Replacing the bearings on a bloody Titus Motolite!!!! 😈

Oh, and bleeding brakes. Brake fluid is nasty stuff, and it’s a tricky operation for which more than two hands is almost essential. Right faff. And brake pads and brake fluid are the two least compatible compounds for efficiency…

Servicing forks. Oil everywhere, no matter how careful you are.

Adjusting cup and cone hubs. For this reason:

Always seem to need 3 hands, and re-fiddling as perfect becomes too tight once the wheels been clamped up.

PITA. Sealed Cartridge FTW.

Front mechs can be a right bugger, as can getting a stem absolutely straight.

Oh and trying to get a freewheel off an old wheel. Specially if it’s bin on there for years, and out in all weathers…

Undoing pedals that some gorilla has overtightened. Overtightened bolts in general. And sorting out some other idiot’s mistakes.

Anything that requires a one-off very expensive extremely difficult to actually get hold of tool you’ll never use for anything else (Cannondale Forks come to mind…).

Actually, in general, bikes are ****s really.

Really, Bike companies really need to subscribe to this thread and engineer out the shite.

I’ve been working in a shop in London all summer, and I now hate all other peoples bikes.

If you work in a bike shop, you will by definition hate the bikes that get brought in there – because the people who take pride in their bikes don’t take it to the shop to get serviced. The people that take their bike to the shop to get serviced are the ones that want it to “just work”.

I don’t get how front mechs are that hard. There are two golden rules, (a) do it in order – 1st position, 2nd limit, 3rd tension – and (b) always use the orange spacer you get with it to put some quiescent tension in it, in order to avoid having to have about 10 turns on the head tube barrel adjuster to start off with.
If you follow those golden rules it’s piss easy and it cannot fail to work perfectly.

Spent 3 evenings trying to get my fron mech fettled.
Stops set,cable reset,tension adjusted and still the bugger rubs when on the big ring.
More tension then its reluctant to drop down on to the middle ring.Grr!
Then there`s the annnoying ting,ting soundof a very slightly bent disc.
Tried gently truing it but,resigned myself to buying a new rotor.
And wheel truing,can get it laterally true then I get wheel hop……
But perversely rebuilding forks and servicing cup and cone hubs is strangely therapeutic!

Bonj,what is this *magic* orange spacer to which you refer?
Is it the answer to all my front mech fettling ills?

Bonj,what is this *magic* orange spacer to which you refer?
Is it the answer to all my front mech fettling ills?

+1, I’ve never had an orange spacer on mine and always have problems with shifting. Perhaps finally I have an excuse for my mechanical incompetence 🙂

On the contrary, I don’t hate other people’s bikes. They pay my wages. And it beats the hell out of working for a living. Been there, done that, 70 hour weeks managing bars and putting up with drunken assholes used to piss me off far more than playing around with bikes all day.
The only thing that does frustrate me a bit is when there are compatability issues with older bikes the customer would like to keep as true to original as possible. Ringing a customer to tell them they need to “upgrade” to a new version because the old one is discontinued, and then they need a whole load of new bits to make it work, kinda feels like killing off a classic bike.

Bonj,what is this *magic* orange spacer to which you refer?
Is it the answer to all my front mech fettling ills?

it comes with every new front mech when it’s bought new in the box. If you bought an OEM one you might not have it as the bike shop will have just taken it off a bike and may not have thought to include one. Most people toss it to one side ‘cos they’re the sort that don’t bother reading the instructions but it does have a purpose.

Or if you bought your whole bike as a complete bike then you won’t have one either, but I don’t generally do that.

I’ve got one in the garage, I’ll post a pic of it tomorrow.
You can improvise, but it has to be the right shape to keep the front mech open, it’s surprising how many things just ping out and wont’ stay in and hold it.