Never worked on a modern car? No space special tools, hard to find simple data like wiring diagrams.
Bike are nice and light easy to access, lift etc
This was going to be my sort of response, compared to other stuff with wheels they're dream.
I find some things on bikes a bit “vague”, like centering calipers over rotors (why so much unlimited adjustability? Have notches, or just have caliper mounts and rotor mounts that match up when you put them in). And why do rotors go out of true so much?
Or headset adjustment. Why can’t you just screw it down to the end of a thread and then “voila’, it’s perfect?
I'm guessing you don't work in any kind of mechanical engineering/manufacturing discipline?
The simplest answer would be you could have it all "perfect" but then nobody could afford a bicycle and fewer things would be interoperable...
TBH I enjoy working on my bikes (and my immediate family), in my Garage, with my tools, on my own time.
If it was my actual job and I had to do it for other people and deal with their expectations and needs I don't think I would like it half as much.
I consider myself a 'capable' bike mechanic, but I very much doubt I could do jobs fast enough for a proper LBS workshop. I think "home spannering" benefits from being time rich and having some patience and is a very different thing to doing it for a living... if you lack time, tools and patience take it to the LBS...
I love working on bikes. I think half the things I buy are just so I can spend time fitting and messing with them rather than an actual improvement to the bike.
I love working on bikes. I think half the things I buy are just so I can spend time fitting and messing with them rather than an actual improvement to the bike.
Imagine how much fun you’d have with something that wasn’t a brakeless fixie?!
In the kitchen. With a workstand. And all the right tools. With good music on. And a good cup of coffee. Or a fine malt. This is my happy place.
Unless re-routing internal cabling is invovled. Or it still creaks after you've put it back together for the seventh time with enough greate to launch the Titanic. Or if a bolt makes a break for freedom under the washing machine.
But mostly my happy place.
Also, for pete's sake, clean your bike!
I don’t mind building and working on bikes and even enjoy it sometimes… but I have a habit of starting a job too late at night and finishing things at some ridiculous time in the morning with the floor covered in tools and the old parts that I removed and the
glasses I now need smeared in grease.
My main complaint is not so much the work itself, rather it annoys me how quickly some stuff wears out, especially in the winter/wet.
If only you could use spanners, eh?
Brakes, forks, Shimano hubs, pedals, mudguards and dropper require spanners or a socket.
I love working on bikes they are mechanically quite simple and best of all problems are easy to diagnose. Different standards for wheels and forks etc. Are making it more complex however to source the correct replacements
