Let me illustrate what it is like posting on these boards with a lot of training and professional experience:

Recently there was a thread about how DT had made some change to its nipples and that the new dimensions required using the larger Park Green spoke wrench instead of the Black one we've all used forever.

Posters, some of whom mentioned their coop experience, quoted some online documents, posted dial caliper measurements of DT nipples and then weighed in very authoritatively that the Green wrench was the only proper wrench.

Now, I have somehow managed to use a Black wrench on DT 14g and smaller nipples forever, and so has everyone else I've worked with. That opinion was rejected.

So then I wrote the tech department at DT and received a definitive answer that their 14g and smaller nipples are a perfect match for Park's Black wrenches, and that at no time were Green wrenches an acceptable fit. But some amateur out there is probably convinced that's also wrong.


There is no arguing with the power of belief. It trumps experience, training, common professional practice and even common sense. This has become a societal problem, so I guess it isn't shocking that it applies to bikes as well.

But it's the reason there are so few of us that bother posting on the Mechanics forum. You guys go out of your way to undercut whatever resource of experience is being offered.