I’ve been sick, so no riding lately. I did work last Friday, though, and I plan on writing about potentially interesting repairs here for the few days I am working while laid off. I’m working alone now, so that means very little gets done. Here are some of the notables from the work day. I’m not used to this kind of flow in my work, so I forgot to take pictures, though there also wasn’t anything worth a picture.

1. Front hydraulic brake replacement

Someone stole the MT-200 right off someone’s fork/handlebar?? I didn’t take this one in so I don’t know the customer’s full story, but I’ve never seen this in Helsinki. Stealing brakes from locked bikes was very common in Baltimore because wheelie kids needed rear hydraulic brakes–which they called OIL brakes if they were brave enough to come into the shop to ask how much they cost. It always took a second to figure out what they were talking about.

I wonder if the customer understood how quickly the theft took place. Surprised it doesn’t happen more often. Should I start gluing ball bearings in brake caliper bolts?

2. Front rack reinstall

Also didn’t take this one in so I don’t know the full story, but it was a Pelago Rasket that had been installed pretty much the opposite of how the instructions say, though there really isn’t a wrong way to do it and I’ve never seen a failure if there has at least been some minimal thought about the way things are put together, even if it’s not the ‘right’ way. It looked like it had been there for a long time, but now they tried to move their dynamo light to a bracket attached to the rack and realized the wires weren’t long enough. Or they bought a used rack or a takeoff from another bike and quickly installed it like this. So I reinstalled the rack and added an extension wire for the lights. It had either been not working because it was missing one of the connectors, or I had cut it off when removing old zipties. Oops.

3. Rear dynamo light connector replacement

This was from my wife’s bike. She had lost her keys and her bike was locked at the Herttoniemi metro station for two weeks. She got most of the bags off but the stem bag was stolen (too bad, a PTAP bag made in Baltimore) and it looked like someone tried to steal her front Busch & Muller IQ-XS. She didn’t notice until a few days later so it could have been something else, but the wires were cut perfectly as with scissors. They could have also been pulled by something and sheered off, who knows.

Working on friends’ bikes is definitely my favorite work to do. For my own bikes I never have the time to get things done how I want and most things settle for a half-way ‘I’ll get to that next time’ state. And customer bikes everything is by the book, frustrating and pointless troubleshooting, or hopefully something new. But friends’ bikes you can settle somewhere in the middle where you get everything perfectly right, in your own way, and you can hide little surprises that they will never notice.

4. & 5. Comprehensive tune-ups on city bikes

Two standard tune-ups in a row. One coaster brake Nexus 3 and one caliper brake Nexus 7. This kind of comprehensive work goes even faster when you haven’t been working much, because total muscle memory takes over and you can bang out a tune-up faster than even on-season work when rush is actually needed. I know I’m not working much, so I’m just trying to do the damn job. During the season or any normal time, I’m either a) distracted by customers or shop operations or b) actively working on some repair method to improve comprehensive service efficiency.

I’m not a fast worker, but on the best days I’m usually trying to focus on how I’m holding a component or tool or wheel or something, the way my body is positioned, where my hands will move next, etc., in order to consider if it really is the best way to be doing it. In addition to specific tasks like derailleur adjustments, hub overhauls, or torque checks, or whatever, which less frequently involve this kind of attention because usually they are automatic in order to do a job the right way unless there is a problem or I’ve learned some new way of doing something. This sounds a bit silly as I’m typing it but this is one of the reasons I want to be writing more about mechanical work; I’m realizing these types of thought for the first time now that I’m spending the time to write about them. Maybe will be interesting as I keep doing it.

6. Insurance estimate

This is actually one of my favorite jobs. Customers rarely know how little their insurance companies care about bikes. Usually a terrible thing, but when it comes to compensation for accident or theft, a very good thing. Even for performance bicycles, the costs are minuscule compared to the other claims that insurance companies are dealing with, so approval almost always happens with little extra effort. I only know this from my side. I have no idea if it is actually true from an insurance adjuster’s perspective.

This was a Pelago Stavanger slammed on the non-drive side chainstay. This I should have gotten a picture of. The steel had almost completely snapped. The wheel was toast too, but not much other damage.

7. Sort-of-difficult DIY customer

The kind of customer that follows me around the shop even though I’ve told him to stay in front of the counter. Definitely didn’t want me to do comprehensive work or even look at the bike systematically, because he kept taking it from me and pointing at random parts. Claimed his chain was jumping all over the place after he installed a new one, and he’s guessing it’s because the cassette was also worn, though he said it was replaced recently. When I finally got it in the stand the adjustment was way off, so I suspect this was his main problem. Wouldn’t let me talk about any other issues because he’ll deal with them himself, later. Ok.

He also wanted to replace his old Shimano double-sided pedals. Fine. Though my patience was gone at this point. I had black ones, but he wanted silver ones. Also fine. I’ll order them, of course, they’ll be here when you’re bike’s done. He decided to look at his phone to see if some store nearby had them immediately, so this is when I finally had a chance to look at his bike more closely. As I was kneeling and looking at the derailleur, he asks, “So where do you think is the best place to order these pedals from?” I was kneeling, he was on his phone, and we were speaking English, so we had to repeat four times,
“From me.”
“Where?”
“From me.”
“Where?”
“From me.”
“Where?”
The final time I stood up, “FROM ME.” And with no sense of any kind of awareness or any emotion he responds matter-of-factly, “Oh, really?”

Some of my work from this day. Didn’t end well so this post doesn’t have to either c: