TransitBiker

So....



Note brake lever position.

The shop i got my frankenuptown (it has the 2012 uptown 8 frame, but uptown infinity components sans wheel lock) had the brake levers all most straight out, like a flat bar bike Problem is, that this is a town geometry with town bar on there, so i was getting sore wrist going for the brakes while shifting.

Sometime last night i decided to tinker.........

The brake levers are now in the correct position and BOY does it feel RIGHT.

Then, i adjusted the brakes themselves. They had unevenly tensioned the springs, set them too far apart, and too far from the rim. I actually looked at the instructions on how to install & adjust this model of v brake, and they had it set up totally wrong. When i pull the brake levers now, the bike actually STOPS! What a revolutionary idea!

Just goes to show you that those guys working on your bike in that shop don't always know more than you & don't assume that they did their work correctly. They tensioned the rear wheel wrong 2x on top of this, and tried to blame me for the tire coming apart and the tube getting a flat on the rim side saying it was a pinch flat when i ride about as aggressively as a 90 year old in a wheelchair on poorly maintained roads. Friendly folks at shop, but never going there to buy or have service ever again.

- Andy

fietsbob

<facepalm> jeez! Its a Photo shoot.. nobody said it had to stay that ..

you discovered the world of personal preferences and now everyone is happy for you ..

RPK79

Post must have been tl:dr for you.

ill.clyde

seriously ... cripes

cyccommute 

Lever position, saddle angle, saddle height, rear rack flatness (that one is way wrong), etc. are all up to the rider. Some people like their brake levers flat and some like them to hang down. Whatever floats your boat. My levers are much more vertical than those




because I like them that way.

As to pinch flats and tire damage, that's usually due to rider error. Pinch flats occur because you didn't have enough air in the tires. The shop has no control over that. Tire damage is also something that the shop has no control over. Once you put the rubber to the road, you are in control of how and when and where the tires go and whether or not they get damaged. Try getting a flat on your car and going back to the dealer. They'd laugh you out of the shop.

Finally, what how did they retention the wheels wrong? Too tight? Too loose? Out of true? Not enough dish? Too much dish? Without more information, how are we, the readers, to know if it was really the shops fault?

e0richt

I had a promax v-brake setup where the adjustment screw was stripped... decided to try to replace it myself rather than wait the week before the shop could fix it... seems to be working great, wish I had done this earlier as the promax were always finicky as to balancing the tension between the calipers (always seemed to end up with one side working while the other one stayed stationery..) I am planning on getting another kit for the back...

TransitBiker

Uh, what?

- Andy

TransitBiker

You didn't see my "show stopper" thread where TWO spokes broke because they tensioned the wheel wrong? There is no dish, its a symmetrical pattern. The tire blew out literally the next ride after the "tune-up", then the next day there was a flat facing the inside aka the spoke side, not on the side side of the tube, but the part facing in, then after getting new tube and new tire the second spoke broke the following day as in 2 days after it was just in the shop getting a spoke replaced. I'm not a sloppy rider, i check my bike before every single ride including brake stopping power, cables, tires to correct pressure, mouting screws for rack & fenders, literally everything. I usually make a small loop in my neighborhood before i set out as well. So, trying to blame me, as the shop manager did, is unwarranted and rude. The manufacturer actually had them replace several spokes during the second visit, including the one that snapped. A friend who knows his stuff said a few were tensioned too high and 1-2 were tensioned too low, including the new spoke they put in from the first time.

Edit: And my original point of that photo was to show the manufacturer positioning of the brake levers (it is the photo right off of their website). It was just one more thing on top of all the other poorly done "servicing".

- Andy

cyccommute 

No, I didn't see your "show stopper" thread. I don't expect everyone to read every single post I make nor do I read every single post that everyone else writes. I read a lot of what is posted but there are only so many hours in a day.

