I recently purchased my first two road bikes from one of those LBS places that doesn't specialize in just bikes. Both bikes seem to have shifting issues and this place can't seem to fix them. My question is, what's normally done when assembling a high-end road bike? I'm wondering it it's worth taking both of my bikes to an experienced LBS and drop some cash to have them reassembled. The two bike are a 2009 Madone 5.5 and a 2008 Madone 4.5.

ah yes... the multi sport bicycling and rock climbing in the summer and snowboardind and skiing for the winter. if your knowledge of bikes is limited, and seeing how these are highend road machines, id take it into the LBS that only deals in bikes and hopefully highend ones at that. to answer your question, prebuilt usually means you need to throw on pedels, a wheel or two, a seat and perhaps handle bars. if i knew a little more detail on exactly what your shifting issue was, i might be a bit more usefull.

After the $7-8K you've spent on these bikes, not to mention the value you place on the life you put at risk every time you ride, I'm surprised you're balking at spending a fraction more to have competent people do whatever adjusting/realigning/reassembling must be done. Oh well. You've been burned by these baboons posing as bike-builders. Chalk it up to experience, keep your bikes away from that shop (or any shop in which you have less than full confidence), ask your fellow locals for help picking out a mechanic or LBS, and go to your regional forum here and ask for help. Good luck.

7-8k?? more like 2600 for the 5.5 and 1600 for the 4.5. I'm nutz, but not that nutz.

get to know a qualified and quantified bike mechanic-- it will help you improve in more ways than one--- i push myself to learn and so should you-- i push myself to drink, but, well , I don't suggest you do.... drink....... a lot.... nicebikes-- not Pinarellos, but nice.........

thanks. I honestly think the 14 year old kid in the back didn't know what he was doing.

After riding thousands of miles in club events and charity rides, I have observed that the more expensive the bike, the less the owner seems to know about it mechanically.

Please don't take this as an offense, it's just a curiosity of mine that's been lingering. I'm not a pro mechanic either, but I can usually true a wheel or adjust a derailleur in the field.

Fix them yourself. Shifting issues on new bikes almost always boil down to cable tension issues. Cables stretch and need periodic adjustment. Look at Park Tools for how to do it. It's a simple job and should take less than 10 minutes. Read the whole page before you proceed. You won't need to adjust the limit screws. All you want to adjust is the cable tension.

Yeah. Not a big deal. You spent $4k on new bikes. Get a stand and some tools and you'll be armpit-deep in awesome technology in a weekend. You'll never have clean fingernails again.

You'll want to hit up this forum, Park Tool, and Sheldon Brown whenever you don't know what something is, how it works, or how to fix it.

Most of these places hire outside mechanic services that get paid by the bike so they blow them out as fast as they can.

I've even seen some that use pneumatic tools!

To answer the original question, when I wrenched (and later managed) we would do everything! By this I mean we would check the BB to make sure it had grease (if it wasn't a cartridge unit, of course), same with the wheels, check the hub locknuts, check wheel true & spoke tension, etc. so that every part of the bike was right. Most new bikes come from factories, so the stuff that is preassembled is usually not done perfectly. We went over all of it.

Of course, my first shop also offered free tune-ups for life, so if we sent out a POS we would get it back more often, but more importantly, our bikes worked right the first time.