Saturday, July 14, 2018

Another great used bike

After getting a bunch of sass from hydraulic brakes for a couple of days, I figured I would knock out a quick tuneup on a used Specialized pre-gravel bike that someone found. First I had to extend the seatpost so I could clamp the bike in the repair stand.

Good luck with that. The seatpost was jammed in there like the worst rusted Muffy in the junk pile. Carbon on carbon. It's so tight, you'd think it was manufactured that way.

Here beginneth the floods of light oil and other procedures. The first treatment, plus leverage, only produced the first couple of light cracking noises that tell a mechanic to back off.

The rider would have to change the seat height for proper fit anyway. Or they could toddle around with their knees out, chortling about what a great deal they scored.

This is how hours get wasted in the workshop. A few minutes at a time, to save the rest of a profitable and productive repair job, half a day gets flushed away on one attempt after another.

Now put an electric motor and hydraulic brakes on that thing. And route the cables inside the frame, because everybody needs that shit, too.

2 comments:

mike w. said...

Were you ever able to get that seat pillar out without cracking the frame?

cafiend said...

No. But the guy who checked the bike in said he thought that the rider had owned it long enough to have set the seat height before the post seized up. When the owner of the bike picked it up, he read my notes on the repair slip and still looked happy. It's someone else's problem now.