jt10000 wrote:
JasoninHalifax wrote:
The videos help to dumb things down, but I learned all this stuff back in the pre-internet dark ages, by taking apart my bike and then trying to put it back together. Those were the days when mechanical knowledge was more important (cable housings were unlined and cables weren't stainless, loose ball BB's in the hubs, BB, and headset, cup and cone adjusters. Most components could be rebuilt rather than thrown out. Learning the importance of Loctite on Italian threaded BB's. Trying to center the old style single pivot brakes was a challenge, since they couldn't be so tight that the calipers didn't move, but they had to be tight enough that they didn't shift off centre.I learned stuff like that too.
But more recently I've learned by video or at least good instructions.
I remember maybe 10 or 15 years ago installing a threadless headset for the first time. There were parts of the process that frankly did not make sense to me and I was super-worried doing them. But I got the right tools and just followed instructions - came out perfect. With new, non-exotic equipment that's it - follow the instructions and it's done. It's like baking a cake from cake mix.
I wouldn't say it's THAT easy. Ok, if you have all the perfect parts ready to go, that totally match the video, it might be.
But tiny variations make a big difference, and for a rookie that hasn't seen it before, that can add up to a lot of frustration and time lost. It all looks easy peasy as pie on the video, but the moment you have one part that doesn't quite fit, or you route something slightly the wrong way, major headache can ensue.
In all my cases of frustration, it was NEVER a situation where I was doing something so obviously wrong that the video pointed it out. It was always some tiny-seemingly little thing that no video mentioned, but busted your entire plan.
Again, I'm saying this as an ex total rookie bike noob who has zero mechanical background, no bike tools, nothing. So I certainly would do 10x worse than anyone who may have used tools around the house at least a little. But I learned a LOT!
I guess my take home message is that 90% of my time was spent troubleshooting tiny-seeming things. It only took 10% of the time to get nearly the entire job done as the videos suggest. But that last 10% was never explained properly on a video, and can be really annoying and take a shockingly long time as a rookie noob.