It doesn't matter that the tire "blew out literally the next ride". Stuff happens. You still could be responsible for the tire blowout. You can be the most cautious rider in the world and still hit something that damages the tire. It's not necessarily their fault once you start to ride the bike. If they had sliced the tire while installing it and you had seen it during your inspections, then you could blame them but there are too many other possible causes of tire blowout to blame the shop. You said that the tire came apart which is different from a tube blowing out due to incorrect installation.

The same applies to the pinch flat. If you installed the new tube (and I'm assuming the new tire), the shop isn't to blame for the pinch flat. It sounds to me like it isn't even a pinch flat but may be due to the rim tape being out of place. If you had the tire off, you should have inspected the rim strip to make sure it was in place. The shop did nothing to cause the pinch flat unless they installed the new tire and tube. Even then, true pinch flats...i.e. when you pinch the tube between the tire and rim due to insufficient inflation...are the rider's responsibility. Many things can cause a true pinch flat from improper inflation to hitting a pot hole to secondary damage due to an initial puncture (i.e. riding on a tire going flat). All of which are under your control.

As to the spokes, since this is a 2012 bike, I assume that it has some miles on it unless you bought it just recently as a NOS (new, old stock) bike. If the bike has more then a couple of hundred miles on it and you haven't looked at the wheels, the responsibility for spokes detensioning rests on your shoulders. The reason that bike shops give you that tune up in the first year is to check for parts on the bike to settle in. Cables stretch (yes, they do stretch) and the spokes conform to the hub. When I build wheels, I bend my spokes around the hubs to shorten that process but that's not done with machine laced wheels. You ride the wheel and the spoke elbows bend around the hub. This lengthens the spoke and causes the tension to go down. If you ride on a bike with loose spokes, the spokes are going to fatigue at the bend and start to fail. Once one fails, the rest of the spokes lose tension and you can have a cascade effect where more and more spokes fail as the each spoke starts to fatigue. Again, it's the rider's responsibility to have this checked after a few hundred miles and either fix it themselves or have it looked at. If you've been riding the bike for 2 years without maintaining the spokes, the failure is, again, your fault not the shop's. I don't doubt that several spokes had to be replaced after the second one failed. The whole wheel would be suspect.

Finally, the levers are personal taste and up to you to adjust. Perhaps someone before you wanted the levers flat and they just never got changed to your tastes. That doesn't mean that the shop did anything wrong. If you've ridden on this bike for 2 years with levers that weren't to your liking, why did you wait so long? You could have taken the bike back to the shop and told them something was wrong or you could have fixed it yourself. The shop can't read your mind nor anticipate your needs. You are asking far too much of the shop. I know this post comes off as rather harsh towards you but if you don't tell someone something is wrong, they can't help you fix it. People may think others can read minds but no one is very good at that particular ability.

TransitBiker

Nah man, the tire was coming apart at the bead, like you can see the nylon bead & a hole 3 mm higher towards the tread. I put the new tire and tube on after the "pinch flat" the next day, then after that on its first ride out second spoke broke. As far as both situations.....I was riding along on flat even smooth pavement & the tube simply deflated suddenly and the spoke suddenly snapped respectively. I carefully matched the rim, tube, and tire, and found no correlation, i even was careful to see if anything fell out as i took the tube out & tire off, but nothing did. The rim tape was likely to blame & who knows about the tire. I have nothing to gain from riding stupid and hitting road holes and going up driveway lips too hard.

I have not had this bike for two years, i got it in april.

I have not ridden a few hundred miles, and the wheel was built wrong, then fiddled with wrong and 7 spokes were replaced all told. I do not touch the wheels as that is not an area where i have any expertise. I leaened about 90% of what i know since buying this bike & joining here. Ive never had a spoke do anything but what it was supposed to, never touched any of the wheels on any of my bike. I'm not a bicycle mechanic, its not my skill area to do that stuff. My skill area is riding, and making sense of specs and how they might translate into real world use. The "master mechanics" (thats how they were referred to) are supposed to take care of those things, as that is their job.

