Bicycle Mechanics - Mechanics: what is your most annoying and favorite repair job?

Annoying: Big jobs like complete overhauls. I lose focuss after a while, especially when interrupted all of the time by customers. Also, working on busted up three-speeds doing a job you know will yield very little result but will still cost the customer enough for you to have to explain yourself. Front derailer set-up on an indexed triple. I spent too many frustrating hours tuning only to discover that the bike will only shift right with a brand new derailer. Now I replace as soon as I see signs of wear or a jammed chain having warped the cage.

Favorite: wheelbuilding! Such a soothing activity, except when you have a crappy rim or that one too-short spoke that sneaked its way into the bunch ( i know, you should check beforehand...) The focuss in our shop is pretty heavily on speed of repair as well as quality and I am the slowest guy around usually, so I was especially proud when I built a XT/Rigida touring wheelset 40/36 in an hour and 10 minutes, yay!

Also, complete overhauls... I especially enjoy shimano equipped derailer bikes with Deore/Tiagra and up. Strip bike down completely except maybe headset. Clean, reinstall , replace everything. Replace hub cones etc. Then tune the gears, brakes to perfection. Such a joy!

Discuss...

Annoying: "My bike makes a noise".

Favorite: wheelbuiliding.

Annoying: "My bike makes a noise".

Forgot that one, though I have become quite good at solving most 'noises'. My boss now hands me all those jobs.

My bike skips when I pedal hard.

"Lardasse - take this bike for a test ride and see why it skips!"

More than once I came back in picking gravel out of open wounds after that.

Favourite job - adding upright handlebars to old road bikes.

Favorite: working on bikes.

Most annoying: putting a new wax seal on a toilet.

Thank you so far! Come on, I know there are more wrenches out there! Spill your beans!

I think one of the most frustrating things I ever tried to do was fixing a flat on a bike with one of those Nexus internal-gear hubs. Not only a PITA to get off, but an even worse one to get back on and get the cable tensioned properly.
When I pulled the tube out, I discovered two! Someone had been so frustrated by the idea of doing what I just did that they popped the tire free of the rim while it was still on the bike, and somehow contrived to stuff a second tube in....

Most Annoying: Working on any department store bikes/kids bikes, disc brake bleeds, frozen bottom bracket removals. Also not a fan of threaded headsets,

Favorite: Complete Overhauls, specifically hub/BB overhauls on nice old bikes olike the set of campagnolo record sew-ups I did the other day.
I also quite enjoy frame prep and wheelbuilding (but my current job doesn't have any wheelbuilding work)
oh and I have alot of fun painting frames, but that falls outside of a mechanics day to day

Why no threaded headset love may I ask?

When the guy who has a 10 year old used $3000 racing bike that he bought for $500. He complains that the its going to cost $700 for a new set of bfriters, and $500 for a new cassette, chain and chainrings. He doesn't even care about the bling. He would have been better off buying a brand new $2k bike. He knows it. He hates us because we know it too.

Favorite: The 5 minute KROIL job on a part that no one has been able to get apart. They look at you like you are some genius. I love the "we tried this" and "the other shop tried that..."

I also love wheelbuilding and find it immensely relaxing.

I love when I try many different ways to do something and they fail and I eventually succeed. I had a heck of a tight lockring on a track hub. I couldn't get a grip on it. I did insane things like using a hammer and punch, vise grip, vise, channel locks, etc. Eventually, I used a vise grip with a 3 ft breaker bar. The good news is that it was a Dura Ace lockring, and it's made of such hard steel that all my abuse didn't wreck it. It still looks almost new. I was doing it for a 17 year old kid, and his eyes bugged out as I worked. He was impressed in the end. I did a lot of grunting and groaning.

Most annoying: working on department store bike brakes. Those things never work brand new let alone after people have beat up the bike.

Favorite: complete overhauls on older bikes. It's always fun to breath new life into an old bike.

Most annoying: working on department store bike brakes. Those things never work brand new let alone after people have beat up the bike.I never counted the "bike like objects" sold at dept stores as actual bikes. So I discount that.


Favorite: complete overhauls on older bikes. It's always fun to breath new life into an old bike.I remember putting as many parts in an old Peugeot U0-8 as the bike was worth. I wasn't very happy about doing that

My least favorite job is cotter pins on a bike where the old cotter pins failed. I was never happy with the results.

I like to build and true wheels

My favorite job has to be a derailleur hanger alignment: Somebody brings in a bike that has stumped him and all of his "pretty good bike machanic" buddies. 15 minutes and I have it shifting "like butter". Makes people think that I'm smarter than I really am.

Least favorite is ANYTHING on a bike that has 1 3/8" tires. It's pretty much the opposite. They always leave thinking that I'm dumber than I really am.

