The fallacy of "servicing" a bicycle.

[Globalti]

Part of repairing and maintaining things, especially mechanical things, is having a mechanic's "feel" for the characteristics of materials, mostly the elasticity of metals. A good, instinctive mechanic knows the difference between just snug, tight and "eff-off" tight (old English technical term) when doing up a nut; the good mechanic appreciates that as you tighten a nut you can just get the surfaces touching, or you can begin to stretch the material or you can really stress it to the point where you are in danger of breaking it. Different metals have different elasticities and some materials, porcelain for example, have no elasticity and are easily broken. A good mechanic also knows that some materials may be incredibly resistant when used in the correct way, a well-lubricated plain bearing will give many years of good service but if you handle it with a tool that's harder than its own surface you will cause irreparable damage, hence the need for plastic and copper mallets when assembling engine parts that are incredibly hard-wearing. There's also an appreciation of how things are manufactured and how they must therefore be disassembled and reassembled.

Some people don't have this instinctive understanding and never will, so I guess they will never be able to fix their houses or cars or bikes.

 

[Rob3rt]

Bike "servicing" is a dirty, boring, tiring, tedious job that makes no profit no matter how much the shop charges.

Excuse me... what?

 

[vickster]

Some people don't have this instinctive understanding and never will, so I guess they will never be able to fix their houses or cars or bikes.

That's me...I also have less than zero interest in mechanical things and fixing them, ditto computers, so will never be inclined to obtain knowledge

 

[Simontm]

I guess I started this off on the other thread when I said I had a service from Evans.

I took the bike for a service as it was was free - of course if I had know the trouble it would cause me post-check I wouldn't have bothered.

To clarify, I grew up in the seventies with hardly any money and two older brothers so I used to build my own bikes from the scraps left behind. Time moves on and I have got back to biking this year.

However, with a full-blown family life and career, the bike is not the priority and when/if I get time, then I do checks on the bike - otherwise, and after a few months, I would go to the brilliant LBS near me if I needed to. And sometimes it is necessary. I had no idea what had happened to my back brake when it locked so I took it to the LBS who told me about the cock-up from Evans.

I'm out of practice, hence questions on this here forum .

As @John the Monkey says, there seems to be a curious hair shirt mentality in the bike world. For instance, I want to shout "smile!" to the weekend wheelies as they frown their way round North Surrey - to me if you can't smile when bombing around on a bike, what's the point?

And to the grease monkeys, it is not a badge of shame if someone can't or won't fix their bike - and it provides a bit of income to the LBS . BTW, until this year I'd never heard of servicing a bike, fettling, and such like. Where I grew up. you oiled the chain about once a month or so, checked that the brakes, gears and tyres actually worked and you were off. You didn't think of it as a service. You didn't have tyre levers, if you remembered you had one of your mum's serving spoons in the back pocket. Occasionally you may take a rag to the frame if you had ridden through some muck!

I guess I'm saying each to their own!

 

[Globalti]

To continue this discussion, here's an excerpt from my favourite book on quality, about the perils of using a bad professional mechanic. Pirsig's motorcycle engine seized and following the seizure, was making a noise of piston slap, which is a typical consequence:

From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig.

"I took this machine into a shop because I thought it wasn’t important enough to justify getting into myself, having to learn all the complicated details and maybe having parts and special tools and all that time-dragging stuff when I could get someone else to do it in less time – sort of John’s attitude.

The shop was a different scene from the ones I remembered. The mechanics, who had once all seemed like ancient veterans, now looked like children. A radio was going full blast and they were clowning around and talking and seemed not to notice me. When one of them finally came over he barely listened to the piston slap before saying, “Oh yeah, tappets.”

Tappets? I should have known then what was coming.

Two weeks later I paid their bill for 140 dollars, rode the cycle carefully at varying low speeds to wear it in and then after one thousand miles opened it up. At about seventy-five it seized again and freed at thirty, the same as before. When I brought it back they accused me of not breaking it in properly, but after much argument agreed to look into it. They overhauled it again and this time took it out themselves for a high-speed road test.

It seized on them this time.

After the third overhaul two months later they replaced the cylinders, put in oversize main carburettor jets, retarded the timing to make it run as coolly as possible and told me, “don’t run it fast.”

It was covered with grease and did not start. I found the plugs were disconnected, connected them and started it, and now there really was a tappet noise. They hadn’t adjusted them. I pointed this out and the kid came with an open-end adjustable wrench, set wrong, and swiftly rounded both of the sheet-aluminum tappet covers, ruining both of them.

“I hope we’ve got some more of these in stock,” he said.

I nodded.

He brought out a hammer and cold chisel and started to pound them loose. The chisel punched through the aluminium cover and I could see he was pounding the chisel right into the engine head. On the next blow he missed the chisel completely and struck the head with the hammer, breaking off a portion of two of the cooling fins.

“Just stop,” I said politely, feeling this was a bad dream. “Just give me some new covers and I’ll take it the way it is.”