In essence , i got a brand new bike, and it was not assembled correctly then it was not serviced correctly. They did not do their job of making sure it was road ready & safe. Saying i had anything to do with the tire coming apart, literally is insulting and has no basis in reality. I never even touched the tires till stuff started going wrong.

I dunno why i'm even bothering to explain all of this. This bike is not some toy to me, it is literally the first thing ive ever owned that i would run into my house and save if my house were on fire. I treat it like gold, i baby it, i'm massively cautions and paranoid about every small detail every squeek every smudge or scratch. To imply that my hand was involved in these problems is beyond absurd.

I didn't just screw around with the brakes, i downloaded the tektro instruction manual, thats how i knew it was wrongly adjusted to begin with.

Ugh, you know i'm just gonna shut my trap and not bother anymore since clearly i'm some kind of hapless buffoon.

- Andy

gregjones

OK.......whoo hoooooo You got screwed by a repair service. Every last one of us has suffered the same loss of hard earned funds at one time or another, whether bike or even transportation related. Pissin' and moanin' without any mention of who the bandits are serves no purpose. It's nothing to me, I will never need the services of any bike shop in, or within several states, of Newton, PA. But, there are are probably readers of this forum than might at some time have that need. You have helped no one except yourself by venting your frustrations, or whatever, with your blameless rant.

Stuart does have valid arguments about whether or not the shop is to blame on several different points, some of which probably could not ever be determined to be caused by manufacturer, service personnel or user. The fact that your brake levers were "all most straight out, like a flat bar bike" were undisputably because you didn't adjust them before you got out of your driveway. (On top of that...any flat bar bike that I've ever ridden, in comfort, had levers pointing at least halfway from level to pointing at the ground.) Perhaps the levers were left out of adjustment ass-u-me.ing that the rider, being the only person that could determine fit, would adjust them.

OK....you took your bike to a shop that didn't adjust your brakes according to mfg. specs. What good does that do any one living in that area if they don't know what shop to avoid?

megalowmatt

I guess you don't reach 39,000 + posts by actually reading what others write.

TransitBiker

In three other threads i specify multiple times where i purchased & had bike serviced. It's bustleton bikes in philadelphia. You're right though, i should have specified again here.

Also, i expect any retailer to have products configured to manufacturer specs. How that is my responsibility is beyond me. Like i said, i'm no expert & accusing me serves only as an insult. Having a shop manager tell me his "master mechanics" are infallible & that i didnt check my bike before a ride and thats what caused all the problems is poor customer service at best and a symptom that the shop is not run well in the service dept and staff that will push off any/all responsibility for poor work done onto customer. In this situation it is the later.

I'm regretting even posting about any of this. I guess its all my fault for not knowing what i didnt know & didnt know i needed to know.

- Andy the apparent idiot

downwinded

Not meaning this to be a "pile on" Andy post. This is just about bikes, ok?

I believe this post was just before the "show stopper" thread.
https://www.bikeforums.net/commuting/...-new-bike.html
The pics have been taken down. I thought, when I saw the pics, that there is no way the bike would hold up to much of that. Others commented the same. Could you put the pics of the bike returning from the shopping trip back up? I'm talking about the one(s) where it was obviously overloaded. Seems to me that is where the spoke/tire discussion should begin.

cyccommute 

It's not that you are riding "stupid", it's the fact that you are riding. Stuff happens. 99.99% of the time you can't tell what punctured the tire nor when you hit the object that caused the puncture. It's not the bike shop's fault nor is it really your fault. It's caused by riding out in the world. The way you describe the blowout with the hole above the bead, suggests to me that you may have hit something unknowingly that damaged the sidewall. It's a random occurrence.