Most annoying: Removing crank pins as I did today on someones bike.

Favorite: Still working on bikes even though I had to do the above. :)

I agree that cotter pins and crappy brakes are annoying.

On the subject of impressing your customers, I remember a customer complimented me on my strength, in putting the lockring on his BB. The truth is that I have finesse. I'm not that strong, but I can tighten things very well. And really, any mechanic with experience has techniques like mine.

Just finished fitting some hard to find 26 by 1 1/4 tyres to an old Raleigh for a customer and the other day tuned up her other Raleigh 3 speed at the co-op... working on older bikes seems to my niche here even though I can fix anything on wheels.

English 3 speeds... mmmm !

Earlier this morning I fitted a gently wheel into an old Raleigh mtb for a local guy who is short on cash but big of heart... had picked up an LX hub laced to a Mavic wheel a while back and had just tuned it up so now his old bike is rocking an 8 speed freehub, new chain, and I gave it a little tune up. The charge on this will be what I paid for the wheel plus the cost of the new chain and a six pack of my favourite brew... :)

The most annoying jobs are where people have tried, failed, and f'd things up beyond repair and I don't work on bike shaped objects as they are an exercise in frustration.

Nicest thing is to be able to fix the things other shops won't or can't and have people roll away saying their bike has never worked better because it probably wasn't set up right in the first place.

I love building wheels and people love my wheels.

Soon, I will be building complete frames and am loving this work so far.

Sixty Fiver, I hope you blog your frame building learning process. Are you going to weld, braze, or both?

Installing chains and when your dam pedal strips from the crank ohh how that pisses me off

Favorite: bikes that work.

Now for a real answer: I have a growing respect and awe for the old school steel frame road, but as of now I love workin on new things that i haven't seen before or don't see often. ex. FFS (Front Freewheel System which we got to work on today)

Least Favorite: TRIKES

Sixty Fiver, I hope you blog your frame building learning process. Are you going to weld, braze, or both?

Kicking things off with filet brazing... will be taking the torch to my folder next week so will document those little upgrades.

Isn't filet brazing the hardest of all?

Most annoying bleeding my Elixirs. Favorite building wheels.

most annoying are old brakes, half of them have little to no adjustments for centering and the pad adjustments are afwul. also dislike smooth post brake pads on cantilever brakes. dont have a real favorite but overhauls and recabling are pretty good.

Not a pro wrench (okay to butt in?), but I do 80% of the work myself (== bad LBS consumer, I know...). Interesting reading; relief to hear that I'm not the only one who finds triple front derailleur setup to be :bang: . Qualifies for my "most annoying", this week anyway.

Indeed, wheelbuilding is zen. Meditative. Haven't done one in way too many years.

Favorite (besides wheelbuilding): cleaning it up and pushin' it out the door for a test ride.

Least:
-Bikes that have been sitting under a porch for a decade that "just need a little air and a little tune up." If there are cobwebs and leaves all over your bike, and the chain refuses to move from it's rusted-solid figure-8 position, I don't want to deal with it.

-Flat changes that require more than 2 hand/arm/face washings afterwards. If I'm getting messy, I want to at least be doing something cool. Otherwise, I don't want to deal with it.

-Bikes where the chain gets sprayed with WD40 and not wiped down, and the drivetrain never gets cleaned. If it takes me 2x as long to get your bike clean enough to even start working on it as it does to do the actual job, I don't want to deal with it.

-Tune ups on crack-head stolen bike cobble jobs. If it has 3 brake levers, one brake, a 6 speed freewheel on a 27x1-1/4" rear wheel, a 9 speed shifter, and a 700c front wheel, a 1/8" chain, and you don't understand why I can't "just fix it up while [you] wait," I don't want to deal with it.

Most:

-Wheelbuilding. I always scoffed at the whole "wheelbuilding as thereputic" thing until I started doing it. By far my favourite thing to do at work aside from shooting things with the compressor-powered bb gun we made.

-Talking through specs for a build with someone who understands that good doesn't equal cheap, but isn't an "I have to have the best and lightest" know-it-all. Building said bike.

-Friction shift drivetrains. 99% of the time it's in, out, gone with minimal fuss.

Why no threaded headset love may I ask?

After using threadless headsets it just seems like such a pain, at least most of the crappy old headsets I encounter everyday.

I spent some time aligning a fork today with the old park tool, that was alot of fun.

I am an advanced amateur. I don't care for the cheap formula or joytech hubs. They don't use decent quality cones and are harder to adjust properly. The freehub bodies are never bolted the same and it sometimes takes the 2' Stilson wrench as a cheater to break them loose.
I do enjoy wheel building and retruing.
A complete overhaul with new cables and housing always makes a bike with brifters shift and brake better.

