in a shop today in France and saw the ad for their bike dept.

squeaky brakes sir?, no problem, a quick squeeze of WD40 should have you on your way 🙂

Unless, of course, that’s disc cleaner…

Narr, I was in France. They don’t clean anything.

Well it looks like a BSO with cable discs, so at least the pic is from within the last ten years.

Was in my local Halfords for some car bits recently.

I needed a new tubeless valve so I asked the guy behind the bike hut counter if he had any in stock. He looked at me as though I asked him if he had any weapon’s grade plutonium for sale and told me he had no idea where I could buy a tubeless valve🤔🙄😂

To be fair to the guy in Halfords how often do you think they get asked for a tubeless valve? Not their (valve) core market .

It’s like walking into Asda and asking for organic crayfish. Yes they’re food but most people went in for sausages and burgers, maybe even some haddock.

My favourite bit of Halfords info was that you couldn’t buy chainring bolts separately, and they only came as part of the chainset.

Which annoyed me more than most as the Halfords bikehut I worked in (years previously) was staffed by riders who knew what they were talking about (even me, believe it or not) yet we’d all be tarred with the same brush.

Guy walked into our shop and asked of we could do up the nut on his rear axle. He’d been into Halfords & they told him they didn’t have the correct size spanner….despite at least one display of every spanners in every size known to man being in the same shop

To be fair to the guy in Halfords how often do you think they get asked for a tubeless valve?

They were selling own brand tubeless fluid!

I went in to halfords and asked for a square taper bittom bracket told him the length and everything.

He looked at me blankly for a few second then apologised and admitted he’d<span style=”font-size: 0.8rem;”> had to readjust to someone knowing what they were asking for and went and got it. </span>

“They were selling own brand tubeless fluid!”

They sell own-brand fluidless tubes as well

TBF my local has always been alright with giving me an odd part from their spares bucket that wasn’t on the shelf, so no complaints here, and you get a BC discount on some stuff. Some branches will be less well-informed than others and don’t reflect the norm, so don’t bash the whole lot as the thread title infers

couple of weeks ago, I was in there, having a scout around as I’d be given a gift card as a present. While I was looking about the two bike workshop dudes were replacing a headset and trying to figure out why the forks wouldn’t sit back in properly. They kept this up for all the time I was mooching about;  taking the fork in and out. While waiting for them to ring through the multi tool I’d bought, I finally lost patience, and pointed out that they hadn’t removed the old crown ring, but just bashed the new one on top of it….

Halfords Leicester, you’ve been warned.

Notes Halfords as source of emergency tubeless fluid.

I think Decathlon do this too, sell the gloop but not the valves. But Decathlon also do a repair kit.

Decathlon do stock valves

Decathlon do sell tubeless valves for around £10 a pair. I have them in two sets of wheels and they are fine

Halfords vary. Been in some that know what they are doing.

With 450 ish stores unfortunately you can’t expect each and every one of those staff to be clued up on every product, I have worked in four stores over the years. One store I worked at was so knowledgeable when it came to car audio it was scary. They were a step above all of the local auto electrical places. Their bike knowledge on the other hand left a lot to be desired. I have also worked at a store where the bike mechanics has been second to none in the local area. Its differs store to store and staff member to staff member.