Thought I’d give my gravel bike a bit of TLC at the weekend, nothing too taxing, will only take an hour…
TL:DR – Quick job turned into a shit show. End result 2 days later, shiny bike all working 🙂
Job 1 – Replace the chain. Couldn’t get the quick link to open and Google says I need a tool to open it on 11 speed, so I gave up and split it the old fashioned way. Decided to give the cassette a degrease and a scrub while I was there. I knew I’d forget the order of the various spacers so I thought I’d be clever and wrap a cable tie around it. Spent about half an hour looking for the 2 bags of cable ties I know I’ve got somewhere. Gave up and wrapped some string around it. Just found the cable ties 3 days later in the place they should be (which was the first place I had looked but couldn’t see them right in front of me FFS).
Started on job 2 whilst the cassette dried and had a few beers. Put the cassette back on and somehow managed to tighten it so it was wonky on the wheel. I must have been so ham-fisted I’d tightened it so much I couldn’t get it back off. In the end I had to get my son to hold the chain whip whilst I used both hands to get enough leverage to get it off!
Job 2 – Replace the front tyre. The old one had a few knicks in it and wouldn’t hold air for long when running tubeless. I’d retaped it a few times (WTB tape) and put 4 layers on last time, so concluded it must be the tyre. Anyway, the new tyre was so loose on the rim it wouldn’t seat at all so I gave up after about an hour of trying and bought some Tesa tape on Ebay. Long story short, a couple of wraps of Tesa tape and it went straight up with just a track pump 🙂
Job 3 – Replace the brake pads. I thought this was going to be a pain in the arse, with bedding in the new pads etc, but a few short sharp stops and they feel perfect! Yay!
Anyway, everything is running fine now despite it taking way longer than it should have! Does anyone else start something and wish they’d never bothered, but still get that satisfied feeling when it’s all done?