What’s your least favourite bike maintenance job?

Replacing Avid Juicy pads and servicing cup and cone hubs.

Can’t decide which annoys me more

any of it! its all a faff a bind and a bore, I happily pay someone to keep mine in tip top condition, I’ve got too much else to do!!

Bleeding Brakes and putting on frame save

enjoy all of it except for bleeding hayes brakes, all others are fine

wheel building… its witchcraft I tell thee

Definitely replacing the pads in Avid Juicy brakes – although the pair I changed at the weekend went in easily first time. Unheard of!
Setting up front mechs always does my head in too.

I love anything to do with bike maintenance its a release from work

what’s maintenance?

Shortening hoses.

For me it has to be bar tape on drop bars, I’d rather cut thread onto forks for an hour (thankgod for aheadset)

Or building 48 spoke BMX wheels, it’s like it’s never going to end 😐

ventanarider – Member

what’s maintenance?

The thing that stops every ride turning into a pile of ratshit!

Before the invention of lock-on grips, putting on a new pair.
Swearing, sweating and hitting youself in the balls were all commonplace.

Juicy pads are OK if you don’t have too much fluid in the system and can push the pistons all the way in.

For me it’s got to be changing/sorting tubeless tyres (non- ust).

Truing wheels
Setting up disk brakes
Replacing suspension bearings
but generally I like tinkering in the garage

I’m fairly odd, I love any bike fiddling. Love car fiddling too. The more complex and fiddly the better. I enjoy fettling the bike more than riding it uphill!

Cleaning.

Trying to remove seized pedals, pain, misery and suffering.

Deffo servicing cup and cone hubs. The Devil’s own work.

setting up gears.. 🙁

Front mechs definitely. Pain in the arse.

Got to be fitting and removing tyres with wire beads, numb thumbs 🙁

Front mechs another of my least faves too, On the middle ring mine will either rub on the inside of the mech (so i turn the barrel adjuster to compensate) then when i drop down to the highest gear after that it catches on the outside of the mech 😈

I have a tourettes-like compulsive twitch that makes me violently punch platform pedal pins whenever I have to fit, adjust or remove anything around the cranks. A special favorite is, with the chain off, somehow whacking my knuckles off the pedal then have the cranks spin and the same pedal smack me in the leg. Add cold gritty mud into the equation ….. loving it

the recurring puncture the gf’s bike, where you’re CERTAIN there’s no microscopic fragment of glass buried in the tyre until the next time she’s out and guess what, there was.

I’m with Tommytowtruck. Avid pads and front mechs. Just the site of an Avid pad-springy thing sends me onto a frenzy.

removing the sucker marks from octopodes

Only adjusting cup and cone bearings other than that i like doing bike maintence.

Washing/cleaning the thing is my pet hate, because you always have to do it when you least want to (ie after a ride, tired and relaxed wanting bed).

Cleaning. I still have bikes in pieces in my cellar awaiting a clean.

The commuter/winter trainer is so filthy right now, none of the decals are readable.

Servicing forks. Not because it’s necessarily hard, but just because of the opportunity to fvck up a massively expensive bit of kit. Nothing else really bothers me.

Glad it’s not just me with Avid pads. That’s mainly why I sold my Juicies.

My least favourite task has got to be trying to index gears with a bent rear mech or deurailler hanger, but not realising.

bearings, theres just so many times ive got everything back together and realised ive left a circlip/spacer/seal/axel out and have to sismantle it all, probably ruining the bearings and re do it all over again.

The nominees are
Cleaning drivechain
Aligning disc brakes
Setting up front mechs

Cleaning drivechain wins it, mainly coz I’ve got to do it 100 times more often than the others.

Putting a patch and tube in a flint-torn tyre in below zero wind blasted conditions, when my hands feel like they’ve got frostbite, and they covered in wet mud and stan’s tyre sealant.

My language wasn’t pretty, I tell thee.

Cleaning drivetrains. Thank gawd for sram links

Errr, mine’s really quite lame. Cleaning the crap out from inside the cassette and derailleur – I seem to manage to clog it with a mixture of mud and twigs every ride, and it forms a kind of immovable cement.

Without a doubt, replacing Avid pads,
Also getting cables through an orange swingarm for the first time is annoying…
Only brakes I ever had issues setting up were Magura HS33’s…

cleaning the arch bit behind the crown on forks

Only done it once but replacing the bearings on my Enduro has to be one of the two things I dont like doing but I didnt have the correct tools.

The other thing is putting the shock in the lower eyelet as it is a pain in the arse. I have even considered getting rid of the frame because its so much hassle.

Anything on a dirty or wet (or both) bike.

Cleaning drivetrains is a non-issue when you have a jetwasher 🙂

I am dreading needing to replace/fix the bearings and pivots on my Blur 4X, but mainly just because I have never done it and have the usual fear of the unknown.

Bleeding disk brakes gets on my nerves too – XT brakes seem to need 5 or 6 attempts to get it right (at least in my hands)