Tom_hampton wrote:
lightheir wrote:
Hah you gotta be KIDDING me. Seriously reality check needed there!
I thought EXACTLY as you did when I first attempted my very own bike maintenace, thinking it the parts tools and everything would come in well under $200. I even had your exact tool estimate, of about $80, given that allen keys, cable cutter, chain tool, don't cost much.
I then first attempted my first must-do repair. Replace rusted front brake. Easy, right? Well aside from the cost of the brake, you need brake cables, brake housing, bar tape to redo the tape after you cable it, grease, allen keys. Then I found I needed a longer front screw for the frame to fit the newer ultegra brake. Not even counting the brake itself, the cost of all that was nearly $80 on Amazon.
...
I don't even know what to say. You must be the poster child for "people who should not work on stuff..." I've worked on bikes in every imaginable condition. Garage sale bikes, left in the rain for a decade bikes, bikes ridden on trainers and sweated on, bikes found in the trash in an alley, etc, etc. All of my bikes, my kids bikes, the neighbors kids, my friends, etc. I've been doing it since I was 8 or so---43+ years. I cannot fathom the amount of trouble you seem to have had.
Maybe it comes from my mechanical upbringing, but bikes are just about the easiest thing to work on, of all the things I have taken apart over the decades. Even frozen bolts on a bike are quite a bit easier than they are on things like cars.
Another point - you are literally the poster boy for someone for whom it SHOULD be easy. You've worked on lots of bikes, 'in every imaginable condition' so you've had the chance to make all your mistakes, try out things, try various tools, over, and over again.
That opportunity does NOT arise for a typical new triathlete who has no bike background, and has one, perhaps two bikes to work with. With which they typically do NOT want to do a half-baked job on their race bike (less risk taking for sure.)
Even for me, with my learned experience from that whole cockpit+drivetrain upgrade, I've forgotton at least half of it in the year+ that I've gone without doing it again. I changed a front FD cable for a race this past summer, and it was almost as annoying as the first time around, getting it through the internal cable path, readjusting the FD tension screws, remembering which direction they go, forgetting to put on the anti-chain-drop fangtool and having to redo it all, etc.
It's different when you have to use the stuff on a regular basis like a shop as compared to an AGer who rarely works on their bikes since once is usually good enough for a year+.