Originally Posted by
Panthers007
Something(s) worse happened to me. First off, my tools were stolen last year, and I needed some overhaul work done on my vintage Reynold's 531 Puch A-D - which is in perfect mechanical condition. So I took it to the bike-shop downtown and told them I needed an overhaul of the Campy bottom-bracket (described above), The Campy Record hubs, and the Tange Levin headset. They charged me $190 up-front. Fine - I left.
They called me to come pick up my Puch a few days later. They had washed the bicycle and installed yellow-foamy handlebar tape. I got it home and removed the tape. New tools were coming in. And the front hub was sort of loose feeling. With my new Park cone-wrenches, I opened the hub. There was the same old pink Bullshot grease I'd used long ago. They hadn't even opened the hubs. My tools poured in - and I checked the bottom-bracket and headset - same story: Pink Bullshot grease. Never even opened.
I overhauled them myself. When I complained, their pet-monkey "mechanic" said I needed a new bottom-bracket - my Campy was junk. He wanted to sell me a cheap Octalink and replace my mint-condition Super Record cranks as well.
I doubt he's ever seen a Campagnolo vintage part before, or he threw them out. I'm glad that spivv didn't work on my Puch.
Absolutely ridiculous. What a fool, what foolishness. And they charged you an ungodly $190 for that? That's over-the-top. I could probably get all my headset/BB/hubs overhauled for $30-40 here at most... And it really isn't that hard to do in the first place. My LBS knows that I know how to do most of the stuff myself and I understand how diffcult (or easy) it is to do most repairs, and won't charge me crazy prices.
For example, $10 to fix a flat that I and a $0.90 patch kit can fix in 10 minutes.