Originally Posted by
Psimet2001
It's the non-warranty stuff too. Example - guy bought a set of ENVE wheels used off Pros closet. Took them to a local shop because one, that was set up tubeless, was slowly losing air. it was a trek shop. The tech there put new rim tape on it and inflated it. *BOOM*
Blew the whole side of the rim off.
Shop guy goes, "I've never seen that happen. That's a defective rim. You should take that up with ENVE." Customer is like, "I wasn't the original buyer." They shrugged and said, "We've never built on carbon. There's this guy that builds carbon wheels. Try him." and sent him my way. I take the time to track down a rep and find out it's a common occurrence. The nipple beds, because they're molded, create a tight enough interface between the nipple and the rim that they become air tight. Then if the tubeless tape fails then the lower rim chamber gets pressurized like the upper tire side does. Their rims can't handle that hoop stress and *BOOM*. Instead of calling it a problem they call it a feature and tell everyone it's because they didn't use the official ENVE tubeless valves. Ones where the nut to tighten them against the rim is off centered drilled to allow for air that escapes into the lower chamber to vent from the rim instead of pressurizing it.
I process a claim, get a rim at cost, swap the rim, explain the problem, and get the guy going again.
So to your point - big shops just don't have the knowledge or expertise to handle anything that is beyond getting on to their dealer portal and filling out a claim form and getting a new part. Us service shops just know how to fix stuff and get people rolling again.
Again on the "simple machine" stuff. 10 Years ago I would agree. It's not that way anymore. Most of the problems and fixes I do aren't simple installs or adjustments. They're troubleshooting electrical systems or hydraulic systems. They involve an ever increasing number of specialized tools and background knowledge and even then the actual fixes are never really in a book, on a video, or in a forum because the root cause is usually not found before the OEM says, "tell the customer to buy a new one".
Externally routed, mechanical, rim brake with a standard English threaded BB days are over. Now it's suspensions, droppers, Odd ball BB standards or proprietary headshock BS, strange internal frame routings, and known electrical issues that the OE claims don't happen but there's forums full of people with the same issues. We've taken a simple pen and paper thought making a word processor would help make writing faster and ended up with twitter.
This post reminds me that the LBS I purchased a new set of Zipp wheels from refused to re-dish the rear to fit my Cannondale frame. This is a reputable boutique shop that sells high-end custom bikes and is a Zipp/SRAM authorized dealer. I was willing to pay them for this service. They made various claims, that re-dishing the wheel would void the Zipp warranty (not true), that I needed to provide them some kind of tech memo/specs from Cannondale (they aren't a C-dale dealer), or that I needed to send the wheel back to Zipp and have them do the work.
I contacted SRAM/Zipp through their online customer support chat and eventually got a response stating that this was fine, any shop could do the work, no issue with warranty, etc - but I decided to just take the wheels to another shop (the one where I purchased my Cannondale bike). They re-dished the rear wheel for a nominal fee, and seemed puzzled by the original shop's concern.
From my perspective, the first shop was overly complicating what should've been a relatively simple service to a set of new wheels that I bought from them, but maybe they've been caught up in enough exploding rim finger pointing situations that they're leery of doing anything that isn't just standard plug-and-play.