Pivot bearing change
You're supposed to change them?
Oh.
Removing sram dub cranks
If you start comparing SRAM stuff with Shimano it's soon clear who's more home mechanic friendly, Cranks, bleeding brakes, changing shifter cables....But I would like to have a conversation with the engineer who decided 54Nm was a good idea for crank bolts with a relatively fine thread thrown in for extra win
Cup and cone hubs, especially if the bearing faces are pitted for when it comes time to tighten them.
I’ve just now bought a full set of cone spanners as I have 2 sets of wheels to sort (one is more of a salvage and make do affair).
hooli
Free Member1. Anything that involves internal cable routing
See, this is another "it depends". My remedy has partial internal routing but it has nice removable covers so that passing a cable through is actually really simple. Slightly more hassle than full outers, mind, but not drastically.
tubeless tyres for me - hate the sodding things and the stuff.
Bleeding brakes. Trying to keep the brake internals clean in a garage recently swept to remove sawdust and other floor detritus. Everything gets slippery as hell. Stupid little hose clips do not stay clipped onto stupid little hoses. Stupid little hoses decamp from the bleed nipples at exactly the wrong moment and spray mineral oil all over the place, making things even more slippery, except for any airborne detritus missed in Step 1 which magically sticks to everything now covered in mineral oil.
Hate it.
Setting up new style Shimano front mechs.
Older mechs were fairly logical really but the new ones still melt my brain a little, the high/low adjust seems to work in unexpected ways and the trim shift doesn't really appear to do anything.
Have my eye on a couple of older generation Ultegra mechs on eBay...
...when you offer to fix a friend's bike and they decide that means while they wait, stood there expecting converstaion and refreshments, asking questions to seem like they're involved in the process and generally distracting you as much as possible.
Derailleur cable outer change on MY19 Stumpy Evo alloy. You have to take the bloody back end off the bike. What should be a 15 minute job is best part of 2 hours. Suffice to say, I bought lots of those Risk stick on cable guides off Alex AliExpress and went fully external last time I did it.....
There is no worse job than…
…explaining to my wife why there is a bicycle in bits, in the kitchen, again.
There was also the incident with the blue Orange that she suddenly realised was now an orange, Orange about two hours into a ride. I’d had it for over a year. That took some innovative fixing.
Threading internally routed brake hoses around ebike motors seems appealing on reflection.
Have my eye on a couple of older generation Ultegra mechs on eBay…
I've got a band-on one you can have for £5 incl postage?
(Although, if you follow the Shimano instructions, the new ones really are a doddle!)
I bought lots of those Risk stick on cable guides off Alex AliExpress and went fully external last time I did it…..
Do post a link, if they've turned out to be any good?
I own two Oranges.
I've probably wasted more time with tubeless than anything. Particularly on Stans Arch Ex - just a total pain.
But Kona pivot bearings are the reason i've only ever owned one FS bike. Only lasted 6 months before they needed replacing. When i finally figured out how to get the last one out - it took incorrect parts diagrams and then someone in America posting in an obscure section of a forum an "oh guys, look what I discovered" post before I figured it out. Then, somehow or other, one of the spacers bounced out and I tore the shed apart looking for it and ended up getting a mate to turn up a replacement.
By the time it was finished i had the bike for sale ... then discovered the seat post was stuck in the carbon frame!
Not at all for me. Easy on the Nomad with cheap tools. On the Murmur it's an absolute piece of pish. Will see how Privateer is in due course.
For me the worst is definitely brake bleeding.
Getting rubber grommets back in on any frame with internal routing that uses grommet in place of something better
Whyte have a tool for this if you email them (it's not on their site).
Combination of pain and frequency, it has to be tubeless tyres.
Never look forward to brake bleeding, but at least it isn't too frequent.
Always put off cable replacement of anything internal, although this has reduced frustration in the last year or so.
Conversely I quite enjoy building wheels and tweaking or changing stems and bars - although I'll be avoiding those uber-internal routing stem/bar setups as long as possible.
Has anyone ever re-cabled an aero bike, with internal routing through bars, stem spacers,headtube, and frame? Total nightmare, especially when you consider the cables/hoses need to be within a few mm of the correct length, have to be in the correct postion relative to each other (try aligning four of them as they come out of/into the headtube through split spacers that constantly fall apart), don't come out of the bars anywhere near where they should to align with the levers, and all to massage somebody's delicate little ego as they pretend they're a pro racer where every split second matters.
Oh, and re-fitting the shock on the old Specialized Enduros (the ones with the ball jointed bush arrangement to cope with wonkety rear ends). Until you made a dummy shaft to hold everything together, you had no hope, but a whole new list of swear words.
Trying to simply oil the chain on an ebike.
Can't spin the cranks, can't flip it upside down because of the display, can't lift the rear wheel up AND pedal due to the fact it weighs the same as a beached whale, can't quite rotate the chainring without feeling like you're going to lose fingers, can't justify over a tenner for a 3d printed chainring rotating tool.... 😂
Internal cable routing on an Orange has to be up there (and +1 to the rubber grommets).
But at least the pivot bearing change is pretty easy.