Additionally, once you repaired the flat, anything that happens after that is your responsibility and you can't blame any of it on the shop. A pinch flat is a very specific kind of flat that occurs when the tire isn't inflated properly for the weight it is asked to carry. There are other ways for a puncture to occur on the inside of the tube. Not putting the rim tape back in position is probably the most common but getting debris in the rim channel can also be a cause. Both are due to user error and not the shop's fault if they occur.

The rim strip itself can be a problem. Rubber and plastic strips may not be up to the job of holding the pressure and the tube can slip around them at the spoke hole. In a prefect world, I'd ban the use of rubber rimstrips under the Geneva Conventions. Cloth strips do a much, much, much better job. But the rubber rim strip is used in thousands of bikes and is not likely to be something that a shop would change without the customer requesting it.


From what I can gather, you may have had the bike since April but someone else owned it before that. It's a used bike and you have no idea how it was used before.

Again, you've haven't ridden it that long but, looking at your other posts, the wheel certainly isn't new. It's got a lot of mileage on it. It probably wasn't built wrong but was ridden for some indeterminate mileage before you got it. That the nature of used bikes. You can't tell what happened to the bike before you bought it and you buy the bike with all the warts. Frankly, I'm impressed that the manufacturer had them replace 7 spokes. That's going above and beyond on the shop's part.

No. You got a used bike that is new to you. You buy used bikes "as is". The shop probably checked the bolts, cleaned the bike, tuned the bike a little so that it shifted properly and set it out on the floor. They did make the bike road ready and safe. But they have no control of what you do with it afterwards.

You should not take what I am saying as an insult but you did have something to do with tire coming apart. You rode the bike. You touched the tires to the ground so if the tires get damaged through use, it is indeed your responsibility.

If you had hung the bike in your garage (if you have one) and never taken it out into the world and the tires had blown off the wheels, you might be able to blame the shop for some of the problem. However, just hanging the bike in the garage subjects the tires to the air and the ozone that we happy little humans make with all our infernal combustion engines. So you can't blame the shop fully even if you don't use the bike.

No, it is not beyond absurd. My bicycles aren't toys either but they are tools to use and if you use a tool you expect wear. If you buy a used tool...or house or bike or car or couch or bed (Ewwww!)...you have to live with the wear someone else put on it.

I know that you didn't screw around with the brakes but I have seen every conceivable placement of brake levers and not a few that are inconceivable ("Really? You like having the levers pointed back at you so that you can use your thumbs?" "Yea, man. They're great that way!"). In your case, someone set up the levers like that and the shop left them that way. It a mole hill, not a mountain.

I'm also not sure what manual you are looking at for the brake levers but the manual for the Tektro CL530-TS I found has this to say about lever installation

There's a little bit about torque on the bolts but that's it. There's nothing about positioning the lever to a specific angle or place on the bars. That is left up to personal taste.

You aren't, by the way a "hapless buffoon". You just seem to be expecting much more from a used bike then you should be.

TransitBiker

It LOOKED "overloaded" because i buy a lot of high volume & low weight items such as packs of burger rolls. The total weight on rack was 50-55 lbs. Monthly groceries are never EVER more than 60 lbs. The total weight carried (including clothing, shoes, helmet, lock, keys, change in pockets, etc) including milk gallon in backpack was like 72 lbs (a gallon of whole milk is 11 lbs). Normally on my old bike i carried everything in 2 backpacks & hung the bread off the wide cruiser handlebars. Obviously this model has town bars & its not really practical for that anyways with all the brake & shift cables. No, I cannot put them back, as for some reason linking photos to this site maxes out my free monthly bandwidth on photo hosting site very quickly (like 5 days).

- Andy

TransitBiker

Used bike? Yea, it wasn't used, i am the first owner, and took delivery from shop in may on the second in the early evening.

As for the service/installation manual, it was for the brake mounting & adjustment. TEKTRO BRAKE SYSTEMS I used the "820a" pdf.

Note the position of the lil rubber bit, its fitted to the end of the noodle. Before i adjusted my brakes, the lil rubber bit had double the amount of space shown of exposed cable.