I got out of there as fast as possible, noisy tappets, shot tappet covers, greasy machine, down the road, and then felt a bad vibration at speeds over twenty. At the kerb I discovered two of the four engine-mounting bolts were missing and a nut was missing from a third. The whole engine was hanging on by only one bolt. The overhead-cam chain-tensioner bolt was also missing, meaning it would have been hopeless to try to adjust the tappets anyway. Nightmare.

The thought of John putting his BMW into the hands of one of these people is something I have never brought up with him. Maybe I should.

I found the cause of the seizures a few weeks later, waiting to happen again. It was a little twenty-five cent pin in the internal oil-delivery system that had been sheared and was preventing oil from reaching the head at high speeds."

 

[Fab Foodie]

You're reading the wrong book Globalti .....

 

[Cyclopathic]

I don't offer a "service" as such. I often get people ask me how much for a service and I simply say that it depends what is wrong. I don't see the point in changing brake blocks, cables etc if they are perfectly ok and have good life in them, just for the sake of doing a service. I assess the bike and it's faults and give the customer an estimate based on that. If other things occur whilst working on it I get in touch and let then know so they can decide what to do.

I get customers who don't even know how to use a pump and think they need to come to me for air in their tyres. I usually pump them up and give them a quick tutorial and advise them to get a pump. Also there are people who are able to do bits and bobs themselves but don't have the tools the time or the inclination. I do think going to mechanic to pumpup your tyres is a bit like getting an electrician in to change a bulb.

 

[Globalti]

Well, yes... that's called routine maintenance. Every couple of weeks especially in winter I take out the brake blocks, give them a good clean up and de-glaze and pick out the grit. It helps to reduce wear on the wheel rims. When the blocks have worn down to the indicator bars I replace them.

 

[tyred]

I do all my own repairs on cars, bikes etc. The only exception might be if I were to need a special tool for something and couldn't justify buying it. It was the done thing when growing up to just roll your sleeves up and get the toolbox out. I grew up on a farm and machinery was always home maintained/repaired. If you are sitting in a field of hay with a broken baler and a real threat of rain, you haven't time to book it into a garage next week, you need to do whatever you need to do to get it working right now, even if it may be using "techniques" you won't find in the service manual.

The other thing is that having seen the handiwork of some professional mechanics (Cars, bikes and machinery), some aren't to be trusted and at least if I do something I will either have done it right (or completely broken it!) and we all learn from mistakes.

I understand that some simply lack interest (you pay your money, etc), others think they lack the skills but probably only really lack confidence. Pull a bike out of a skip, doesn't really matter what it is, get a few basic tools and some penetrating oil, and pull it apart and rebuild it. It's the best way to learn imo.

 

[John the Monkey]

I get customers who don't even know how to use a pump and think they need to come to me for air in their tyres. I usually pump them up and give them a quick tutorial and advise them to get a pump. Also there are people who are able to do bits and bobs themselves but don't have the tools the time or the inclination. I do think going to mechanic to pumpup your tyres is a bit like getting an electrician in to change a bulb.

I remember being in Supreme Cycles a couple of times when folk have come in to have punctures repaired (£5 incl new tube, iirc).

The guy in the shop usually offers to demonstrate (jovially saying something like "You don't need to keep paying me to do this, lads") sometimes people take him up on it, sometimes they don't.

 

[Profpointy]

I remember being in Supreme Cycles a couple of times when folk have come in to have punctures repaired (£5 incl new tube, iirc).

The guy in the shop usually offers to demonstrate (jovially saying something like "You don't need to keep paying me to do this, lads") sometimes people take him up on it, sometimes they don't.

There was a very bizarre letter to the local paper in Cheltenham a few years ago where a woman was complaining a bike shop wouldn't help "a damsel in distress" by doing a "temporary" repair to a puncture but wanted to charge her for a new tube, whatever the-f a "temporary repair" to a puncture might be.

The follow up letters were pretty scathing (to her) it must be said.

Whilst I'd always do my own puncture repair, I don't see any fundamental issue with someone paying the price of a coffee & bun for someone to do it for them. I might consider such a person a bit feebly mind.

 

[Fab Foodie]

Life's to short to fix a puncture daahlin' ....

 

[John the Monkey]

You can fully strip down a bike, true the wheelset and grease everything in 15 minutes... This LBS needs you working there.

That's an *average*.

Probably a lot of 5 minute weekends, and one infrequent, but hideous, all nighter...

 

[Leodis]

That's an *average*.

Probably a lot of 5 minute weekends, and one infrequent, but hideous, all nighter...

Sorry removed it as it was a bit arsey. I do the basics to keep my bikes ticking over but once a year I get the fully stripped down and serviced.

 

[Profpointy]

Life's to short to fix a puncture daahlin' ....

The alternative to mending your own puncture, is the long push-of-shame home, followed by a further push-of-shame to the bike shop, so getting someone else to do it for you isn't saving time nor hassle. Unless of course, you just ring your butler to send the car out for you of course.

(I do realise your post was tongue-in-check)