Yes ! At least the cable routing us possible, not the grommets. Going to have to go AXS.
Swapping my gravel bike's brakes from euro front-brake-on-the-left madness to uk front-brake-on-the-right sensibility. ALL the fiddly jobs in one massive continuum of fiddliness.
- Unwrap bar tape
- Undo hose 1, catch spilling mineral oil
- Snip and new olive
- Repeat for hose 2
- Attach hoses to the correct levers
- Remove front pads and bleed front brake
- Refit front pads
- Realise bleed screw on rear brake can't be accessed without removing caliper
- Remove caliper
- Remove rear pads and bleed rear brake
- Refit rear pads
- Refit rear caliper and centre
- Re-wrap bar tape
Holy moly I was glad when that was finished.
Trying to simply oil the chain on an ebike.
Aye, this! (Kiox mounted on top tube of the Rail helps, but still, it's a muckle ****er to turn upside down!).
There's a wee saddle hook going on the indide of the van door to address this shortly, I just hope the door hinges can take the weight!.
Trying to simply oil the chain on an ebike.
I always lube my Levo's chain with the bike upside down, granted the display is mounted into the top tube so it dosent get damaged
When i have to lube a chain on a ebike with the display on the bars (the wife's bike for example) a simple trick is to place a couple of house bricks on the floor and place the bike upside down with the grips sat on the bricks thus moving the display away from the floor
You can't spin the cranks backwards on an ebike?
Has anyone ever re-cabled an aero bike, with internal routing through bars, stem spacers,headtube, and frame?
This is why I think I can never buy a modern off the shelf road bike, recently had a nightmare with proprietary seatclamps as well. Next frame will be nice round steel tubes, standard aftermarket seatclamp, standard headset, cables under top tube. Maybe a set of aero wheels as a token nod to trying to go a few seconds faster 😎
You can’t spin the cranks backwards on an ebike?
You can, but it's disengaged from the chainring.
Bleeding road disc brakes on internally routed frames. It's almost impossible to not have areas where air can be trapped whilst trying to keep the lever horizontal for the silly funnel thing.
5mm allen key in the chainring bolt on shimano motors means you can pedal backwards.
Yes ! At least the cable routing us possible, not the grommets.
Why don't they just make them a tiny bit smaller?
Cheers @andyrm
5mm allen key in the chainring bolt on shimano motors means you can pedal backwards.
Good idea!
Has anyone ever re-cabled an aero bike, with internal routing through bars, stem spacers,headtube, and frame?
TT bikes are the worst, threading it all down the tri-bars first.
Internal cables are horrendous. Hoses and Di2 I don't mind as much because once it's in, it generally doesn't need to come out again or need replacing and tight bends are less of an issue.
Bikes are getting better, especially with wireless shifting and the new Shimano Di2 is semi-wireless but some of the early inttegrations were total bastards to work with.
Looks like a tapered punch.
Bleeding some brakes can be a pain but I recently bled a new SRAM brake with the bleeding edge port and it makes it so easy, I f I could combine a bleeding edge at the bottom with the Shimano funnel at the top it would be perfect.
And to the people who say cleaning a bike isn't a hassle, I bet they're the type who also say washing the dishes isn't a pain in the backside but actually only briefly dunk them in lukewarm mildly soapy water.
And to the people who say cleaning a bike isn’t a hassle, I bet they’re the type who also say washing the dishes isn’t a pain in the backside but actually only briefly dunk them in lukewarm mildly soapy water.
Add in not getting home from Tweed valley til nigh on 6pm on sunday, so if I don't wash the bike in the dark, it'll be saturday before I can do it in daylight!.
Hot hose down, lube chain just had to do.
You can’t spin the cranks backwards on an ebike?
You can, but it’s disengaged from the chainring.
Turn the rear wheel backwards then? Or just turn the cassette backwards?
Turn the rear wheel backwards then? Or just turn the cassette backwards?
While hold bike, and scooting lube on, no great. Easier to fire in workstand/some kind of saddle hook.
@ads678 ball joint splitter. Tool of last resort if a crank doesn’t come off the axle
At the moment it's trying to remove a retaining ring from an orbea Occam swingarm. It doesn't have holes for special pliers and I can't get it to budge using a pick or anything else. Also, I can't get the linkage arms off the splines as the loctite is doing its job well and I'm not hulk.
Replacing the bearings on my crank brothers pedals was the last nightmare job I did. The plastic friction bearings were so incredibly tight going in that one deformed/crimped. Consequently, I expect it to fail relatively soon.
@davros at the risk of stating the obvious, punches and hammers, plus improvised slide hammers made of nuts and bolts has always helped me in the past.
being volunteered to fix someone elses kids bso.
I do have a slide hammer, punches and threaded bars which will probably do the job on the linkage arms. Last time I attempted it I ran out of time so decided not to go any further.
Still totally stuck on the circlip thing... Might have to spend some money on special retaining ring pliers in the hope they will do the job.
There is no worse bike maintenance job than…..
Tubeless when the tyre won't seat. It combines non-exact science with physical exertion and if unsuccessful it is 100% unsuccessful.
Mind you, I was doing it with just a shock pump. I've got an airshot now and it is much better.