I'm done with this thread, seriously. I see threads about (no offense) pretty mundane stuff & i come and exclaim my disaproval of being treated like a con artist by a bike shop that poorly serviced my bike bought at their shop only to be told here that "oh man so many things could have caused that". Yea, so many things, like hiring a bunch of slacking skater kids to keep a road going vehicle in safe working order. My final thought is that Guy's bikes will get my business from now on, as the shop n town here has an unfriendly owner & this other shop is lacking in staffing quality in the service dept. It's a shame, because it started out so well & ended like this, me having to publicly discredit them on a cycling website. Them's the breaks, i guess.

- Andy

cyccommute 

When you say in "Show Stopper"

it's a bit difficult to read your mind. Some would infer (as I did) that the bike is used. I did say something above about the bike being NOS and even gave you the definition...new, old stock as in it's a new bike that has been at the shop for the last 2 years... of that term so that we would be clear. I post a lot here and, while I try to keep up on who has what and when they got it, I'm not perfect. No one can be.

That's the instructions for the calipers. Your complaints and my responses have been about the levers on the handlebars. Different parts.

Again, this is something that you should have picked up on as the consumer. The bike shop probably offered you a tune up within some time frame...it's usually a year. There is a reason for this. Cables of all variety stretch as you use them. It takes some time for that stretch to stop. That's why the levers and shifters have cable adjuster. You take up the slack that has worked into the system or you have the shop do it on that free tune-up. If you were having a problem with the brakes, you should have taken the bike back and they would have gladly adjusted them.

The springs on the brakes can similarly take some time to settle into place properly and might need a little bit of adjustment in the first few hundred miles of riding.

Shops do sometimes set the levers up further from the rims than they should but this is a CYA on their part. They are afraid that some newbie will smash on the brakes, crash and sue them. So they set up the levers to not hit the rim until about half lever travel. If the cable stretches a little, the travel is longer and the brakes are mushier. A very large part of the reason that hub mounted discs are so popular is that they can't be set up that way...they can but they are much, much, much worse than a poorly set up rim brake... and are much more responsive.

Frankly, you are too harsh on the shop. From your other posts and this one, the shop seems to have gone out of their way to fix your problems. Broken spokes happen and they fixed the problem, why are you so upset about that? Flats and blowouts do have a large variety of causes that the shop can't control for so those are primarily your responsibility to fix and avoid. You can't always avoid them so you just have to learn to live with them. Every person on the Bike Forums can probably point to a tire blowout or a flat and there aren't too many of them that will blame it on the shop. The world is a rough place and stuff happens.

TransitBiker

Let me explain really thoroughly once and for all then.

Yea, it was scratch & dent. The uptown infinity frame was damaged unusable in shipping, so they ordered an uptown 8 frame & attached the infinity components to it. I first thought it was a canceled order, but no, just something that was damaged between factory and shop. If you note my bike does not have a rear wheel lock, thats because it was a bare frame & fork and nothing added. I plan to get a wheel lock at some point.

The reason i was upset about brakes, is because its not just that they didn't have the levers to factory default, regardless of what a customer does later they should (and ive always seen at every shop ive ever been to on every bike) have it at the default position. The reason they weren't, is probably related to the way it was put together after new frame arrived. I was also upset because their tune up likely had the calipers out of alignment & it rubbed on wheel & traffic was too loud for me to hear it on trip back from shop. the shifter is a tad off as well, something i plan do fix DIY. But yea, they did not adjust caliper spring tension, so right rear pad was always rubbing on the rim. I fixed the rim/pad alignment to ensure the pad was not coming close to contacting the tire, and no contact with rim (1 mm spec in pdf). I know tensioned cables stretch, but all they did was tighten the cable, they did not do the rest of the job which is pad alignment to the rim.

