Originally Posted by waterrockets
Bikes are easy to maintain. Even the difficult stuff is straightforward.
Which is why there are over 27,000 threads in the mechanic's forum.
I generally do all my own car stuff, so I understand why people chose to learn to do it themselves. It's all relative. I do things to my car on the weekend that blow my neighbor's minds. It's also why I get to drive a
really cool 20 year old car that would cost me large sums of money to keep going if I had to pay someone else to do it. Parts for those things are dirt cheap, even from the dealer-far less $$ than my wife's Honda. Labor, however, is another matter entirely. An engine rebuild alone for those things can top $10K-
if you had to pay someone else to do all the work.
It's like this: we in the LBS know we can't be all things to all people, just as your local garage probably doesn't know much about F1 design and construction. There are certainly exceptions, and the ones that know how to properly treat cutting edge tech aren't bargain priced. We have thousands of items to keep aware of, dozens of bikes, their specs, how to fix them, etc. Picky (not a bad thing) enthusiasts are
always better off learning about their stuff-its care and feeding-than entrusting it, in many cases, to guys who have to fix Nexts and Mongooses all week.
My shop, fortunately, is populated, by and large, by passionate bike nuts who understand how enthusiasts want their bikes treated. That is, unfortunately, in many cases, not what I've found when walking into other shops in my and other areas.
