Was the mechanic just lazy?
 

I don't know why this is in the commuting forum but I guess it's because its my commuter.
I took my bike in for a full tune up and cleaning the other day and after I got it back, I noticed my disc brakes felt a little weak. So I took it down an empty street, got it up to about 25mph, slammed on both brakes and rolled a good city block before stopping. Did that a few times and it's all good now.
I guess the mechanic left a lot of grease or something on my discs? Who would grease up my discs!! My guess is he forgot to clean em..

...or he knows how you ride and don't like you much. :eek:

Perhaps he did clean them. Disks generally work better and squeal less with a build up of pad material and other muck. It's best not to clean them unless there is a problem.
A mtb trick is to slop some mud on the disks to take the place of pad material.

Hmm.. might want to check if the bike was actually cleaned up INSIDE then the wipe about OUTSIDE now.


Zero_Enigma

I had to pay that guy $10 to do that. :)

Maybe he grabbed a can of WD40 instead of brake cleaner and gave it a good hosing.

I had a (sort of) similar experience after getting my bikes out of the shop. I took 2 bikes in to do a Fit Kit session, and get them both set up properly. They were great in the shop, and the next day, I decided to take one of them for the commute into work. When I started out, everything was fine, but about 8-9 miles into the ride, it just felt 'funny.' I looked down and thought - my seat feels awfully low....and at the next intersection, I checked and realized that my seat had worked itself all the way down to the stops.....I looked at the seat collar, and only one of the 2 bolts had been tightened (it's got one on each side). I fixed it when I got to work, but I had to wait until I got home to check it against the height of the other saddle to make sure it fit properly....

I thought about saying something to the shop, but it's fine now, so I don't know if I will or not.

He probably cleaned them. After I clean my discs, it takes a few good stops to get them working again right.

Not a big deal.

Maybe he gave the entire bike a quick cleaning and accidently got some overspray on the discs?

About a Year ago in an LBS, lady picks up her bike while I was there, leaves.

Five minutes later; she's back.

The mech had forgotten to hook up the canti noodles.

She probably should have checked something like that, of course.

LBS should be doing test rides to check the work, so these oversights do not make it to the customer.

This is starting to sound like a "LBS horror stories" thread.


Zero_Enigma

Good recipe for killing bike ladies:( Especially if it was both brakes.

New pads need to be bedded in with a few good hard stops.

yeah, were they new pads?

even if he just wiped your rotors with an oily rag, that could do it...

My mechanic once messed up and didn't mount a disc pad correctly, somehow it popped out and I was only using the one pad which didn't squeeze the disc as well as two would have. He was a bit red faced when I brought it back.
This was a one time thing but he does have a habit of setting my rim brakes in the open position then forgetting to unlock them after doing his work, I still have braking, just less of it till I realize whats happening and unlock them.

When I bought my DBX,the front brake worked fine when pulling the road lever,but not the cross lever. I figured out that when I pulled the lever the adjuster/cable moved forward and would hit the handlbar mounted reflector. I removed the reflector and had to have the shop fix the adjuster(it stripped out). When I explained the prob,and told them they should contact Schwinn about the bad design,their reply was that Schwinn couldn't sell bikes without a front reflector. They never contacted Schwinn,and every other DBX had the reflector blocking the lever travel. Last time I bought a bike from Performance Bike.

Yikes... I'm hoping it was just a stupid mistake. The brake pads have about 30% life in them. But I'm sure what most likely happened was, he tried to kill me, and one of you paid for it (especially since one of you blatantly admitted it.)

Still, I think the worst was when I went to test ride a bike and the guy forgot to tighten the QR skewer on the front wheel with disc brakes... well you know what happened.

:lol: What's this gel on my bars?.............................................*thud*.


Doing anything to the brakes and not test riding the bike is pretty bad. Any adjustment to the drive train deserves a test ride. It was stupid. Even if your brakes are fine, tell the shop just in case of a repeat performance.

:eek: Did the front wheel come off ? :eek:

I seriously think that he cleaned them. My discs always need to bed in again following a cleaning. If he got oil of any kind on them, they'd squeal like a banshee.

Almost, I was only going 10-12mph at the time, thank god, I felt the front wheel pop off slightly.

Wow!

What bike store?

I'd rather not say, since they're really nice guys there. :)

i've forgotten to hook the front noodle up a couple of times, when I bring my QR wheel up to the office. Kind of scary, but I'm a fatzo so I can usually lean back and stop really hard with just the back, then pull off the road and hook things up correctly.

I agree they probably should have test-ridden it.