Dumb Bike Problems

Eeww! I got a pretty good one for you. So I'm converting my old homemade 26" DH bike to 27.5" to give to a friend's son. (If the son ever gets it away from his father...) It's a second gen Santa Cruz Bullit swing arm on a steel front end. It's got modern geometry from before it's time. The drawing says "Atherton style." because they were the only ones doing long, low and slack at the time. I'm just making new bolt on dropouts to fit the bigger wheels and we'll put a 27.5" fork on it. So today I started unbuilding the nice old Mavic DH wheels (One beer per wheel, of course.) I got two times around the drive side of the rear wheel wondering why the spokes didn't seem to be getting easier to unthread and thinking that the spoke prep should have broken free by now? I was doing it on the table top instead of getting out my truing stand like I normally would have. It turns out that I had been tightening the spokes instead of loosening them. Two full rotations tighter! I was able to detention them without anything exploding on me. Wheew! What a maroon!

Did you guys see my new green bike? It’s so dope. 3.00 minions are very much a radical trail experience - mounting them on the old Stans Hugo 52 was proving pretty shit lately, pulling and pulling. And wrestling and I just could not for the life of me get them around the rim wall….. it’s a wide rim and a odd tire—— 

my 13 year old daughter walks in the garage and asks: what if you pull and twist them the other way?

Boosh. But yeah, now I’m out of Stan’s. 

Don’t shift cables only get mounted in one direction, one end has a metal knob on it. The other end doesn’t.????

I think backwards in the sense of the direction of wrapping it around the mounting bolt. 

Most times I deal with shimano stuff I'm not quite sure how to route the cable to be honest... 

Yeah that will be it - some of the shimano mechs were definitely routed in a way that isn't intuitive!  But it made a big difference

There was a run of sram xx brakes in about 2010 with the super light lever bodies that were known to occasionally shatter when tightening. They had a composite filament kind of structure, and were so expensive they weren’t common.

I recall having a major discussion with the sram team rep when two did it on a weekend before a race and both athlete’s bikes had front ends covered in DOT fluid.

Dammit. One on me today. Why is my 12sp XT shifting like garbage on the dirt? Totally helps when you put the 2nd position cog in the right orientation. Lesson: if you need glasses/readers, wear em when aligning your cogs. It really helps to connect the goddamn (alignment) dots on the cogs.... 

I just swapped in a pair of stupid-cheap new Code RSC's for an extraordinary well-used pair (to the point where I was having a hard time reviving one of the lever bearings, and replacing those things is a PITA - at least with the bearing tools I have).  TIps from you and Jono seemed to make a difference on install.  Eventual removal will tell the full tale. 

To the extent I was under-tightening the barb and barrel nut, I'm going to look at the positive.  Been doing almost all of my own wrenching for a couple of decades, and I think that'd be the first time I didn't forget to fully torque something and the problem wasn't overtightening it.  I'm maturing.  

Riding by myself the other day, I snapped an X01 chain for the first time in ages.  Riding with an EDC pump and my minimalist hip pack on a bike without internal storage.  Hip pack was new and somehow the tiny readers I keep in all my packs weren't in it.  Had a hell of a time getting a quick link installed and going again.  

It's frustrating to know that you can carry around a vast array of tools, but if you don't have your glasses, you're screwed.  I've long maintained there's a market for steerer-tube readers that pop out like OneUp's multitool. 

I removed one of the brake caliper post mount bolts on the weekend and failed to catch one of the cone washers before it bounced across the tiles and down a ducted heating vent.

Pro tip: close the vents before working on your bike.  Or put some mesh backing on them.

Been there.  They also make magnetic covers for vents.  I have one on the floor vent near my work stand.  

I looked one time for the little bent c-clips SRAM uses on their pad retaining bolts.  I wanted to buy a 100 so I could drop them and not even bother looking for them.  Actually hard to find in that small of a size.  

Do people just say screw it and not bother with those clips?  I've forgotten to tighten a pad retaining bolt once.  It's not like a I remember the clip but forget to tighten the bolt.  I've never had a tightened pad retaining bolt back out (knock on wood).

This matters. Worked with a guy who was how you say Very Proud of His Excellent Mech Skills. Watched him struggle with a front derailleur for over a half hour before he asked me to take a look at it. Cable was on the wrong side of the pinch bolt.  Not even 2 minutes to correct his installation error. That right there is why I spent extra time reading up and watching vids of Sram and Shimano's newer style front d's when they came out. A good mech knows they don't know everything, terra incognita means you study the map before embarking.

"....and the problem wasn't overtightening it.  I'm maturing." YUUUUUP! Thanks to you I nabbed a pir of readers to stash in my downtube permanently. That is an excellent idea!

You can always remove the cable fixing bolt and find the groove/path that Shimano wants you to orient the cable in. That or si.shimano.com and look at the docs.

The clips often fall off during riding anyway. I've ran multiple brakes over the years for years without a clip and never had a problem. The bolt bakes into the threads anyway. 

The clip is probably an effective reminder to tighten the bolt on its own... In my experience they don't fall off Shimano calipers, but maybe that means I don't ride hard enough.

On the lower grade Shimano brakes that use split pins to retain the pads, I did once have a bike shop mechanic insert the pin and then forget to bend it.  I didn't notice until I lifted the bike off my car at the bike park.

Here's a new one from this past weekend - catching up on maintenance doing a brake bleed. Need to clean the pads off so I go to my shelf of flammable /aerosol cans in my garage. Brain is on autopilot, I thought I grabbed the brake cleaner and sprayed a set of pads was confused by the smell. Turns out I grabbed penetrating oil.

“Why do these new grips feel like crap?” weeks pass “Why does my right grip have a big L on the end? … Oohhhhh”

I also found myself the other day mistaking the ft-lb scale on my new torque wrench for the Nm scale so now I’m wondering what bolts on my bike are fighting for their lives rn.

Carbon nerd thread reminded me of one:  

My friend cracked the seat tube of his brand new hardtail by accidentally knocking it over into a shelf corner in his garage. He fixed it with a repair kit and rode it for years but that's about as bad as it gets. 

Rode my only set of Ergon GE's on the wrong sides and didn't care for em. Switched em over to the correct side and still didn't care for em. Fine on the cruiser however.