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I’ve just had to replace a hood cover on my shifter/brake lever on my gravel bike, and I’m starting to understand why they’re so grumpy all the time.
Seriously to replace a rubber hood cover I’ve had to take off my bar tape, replace my shifter cable, dismantle my shifter to detach my brake hose, then partly install the hood cover, reattach everything, bleed my brakes, finish installing the hood cover, reattach the shifter, and then reinstall my bar tape and re-index my gears.
🤬
When I replaced mine I just soaked it in hot water and fitted it without removing anything other than the old hood 🤷
Are you ****ing kidding me.
as above smidge of lube and it slipped on lovely, no faff, no issues
Boiling water every time, just slides on
Understanding the Roadie mindset
You’re all bastards and I hate you.
Success!
Oops ! Made me laugh on a wet Sunday !
The really annoying thing is that’s how I initially thought it would fit, but struggled to get it to stretch, and as the previous one had torn decided that I needed to remove the shifter to get it to fit.
Hilarious
I am minded of an ex colleague experimental physicist's advice
"Two weeks in the laboratory can save a whole afternoon in the library"
Yep, plenty of lube and it fits easily.
A nice problem to have ...
Average of Sussex
@Kramer 'You’re all bastards and I hate you.'
Thanks made me chuckle!
Now you know ... the real roady mindset is that you can colour match your hoods to your saddle, sunnies, garmin mount, any other kit etc: shoes, shoe covers, socks, what ever! #Hudz
'You’re all bastards and I hate you.' Brilliant!
😂
Most excellent 👌
😂
So sure this was going to be grumpy over takes with no hello. Which was my view of roadies today
Came to say,
Cut off or pull off the old one, Hot water in a bowl leave new one to soak a couple of minutes then it's easy to fit. Did many of these working in bike shops
But see you've already been educated.
Did similar at work on Friday, two 20L specimen buckets, one stuck inside the other. A whole laboratory of science degree holders try to separate them with much huffing and puffing.
I run hot tap over outer bucket, outside bucket literally falls off the other. Much muttering from the "intelligent" people as I walk off shaking head and saying FFS! 😀
Science is your friend
That's definitely a space biro moment
Relevant information given 4 or 5 hours after the fact is basically abuse guys.
Much lolz.
Oh dear. Still you have learned a LOT of new skills
The truth about the space biro is duly noted - with a felt tip...😉
What. A. Plum.
Indeed a throbber of the highest order. 🤣
Brilliant thread. Thank you, Kramer!
Anyway you can’t be a proper roadie. Most in my club send the bike to the club mechanic for anything. To be fair, he’s really good, charges almost nothing and does it for love.
now if you’d said you wanted to raise the stem on a fully integrated front end with hidden cables, THEN I would have known where you were coming from. 😏
Anyway you can’t be a proper roadie. Most in my club send the bike to the club mechanic for anything. To be fair, he’s really good, charges almost nothing and does it for love.
Met a roadie sat at the side of the road the other week with a puncture.
He'd got nothing with him and was going to call his OH.
I was on my gravel so had everything.
Me "Tube or tubeless?"
Him "Tubeless"
Me "I'll just Dynaplug it for you", "much sealant leaked out?"
Him "Oh, well it's actually a tube, as I punctured last week and had a tube put in but haven't been back to my bike shop to have it sorted back to tubeless"
I wished him a good day and rode off.
Most in my club send the bike to the club mechanic for anything.
Every road club i've been in is utterly polarised between those who do *everything* themselves and those who do *nothing*, and always send it to a shop.
These are then further broken down into those who actually do know how to do everything, and those who know how to do nothing, and those who know nothing but *think* they do.
Not to mention the difference between those who will pay whatever it costs and those who whine about every damn penny.
As you can imagine, the maintenance standards on club members bikes were certainly variable.
@mert my club resembles that comment. Although the number that think they can do everything is relatively small. Until you’ve threaded internal cables in a carbon frame, you haven’t lived.
I don’t have disc brakes but this was three hours of fishing. External cables for the shifters means replacing the hoods would require their removal. No brake bleeding needed though, although the V brakes can be a temperamental thing to set properly.
those who actually do know how to do everything, and those who know how to do nothing, and those who know nothing but *think* they do.
<ahem>
Met a roadie sat at the side of the road the other week with a puncture.
He’d got nothing with him and was going to call his OH.
There must be so many stories starting like this, I met a(nother, I was also on road bike) roadie at the side of the road having been dropped by his group because of a puncture. He had a shiny new Lezyne pump which had promptly unscrewed the valve core of his new tube which was now somehow wedged in the rubber grommet inside the pump, rendering pump and tube useless.
I think he was so mechanically un-initiated that his eyes boggled at my old school thumb chuck style pump which he noted the details of and went home to buy.
A sub-moral of the story is that he was clearly a significantly faster rider than me, I think there might be a subset of riders who just ride their bikes ALL.THE.TIME and don't bother devoting any time to maintenance or learning new skills. It's a sort of all-or-nothing approach I guess, if you get fast enough soon enough with few enough mechanical disasters you can get signed by a team and have a pro-mechanic on hand all the time 😎
Every road club i’ve been in is utterly polarised between those who do *everything* themselves and those who do *nothing*, and always send it to a shop.These are then further broken down into those who actually do know how to do everything, and those who know how to do nothing, and those who know nothing but *think* they do.
