Originally Posted by
masi61
I’ve had quite a few friends, family & acquaintances that are like that. They will stomp on the cranks and push too high of gears leading to broken crankarms, or they will continue riding an out of adjustment bike that is clicking and making noises of protest, blowing off people who suggest they should pause for a moment to investigate the cause of the bad noise. These folks are not your folks who do their own wrenching. For whatever reason, they don’t really have the time or desire to know what minutia lies behind the cause of the malfunction. For them, this is why the LBS mechanic is who they trust most. To me that puts a lot of responsibility on a mechanic who may or may not remember your bike. I would prefer to dig deep myself to discern the why.
This has been the subject of a bunch of threads, but I very much like to ride in the high gears, and am much less efficient spinning in lower gears. While it's true that I wear out different gears on the cassette, it does not cause problems with the cranks, which I put thousands of miles on with nary a problem. My chain may wear a little bit faster, but otherwise, I think that's nonsense.
Forty five years of riding like that, and I've never once broken a crank arm.