks one year to find out why the UK break so many of their mechs though and the UK got rated ‘most hostile general riding conditions’…

I have a few mates that are the opposite almost. For example they might need a new cassette, and they’re going to lose a weekend of riding because of it. I’ll offer to do it there and then for them, they just stare at me for a bit then look away again as if I’d not said a thing. The concept of a mortal changing a cassette is beyond them.
Years down the line and most still can’t change a tyre/fix a puncture. They’ll still ride with their brake Q/R’s open rather than sort them out. They’d still rather swivel their bars to get the hoods where they want them rather than sort and re tape. Goes on and on.

Ignoring even doing simple maintenance properly or whacking stuff up ‘Yorkshire Tight’ regardless of correct fitting is what kills most parts, not poor design/evil manufacturers.

I feel sorry for the poor chap who has to hand paint on all the NM recommendations just for decoration

Or at point of sale trying to convince the same kind of customer that their new £1000 forks are going to need tlc pretty much after every other ride or else they’ll run into expensive repair bills a year or two

Fox?…

I do a lot of (roadie) spannering for matey members of the tri club my better half is a member of, most of them are completely clueless about bike mechanics. So far no problems, lots of gratitude and a fair few bottles of wine despite me saying explicitly I don’t expect anything.

Your mate *sounds* like a complete prat, but you know him, we don’t, and as has been said maybe it was the final straw on top of other matters. He might now be sat at home feeling a complete prat himself?

I feel sorry for the poor chap who has to hand paint on all the NM recommendations just for decoration

There isn’t room on a stem clamp to write “tighten ’til the thread strips, then back it off half a turn” 🙂

Amateur. You only to back off a quarter at most

Open bath Marzocchi’s .Massive service intervals,bomb proof and great damping.No one bought them because they were 10% heavier than Fox.You bring it on yourselves.

This. I still only run my original Marz’s on my new bikes because they work first time, every time,and have sod all maintenance needs while performing perfectly well for 95% of my riding needs.

And the OP’s mate sounds like an acquaintance. No mate would take a bike to another mate for help and then complain that they broke something (that was already likely to be dead) unless the mate doing the spannering was being a complete tool at the time and clearly not taking care. IF you go to someone asking for free help you need to be prepared for the worst. If you pay a professional you can complain, a little, but not in this case!

I didn’t ever actually understand whether it was a broken, replaceable mech hanger, or the actual drop out was knackered?

In the scale of things, £15 or £20 for a mech hanger is sod all.

Hanger luckily.

He’s apologised now. Few things going on in the background that led to the problem too. Doesn’t excuse the behaviour. Not that I don’t forgive, but I don’t forget these things easily.

Is it so hard to deal with your own problems without taking it out on someone else?

+1 for anyone basically saying he can’t be that much of a mate.

He brings the bike to you complaining that something isn’t working properly. You identify the problem, thus helping him. As a seemingly unfortunate by product you do the last 1% of breakage when trying to fix it. But what mood would he have been in if it broke in the middle of nowhere? Or when he’d got excited about a day out and it broke within 50 yards of the car park?

Unless he is taking the piss and you have fallen for it (not unknown in some circles), you have two things to do.

A. Realise he is a cock.

B. Decide whether his cockdom can be tolerated or not.

If the answer to B is ‘no’, then excommunication is the way to go.

I used to look after a mate’s bike, every time it came to me I looked at the drivetrain and said “every part of that is ****ed, I’m not touching it with a 10 foot pole” because I knew it was only working out of peversity, and if I so much as looked at it hard it’d crumble to dust.

Put a pound of lead down his seat tube.

I was going to suggest a text to him enquiring as to whether his hormone levels had dropped to more normal levels?

I’ll pick faults in most of my mates bikes, but i will fix them if im able. My brother in law’s bike has cables and hoses which need about 3″ lopping off them. Its getting to ME every time I see it, such that I NEED to shorten them!!

Put a pound of lead down his seat tube.

Ooer missus!.

We used a socket extension bar in the seat tube of a colleagues brand new ultralight frame that arrived on his day off, fitted his seat post, and left it in his workstand. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be there to witness the disappointment in his little face when he picked it up,a shame as I gather it was well worth it 😀

Put a pound of lead sausages down his seat tube.

also a good trick 🙂

“We used a socket extension bar in the seat tube of a colleagues brand new ultralight frame”

Ultralite new bike that was soooooo good and going to be so fast according to its new owner.
Did you know its possible to fill inner tubes with water.

A tri rider at work was sent to see me because his bike had let him done on a 30km section at an event.
He had a flat, was using tubes, had to abandon. what could he do to stop it happening again?