I've done ride leading jobs where the punters don't even know how to get the wheel out of the bike.
Most people ride in far far too high a gear - one guy actually said he liked using the highest gear possible because he had to put more power through the cranks therefore his power meter gave higher numbers. 😳
Never underestimate the levels of cluelessness from cyclists as to how their bikes operate... They can tell you everything about Strava and power and aero and FTP but when it comes to fixing a puncture, they can't even undo a thru-axle... 🙄
Most people signing up to these supported rides have never had to fix a puncture so they have no idea of how tight their tyre is. They just use what the shop fitted & and what fits fine with industrial tyre levers in a warm dry shop does not come off at the side of a cold wet road using piddly plastic levers!
It’s a sort of all-or-nothing approach I guess, if you get fast enough soon enough with few enough mechanical disasters you can get signed by a team and have a pro-mechanic on hand all the time 😎
Is that a thinly veiled dig at Fwoomey, thinks his setup has changed by 10cm and he didn't notice...
To be fair, road bikes don’t suffer nearly the same level of mechanicals as mountain bikes as their riders don’t tend to throw them down rocky paths and cover them in grinding paste.
I’d use a professional mechanic if a) it didn’t cost a fortune, b) I could get things done as and when I need them doing, and c) I could trust that it isn’t going to be bodged.
I resemble a lot of those last remarks!!
Team rider, ridden on road for years, mechanic did all the spannering. Every time I tried fixing something his words were pretty much "next time just bring it straight in so I don't have to fix the mess you've made".....
I can fix a flat though.....
To be fair, road bikes don’t suffer nearly the same level of mechanicals as mountain bikes as their riders don’t tend to throw them down rocky paths and cover them in grinding paste.
Whilst that's true ... I see the same pattern in my cycling club. Maintenance is just about making things sparkly clean for a lot of members - repairing punctures on the roadside is seen as some sort of art form. As someone who's always done their own maintenance (I guess growing up and having to make do with 2nd hand / hand me down fixer uppers was a blessing in disguise) I find it ... weird !
Every road club i’ve been in is utterly polarised between those who do *everything* themselves and those who do *nothing*, and always send it to a shop.
Ironically, it's normally the ones who do *everything* themselves that cause more problems because they've almost invariably bodged something or used not quite the right tool or "just done that for now" or got distracted.
Back in the late 90's through to mid 00's when I was working in bike shops, it wasn't uncommon to get some beardy old bloke on a wildly customised pile of absolute crap that had, once upon a time, been a nice bike but had been progressively "improved" by its owner - folk who'd machined their own bars or cranks, hacksawed up racks and mudguards to fit better, chopped up their cassette to get custom ratios...
They were always a nightmare to fix - the bike would never have seen the inside of a shop until the owner's mechanical aspirations outweighed his abilities by which point the whole thing would be a mess of random bolt sizes and modified componentry.
And they were always SO proud of their Frankenbike creations.
Ooh yes, I modified this 8sp Campag shifter so it fits sideways on the stem and the cassette is formed from individual sprockets glued together to give me the ratios I need!
Yes because clearly Campag had missed a trick there ... 🙄
A sub-moral of the story is that he was clearly a significantly faster rider than me, I think there might be a subset of riders who just ride their bikes ALL.THE.TIME and don’t bother devoting any time to maintenance or learning new skills. It’s a sort of all-or-nothing approach I guess, if you get fast enough soon enough with few enough mechanical disasters you can get signed by a team and have a pro-mechanic on hand all the time
It's a sub-sub-set of the ones who get the shop to do all their maintenance, but only once it's reached a point of failing.
The good thing about road bikes though is they tend to just go on, and on, and on. Clubmate was moaning that his "new" bike had 20,000km on it now and needed new bearings. I can do worse than that in a single off-piste winter lap of Swinley! My assumption is that MTBing ends up almost 1:1 riding to maintenance time once you include faffage like getting bikes in/out of cars, having to clean it, etc. Then less frequent stuff like suspension serviceing, tubeless tyres, etc.
While we're all dropping the lowers and changing seals they're getting in at least one more half day ride every month.
Gravel bikes are the worst of both, every time I jump on it I'm expecting a "road bike", efficiency, silence, perfect shifting. The reality is the tyres have gone down, the shifting is 2 up one down, the drivechain is full of grit and I've bent another mech.
I’d use a professional mechanic if a) it didn’t cost a fortune, b) I could get things done as and when I need them doing, and c) I could trust that it isn’t going to be bodged.
As with any job you are able to do yourself, it seems to expensive to pay for someone good to do and at the price point you are willing to pay, it will almost certainly be done badly.
Doing internally routed cables is just a fun Sunday afternoon puzzle, it's all about mindset! The cable routing on a giant Defy is almost comical in the sharp angle for the front mech and ridiculously difficult portion through the chainstay for the rear mech.