[Closed] Fettling

Hi, my name is Momo and I too enjoy a good fettle!

I've even managed to convince my kids that cleaning bikes is fun!

Yup. love an hour or two in the shed tinkering with a job. I imagine its much like lying under a classic car or landrover for a weekend, except more useful and cheaper

With ten bikes in the house (yes, in, we don't have a garage), there's always a bit of fettling going on. Oooh, err missus!

Replaced the BB on the fat bike yesterday - would have been a simple job but for the fact that Raceface have at least two Cinch interfaces on their cranks and mine wasn't the one that a YouTube search pulls up. Eventually remembered that I'd had to buy a crank extractor when building up the bike (buying new tools is never to be avoided) and that I should use that.

There is no greater satisfaction in life than taking a non working thing and make it work again.
Its what I do for a job as well.

If it paid enough, i'd become a full time spanner boy. Sadly it doesn't.

If it paid enough ... and I was any good, I'd become a full time spanner boy!

No, I don't enjoy spannering more than riding. But, as I have become a little more competent over the years, I enjoy it more than I did. This year's gone pretty well for me; I've built up 4 bikes from frames and used / new parts, I've finally got the hang of gear indexing, and I've had a run of success in setting wheels up tubeless.

Oddly, the most exasperating experience was replacing a set of road tyres on my wife's road bike, breaking 2 tyre levers and puncturing 3 inner tubes! 😬

I still haven't tackled fork servicing, and am still scared of brake bleeding, but both are mental (and time-related) blocks ... I just need to get over myself and set aside a half day and a series of YouTube videos to 'master' these skills too.

I have new seals and pistons for a hope brake in the shed. Massively looking forward to doing the job, so satisfying.

If I could get parts I'd be fettling... I do enjoy it, but find something very frustrating like bleeding brakes.

I go far far to quickly to brute force as soon as I can't work something out. I never go to a bike shop but it probably wouldn't actually be that much more expensive considering how much stuff I've needlesly broken. It's a good reason to start on a cheap bike to be honest. Now I've upgraded I'm a lot more stressed!

I’ve always got a lot of satisfaction out of fettling bikes - right from when I started m/cycle trials at the age of sixteen. Scrutineers used to take the piss because they were always immaculate before the event.
It often went a bit further than maintenance though - Honda TL125 engine re-sleeved to 180cc and then stroked to 230cc.
In a Miller frame with XL125 forks with air conversion, external oil cooler...
Or, in my enduro days, a Suzuki DR400 engine shoehorned into an RM250 rolling chassis.
In both cases just because I could, a technical exercise if you like.
There’s nowhere near the same scope for fettling with pushbikes but I still do like a well set-up bike.

Yup, I love it too. Just restored and rebuilt my boys, now too small for him Commencal 20" for his sister. Possibly spent to much on parts but it runs and looks as good as new.
Also do my friends when they let me. Have my boss's Honzo in the shed currently for full service.

I was out of work just before the Corona struck and applied for many bike shop jobs but got no takers.

Nope. I used to.

Even the thought of cleaning it can put me off riding

meh. 95% is good enough for me.

ride until it breaks, buy another one.

Weirdos. 😄

I hate working on bikes and assumed everyone else was the same. When my gears used to seize up and stop changing properly to certain cogs I'd just get used to having less gears. Seemed obvious to me that you just use the ones that are left. Ditto suspension forks. At some point they stop being bouncy so you either bin then and buy new, it just accept that you're on a half suss.

Couldn't believe it when I joined STW what a bunch of gear freaks people were. Incredulous at the endless post about upgrading & fiddling. Kept expecting someone to pop up and say that they were only joking and the actual biking forum was over there.

About my only recent fettling "success" was when I managed to bleed my son's brake after an Alps trip where he was moaning that his brakes didn't work.
I was sat there congratulating myself on an excellent job, till I noticed a pool of brake fluid on the patio. Turns out he'd worn through the pads, and the backing plate and the pistons until all the fluid pissed out on some alp somewhere.

Lesson learned: don't try to fix shit on a bike, it never goes well.

I'm always horrified/appalled/amused/awed by SteveXtc's posts. He appears to be the exact opposite of me. Loves the minutiae of buying, building and repairing bikes.

I've been fettling more and more, especially since the whole covid thing afforded me far more garage time and the need to escape to a far flung corner where nobody else enters. I'd be happy to do this all day for pittance, providing I got to pick the tunes playing.

Currently queued up I have a wheel build for the youngest and a full strip and rebuild for the money pit that is a reverb stealth (just for fun and to get it out of the house once and for all)

My name is Fettlin' and I enjoy fettling! Hence the name...

Anything: bikes, mowers, cars, tractors, houses. You name it, I enjoy getting to know how things work by taking them apart, then carefully putting them back together again, hopefully in a better condition then when I started

I literally hadn't picked up a bike tool for about 3 months, even through the snow and wet of the start of the year I just kept throwing the fatbike back in the garage and then checking the tyre pressures and riding it again. I think I added a little chain lube once. Finally it needed pads and ahhhhhh, what a pleasure, to just put it in the stand and work through it front to back and got it all ready to go again for another spell of basically neglect. Almost as good as the rides. And also something nicely affirming about "I built this for this job and look at it go"

Usually I'm pretty on top of bike maintenance, in fact it's pretty rare for me to even go a couple of rides without a wash, and all my bikes are pretty well built and durable and reliable, so I think I'd missed out on a lot of this. Just having a bike in good order and then sorting one thing or doing some preventative medicine is fine but it's nothing like really getting into a case of neglect and putting it right. And actually, the same goes for "making it perfect" and just keeping everything going, there's something lovely and organic about keeping a bike in that sweet spot between shiny and ****ed, that's quite a different feeling to just totally fixing things.

Just spent Sunday and tonight sorting out my single speed, old cranks off,Jones's XTR 960s to prep for Cerakoting and XT spare cranks put back on.
Fettlin with chain tension and a damn good clean, degrease and re-grease of parts and I have a sparkly clean bike......until the weekend.
If find fettlin almost a Zen like experience, whatever that is, and can literally lose track of time. Shed/Workshop on the cards soon, so I can get a proper fettlin place sorted out.

On a good day it is great, stuff works well and everything is right in the world.

On a bad day, I want to thrown it all out the door and take up another sport.

I never seem to have in between days but thankfully I do have more good days than bad.

I am a self confessed bodger definitely not a fettler. However I have just had a, not very obvious, revelation. I am half way through replacing the cables and bar tape on the road bike. As it is not covered in sheep shit and grease I was allowed to work on it in the office. As we are in lock down I have set the gravel bike up on the turbo. This has meant a warm, light environment with a solid floor that doesn't swallow tiny nuts and bolts. I also have all the time in the world as I don't need the bike for a ride in ten minutes time.
A nice environment and no time pressure make fettling slightly more enjoyable (obvs. really)

I started fettling when I was around 7 years old and could strip and rebuild a bike by then (helped that my dad was a mechanic with a garage fool of tools)
Still enjoy it just as much 45 years later and don't miss the cottered cranks and loose ball bottom brackets (remember those!)

I love a good fettle. Ive been known to service forks/ replace bearings and rebuild brakes just for the fun of it.

We used to have a huge lean-to on the back of our house. It was the dumping ground for all our rubbish, bike storage and my fettling bench. I used to spend hours fettling.

8 years ago we took it down and built an extension and the bikes were moved to the cold, small shed at the top of the garden. I'm convinced my interest in cycling started to wain at this point as the bikes where out of sight and out of mind.

I only ride a couple of times a year now.