Most annoying-changing a tube on a rear, bolt-on wheel that's dirty, cob webbed, bent axle, loose, dry bearings, rusty chain, etc. No satisfaction in that.
Favorite-a cable or housing change on a bike with old, but very high quality brakes, shifters, and derailleurs, especially if the cables and housing are in bad shape. A simple job with dramatic results that does justice to the rest of the system. Very satisfying.

I've been working part-time as a mechanic for a few months, most annoying job I've done has to be trying to get a department-store bike to actually work. Favorite, I'd have to say wheelbuilding, but taking a knackered old bike and making it run properly again is a fairly close second.

We've stopped working on dep. store bikes, except when business is really slow... :-)

Over here we deal with a lot of IGH equipped bikes, so changing a rear tire becomes second nature. It's not something I look forward too though.

Additionally, Dutch people fit there day-to-day bikes with a lot of accesories, like a coupling for a trailer, child rear seat, rear pannier bags (the big ones).

Which makes it a lot more work to change a rear tire. Much more bolts to undo, bags that are in your face, stinking of cat urine etc. I would love to work over in the U.S. where I gather 95 % of bikes are derailered. So much easier! Oh and I forget full chaincases on IGH bikes, which are always alot of fun to put back on after a cog and chain swap, especially when they were being held together by remnants of duck tape. You really learn to value tie-wraps!

Least: dealing with people who bought a cheap bike at a yardsale. Since in most cases the cost of a repair is but a fraction of the purchase price of the bike, these people somehow form a logic that says "since this bike only cost $10, anything I want done should cost less than that". It's like talking to a wall where everything I say is met with "but I only paid $10 for it...." "M'am, the bike is in generally good condition, but the front wheel is bent beyond repair. If we replace it you'll have a nice, functional bike". Her: "how much?" Me: "About $40 all said and done". Her: "but I only paid $10 for it...."

Most: finding out why the bike that's been to three other shops won't shift right and then hearing about how their bike's never worked better and that they're only coming to us from now on after we fix it.

We've stopped working on dep. store bikes, except when business is really slow... :-)

Over here we deal with a lot of IGH equipped bikes, so changing a rear tire becomes second nature. It's not something I look forward too though.

Additionally, Dutch people fit there day-to-day bikes with a lot of accesories, like a coupling for a trailer, child rear seat, rear pannier bags (the big ones).

Which makes it a lot more work to change a rear tire. Much more bolts to undo, bags that are in your face, stinking of cat urine etc. I would love to work over in the U.S. where I gather 95 % of bikes are derailered. So much easier! Oh and I forget full chaincases on IGH bikes, which are always alot of fun to put back on after a cog and chain swap, especially when they were being held together by remnants of duck tape. You really learn to value tie-wraps!

The Dutch seem to also love cramming wide-spaced Nexus 8 hubs into really narrow frames, or at least from the Workcycles and Batavus bikes I work on. Couple that with tensioners, chainguard, etc in there, and it's always a blast anytime that wheel has to come off.

I'm working only on my bikes, my cars. And in small occasions on friends bikes/cars

Most annoying for me is to straighten up a slightly bent chainring (I would change it but I don't find easily a new 55T 6 bolt chainring)
Also it annoys me to overhaul the bottom bracket on one of my bikes because I have to remove the cranks (it has cottered cranks with a lot of wear on the groove in the spindle)

Favorite thing to do on a bike: overhauling hubs, freewheels, geared hubs, unusual complicated mechanisms, taking apart something in hundreds of pieces, cleaning them and put them back together (like freewheels, brifters, geared hubs).* (*only on good quality parts, I don't deal with low quality junk because I don't own dept. bikes or crap quality, better an older high-end stuff than new junk)
Also tuning the play in cup-cone bearings is relaxing me, and the fact that I have cup and cone everywhere on bike (BB, headset, hubs, and even the pedals) is fine with me :D

Most favorite thing for me is rebuild engines/gearboxes/differential and generally the drivetrain (I hate the suspension jobs where you have to relay on the fixed geometry of the chassis, but the chassis in misaligned/bent so nothing fits without a hammer)

I'm working only on my bikes, my cars. And in small occasions on friends bikes/cars

Most annoying for me is to straighten up a slightly bent chainring (I would change it but I don't find easily a new 55T 6 bolt chainring)
Also it annoys me to overhaul the bottom bracket on one of my bikes because I have to remove the cranks (it has cottered cranks with a lot of wear on the groove in the spindle)

