Back From The Dead: Your Bike Hates You

Dieter is the kind of bike nerd mechanic that every good bike shop should want. He is endlessly enthusiastic about getting people of all kinds onto bikes of all sorts. He can fix your bike even when the outlook looks bleak. Go for a ride with him and you’ll probably end up doing high fives and exclaiming ‘sick!’. In short, he has boundless enthusiasm for all things bike. He’s also a bit of a socially conscious punk environmentalist, so he’s probably a bit rubbish if your bike shop is one of those glittering concept store type places where it doesn’t smell of rubber and GT85 (Or WD40). Luckily for him, and us, he works at our local social enterprise bike shop, and we’ve talked him into bringing us a few of his more ingenious and interesting fixes, alongside whatever commentary he might like to get off his chest. We hope you enjoy…

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By down_and_across

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Back From The Dead: Your Bike Hates You

I’m torn as to which is my favorite – maybe the grease, but the crumbling bottom bracket is pretty ace too. The e bike is too far gone for me, but the shoes are tantalizing!

I honestly would not have believed half of it without the pictures.

Need a lie down. I get the bottom bracket issues. Whip mine out once a year to clean and lightly grease

What can I say or think about the grease ports and that wonderful e bike.

Mind blown.

Looks pretty standard to the stuff I’ve seen dragged in to repair shops of all industries. Paying someone who may know what they are doing to fix things is often only going to happen as a last resort.

(All the readers pulling their BB this weekend) Those Centaur thumbies are probably worth more than the rest of the bike.

Love it haha made me happy knowing my minor repairs are moderately sensible…in the main. Keep up the good work.

Greased (whole) frame for the win. That’s taken a few pumps of grease every ride for a decade to get that full..

Whip mine out once a year to clean and lightly grease

That’s what (s)he said….

Honestly Guv I do. Lol.

Like hopefiendboy says. It is reassuring to know that a little bit of faffing and getting to know your bike goes a long way.

That’s all pretty horrific but for truly scary you want to see what people will chance bodging on their gas boilers…😬

Worst I’ve seen was someone using motor oil for their drivetrain, you literally couldn’t see the chain, cogs or jockey wheels for crud. Apparently it wasn’t shifting very well.

I only ever refused to work on one bike in my whole career as a bike mechanic too! It was owned by a local farmer who had always bought a new cheap bike from us every year and then just run it into the ground but this time he brought it back for an annual service. Except it was absolutely covered in whatever excrement he had lying round the farm, and I mean covered. It was inches thick in some spots! He agreed to wash it before we took it in so it went through the local jetwash then came back to us to give it a pretty much complete rebuild, returning it to full working order. Amazingly it was just new cables and plenty of regressing needed, the crap has been doing a very good job if acting as a natural rust sealant. When he returned to pick it up he was so grateful he gave us a crisp packet with some money in it as a tip, it contained nearly £300 in 20’s. It was when he passed away a few years later and his sister called in the shop that we found out they he’d placed a bet with her that his old bike could be brought back to life after she had berated him for wasting money in always buying a new one every year. The fact the repair cost and the tip was way more than the bike had cost new didn’t matter, he won the bet.

Mr Thomas, you were a living legend in that shop.

More horror tales pleeaase!!!

Those shoes are class! We need answers to why!

Love it, keep em coming.

Vomit enducing repair is when you change the sweat soaked and encrusted bar tape on a customer bike that’s been sat on the turbo through summer lockdowns and winters. The pics are too gross to post but the smell is worse

We had a customer bring a bike in for repair after a traffic accident. The bike was covered in the customer’s dried blood. We refused to work on it and he went mental – telling everyone he’d been in an accident, he was a very clean guy, he had no diseases so surely we could just wear gloves and deal with the blood all over everything…

Seen some weird bodges, almost always from older guys – the sort of weirdy-beardy generation who liked to tinker with things in their spare time and absolutely refused to pay any money for the proper solution if there was a chance they could bodge it from their long-obsolete collection of random parts.
A bike with what the customer proudly claimed was 74 working gears once came in – some sort of hub gear that had a cassette bodged onto it combined with a triple chainring set-up. Like …WHY?!