I hope this clarifies things & explains why i am not a dissatisfied customer, simply a customer who learned the personality of that shop the hard way. It's a neat place, fun to test ride, has a relaxed atmoshere, but maybe not the best place for service. Guys bicycles on the other hand has people who are passionate about riding both for sport and utility, passionate about car free, passionate about the technical aspects, and all of the people ive ever talked to there were amazeballs friendly & super knowledgeable. It is also nice that they know bucks county & they know where i ride which helps in figuring out what product might work best for me, plus i used to live literally right behind there & grew up seeing it every single day, so it has that "hometown" charm.

- Andy

Motolegs

Only you can set adjustments to your satisfaction. Have had similar experience with bike shops too.. in fact learned things because of it. I wonder- are they doing it on purpose to make us more self reliant? Maybe we should thank them!

acidfast7

WOW!

I take back everything negative, I've ever said about you and Denver. That's a sweet machine.

Would it be possible to post some details and additional photos.

Thanks!

meanwhile

There is such a thing as a correct orientation for brakes (which users can then adjust away from if they wish) and this wasn't it. You're correct to be alarmed. And the people who are saying "But I'm so smart! I can use a hex key!".. Yes, well, good for you!

cyccommute 

You are happy with the bike you got. I get that. Congratulations...really.

On the brake levers: There is no "default" factory setting. None. There is no manufacturer's suggested angle for brake levers. Look at the Tektro document again. It says put them on...period. The picture you are looking at isn't the "default" factory setting, it is an artistic decision by the photographer and is based on the way that most people place their levers. But that isn't the only way to do it.

On to the calipers: They might have missed the spring tension. People make mistakes. But if you look at the manufacturer's specification again, Tektro says that the gap between the arms can be 45mm to 65mm. That's 1.75" to 2.5". That's a large range. It's also a completely useless number because the gap depends how close the rider wants the pads to the rim, the width of the rim, if there is any wobble in the wheel, and how responsive the rider wants the brakes.

And, yet again, I'm going to suggest that you may be responsible for something on this bike, specifically the brakes being misaligned. You've had a lot of the wheel being taken out of the dropouts lately with fixing the wheel, blowouts, flats, etc. If the brakes were working and aligned correctly before, you (or a mechanic) may not have put the wheel back in the dropouts completely. That's the very first thing I check when I find one of my brakes rubbing or when someone comes into my local co-op complaining about brake rub. You might want to check your wheel alignment in the dropouts before you go adjusting the brakes, especially if the brakes weren't rubbing before.

You need to go back and reread your posts on this bike. All of your posts scream that you are a dissatisfied customer. That is your right and you may have some justification for some of it. But be dissatisfied about the right things. The wheel? Yes, you might have some reason to be upset but, as others have pointed out to you, your overloading of the wheel could be at least part of the reason for the wheel problem. Tires? Nope, you have zero right to be upset at the shop about that. The first time you threw your leg over the bike and pushed down on the pedals, you are responsible for the tires and any flats that happen. The shop has no control over where you ride the bike and the road conditions that you encounter. You could do laps around your living room while never going outside and I'd still say your are responsible for a tire going flat. That's just the way it works.

Finally, if you don't get the service you want from one shop, go to another. Better yet, learn how to do everything on the bike yourself. Not a single one of my bikes has been in a shop since around 1990 (that's, roughly, 25 bikes). I don't take advantage of the free tune up nor do I take the bike back to the shop for anything other than a broken frame. I like working on my bikes but I also don't want to wait days for something simple to be fixed. And nothing on a bike is complicated to fix.

gregjones

I'm sure he can match you, line for line, about Denver and then add some. I think he put "Denver" to keep people from saying "Where?". There's not a lot of folks as familiar with the other side of the hill.

acidfast7

I've done a fair bit of cycling in Denver, actually more the Boulder area, as I worked at UC for a while.

What other side of the hill? West Coast? I actually cycled up the highest continuous mountain road on the planet a (long) while back (or so as it was advertised):