Favorite thing to do on a bike: overhauling hubs, freewheels, geared hubs, unusual complicated mechanisms, taking apart something in hundreds of pieces, cleaning them and put them back together (like freewheels, brifters, geared hubs).* (*only on good quality parts, I don't deal with low quality junk because I don't own dept. bikes or crap quality, better an older high-end stuff than new junk)
Also tuning the play in cup-cone bearings is relaxing me, and the fact that I have cup and cone everywhere on bike (BB, headset, hubs, and even the pedals) is fine with me :D

Most favorite thing for me is rebuild engines/gearboxes/differential and generally the drivetrain (I hate the suspension jobs where you have to relay on the fixed geometry of the chassis, but the chassis in misaligned/bent so nothing fits without a hammer)

You are a better mechanic than I am! I once owned a motorcycle and found it infinitely more complicated than a bicycle! I am not mechanically inclined by nature and learned to be a bicycle mechanic by apprenticeship. Most difficult thing I've done (and enjoy very much) is stripping, cleaning and rebuilding Sachs/SRAM torpedo IGH's. I have an older model torpedo 7-speed on my bike and sometimes overhaul it just for the fun of it.


As for Batavus bikes, contrary to my handle, the modern bikes suck the big one! Lard ass aluminum frames with inch thick dropouts that are always out of alignment having a Nexus hub crammed in there just barely doing what it's supposed to do. All other parts are either made from plastic (imitation nexus 8 shifters that don't last more than a year) or assembled bone dry. Cartridge bottom brackets that are below any level I've ever seen. Chainlines out by more than 5 mm. They just don't care! As long as they can save a couple of eurocents on a certain part, they're happy.

And we are not talking dep. store level bikes! I am talking an 800 euro bike. Nexus 8, rollerbrakes, hub dynamo. They weigh a ton, fitted with ultra cheap suspension forks that develop play after 6 months. It is just ridiculous that these big manufacturers ( Batavus, Gazelle etc) can still get away with this. All they are doing is relying on the good name they built up with the bikes they sold 30 years ago! Rant over.

Dislikes: Bleeding hydraulic brakes, rust removal by steel wool, rust removal by anything really, Schwinn/Raleigh only sized tire changes/repair, Italian rim tire mounting, and wheel truing on shot spoke nipples. Front Derailleur adjustments with Sora Brifters suck so bad.

Likes: Dialing in shifting (never had trouble with most front derailleurs), Dialing in cantilever brakes, the amazing mix/match Shimano parts game (truly amazing to see what works, everytime), truing the un-true-able wheel, old road bike overhauls, 90's mtn bike overhauls, and taking some old, old bike and completely rebuiding it from the ground up. Swap meets are super fun too.

Easiest: Friction shifting dial in. It can be so fast sometimes, I just stand there in disbelief.

Thanks for the compliment, Batavus. I'm not a full time mechanic, I usually end up doing small thing in a much longer time.. but at least I get it the way I want and spend a lot of time on details, especially on crucial "details" that are usually rushed in shops (in installing valves, check valve springs to be equal and within specs, honing cylinders, etc). On a bike is much more simple but yet still holds interesting things in it.

A clear image of the disassembled mechanism is always in my head (or at least I try), and in automotive area is a passion of mine, and after all I am an automotive engineer that works in designing and calculating of gearboxes (and not only), so such things are pleasant for me to work on since I know how they are assembled and how it works, and in my opinion this are the most important things: to know exactly how it is assembled, what does it do, how it works, and why each component is shaped in that way (there is a reason for every hole, thread, bolt, washer, pin, step, groove, slot, etc.)

truing the un-true-able wheel, Esp. the tacos left to be "curb-shopped". I've snagged more than one of these, initially figuring on plinking off the spokes and stashing the hub for a "one o'these days" rebuild. Then I get to lookin' at it, a tweak here, a "stand on it" there, and before you know it.... Even did this with a cheapo MTB wheel from the Mongoose (Montague) folder I was riding when I got T-boned by a Crown Vic. Something about snatching it from the grave...


Swap meets are super fun too. That could be fodder for a whole 'nother thread: "Best and worst swap meet experiences..."

The most annoying is when someone expects the service to be free when they have obvious means of paying.

My favorite is getting an old bike to work perfectly for someone of little means for free.

Working on old/vintage bikes for customers. They are never happy with the results and if the bill is over $20.00 they expect the bike to look and perform just like it came off of the showroom floor.

Working on my old/vintage bikes. I love turning rusty junk into something that can be used and enjoyed again.

Funny and well put!

Truing brake rotors sucks.

Worst: The biggest thing I did was bleed my brake. It sucked until I got it right. Syringe is the key. Now all is well and I feel proud of myself. I just hated it along the way. Now I'm cool with it.

Best? I don't like doing any of it but if I can do it myself, it's free. So that's good.