Back in January or thereabouts, I changed a headlight bulb in the Ford Escape. That proved to be as annoying as working on any modern machinery. I had to remove the coolant overflow reservoir to get at the back of the headlight housing, and still contort my hand to insert and twist the vulnerable halogen bulb into the socket. While I was there, I noticed that the coolant was below the "minimum" line. Okay, I'll just get some coolant at O'Reilly and top 'er up. Let's just check the owner's manual.
Yep, nope. You need a PhD in chemistry and some lab equipment to blend the coolant properly so that you don't scorch the delicate engine, engineered to perfection. Perfection for someone, anyway.
The car was running fine, temperature was mid range. I waited until I was getting some other service done to mention it. The mechanic informed me that he had discovered very slight residue indicating a water pump leak. He also said that it's a stupid design that calls for almost ten hours of labor and requires special tools most likely only found at a dealership. He guessed upwards of a thousand dollars for the job, because so much of the engine has to be disassembled to get at the water pump.
Back at my own job the next day, a long-time seasonal customer showed up with a brand new 3T Strada road bike in the box, needing assembly. We have assembled a number of high-end road bikes that get shipped to the customer directly. They generally require no more than the usual tools and procedures, although we did have a good bout of bullshit with a Canyon that a guy brought in, and an epic struggle with an extraordinarily stupid e-bike design from Specialized. Prophetically, that one involved hydraulic brake lines led through the handlebar.
The 3T routes the hydraulic brake lines through the handlebars, because of course they do. They provide little plastic tubes, like the ones we thread cables through, which are entirely inadequate to redirect a stiff brake line. The lines themselves are already filled with fluid and capped. The first thing you have to do is cut the cap off, because it makes the end of the brake line too stiff to make the ridiculously tight bend where it exits the bar to connect to the brifter. So now you're trying to wrangle drippy brake lines through two sharp bends, into and then back out of the bar. I'm ready to go into a bar after that.
This is just more of the thousand dollar water pump philosophy driving modern design. I'm through coddling customers who are certain they they need it. You need it? Fork out for it. This is bullshit. It was bullshit in the 1990s and it's bullshit on ketamine and steroids now.
Bikes sold directly to consumers usually come with either lots of printed instructions or some sort of link to a tedious video that might or might not cover the crucial detail that will hang you up for half a day. But at least there's something. Not with this Italian beauty, though. There's one manual for assembling the bar and stem setup and yes, it absolutely leaves out the crucial detail that will hang you up for half a day. I guess if you're really skilled, you know your way around without anyone telling you where things are and how hard to press. If you need instructions, we're not talking to you.
I ended up making a hook tool with an old spoke to catch the end of the brake line at exactly the right spot as it came into view in the dark interior of the bar under the exit hole. That was after trying six or eight other things to try to guide it. The Park Tool internal routing kit didn't work, because the end that would attach almost securely enough to the brake line was itself too long to make the turn.
This bike looks like it was packaged for sale through an authorized dealer who would have assembled it.
Even under ideal circumstances I would have had to bleed the brakes. So, after I managed to get the brake lines placed, I went to remove the rear wheel so that I could prepare the caliper.
The bike has Di2 shifting. The derailleurs were locked in position with the rear derailleur under the largest cog and the front derailleur holding the chain on the big ring. That wheel was not going to come out. I managed to get the rear derailleur to move a couple of cogs outward on the 12-speed cassette, which gained me just enough slack to get the wheel out. I had already tried pairing the wireless levers to the derailleurs, but it seemed that the battery didn't have enough charge.
Oh yeah, and let's back up to installing the battery. It goes in the seatpost. I've had some hilarious times with these in the past, when the wires came undone, but the battery kept creeping further up inside the post every time I tried to plug them back in. Fortunately, this post doesn't allow the battery to creep out of reach, but that was the only thing that went reassuringly smoothly. There are three capped terminals on the battery, but only two wires to connect. Nothing on or with the battery indicates whether it matters which terminals you choose. I don't know if it didn't matter or I just got lucky with my selection.
Shimano makes a special tool to push the connectors onto the battery. Wait, no, now they make two special tools to fit multiple generations of mistakes they correct after dumping product on hapless consumers and mechanics.
The aero seatpost is basically rectangular. It has some taper to the leading edge, but it can only go one way. It fits very tightly in the seat tube. The seat tube itself is not a long, straight line. Instead it uses the illusion of a tight rear triangle, with a vertical section that merges into a curved lower part that follows the contour of the wheel. It looks ridiculously tight and steep, when the actual seat angle is pretty slack.
The wires dangling out of the seatpost have to go somewhere. In a normal seat tube, you can generally shove them down out of the way with only a bit of time and care, aided by the fact that you can rotate the seatpost back and forth to facilitate stacking the spare wire down in the depths. Not with this square thing, though. Not only can't you wiggle it in, the wires have to make an abrupt turn into a narrower space in the curved part of the tube.
The battery itself is held into the seatpost with a specially shaped rubber stopper. This item is slightly oversized, binding on the seat tube as you try to shove the post down. You hope that the wires are going where you tried to aim them, but you have no control and can't see. The seatpost goes in as far as the minimum line. I'm not sure how much farther it will go. The rider had better need the seat at or near full height.
I charged the shifting system through the charging port on the rear derailleur. I had to work around the cable as I set up the brake bleed. And before I did the bleed I had to cut the brake lines according to the instructions, with 55mm protruding from the exit holes in the bars. They were quite specific in the instructions. Fifty-five millimeters. I pulled the brake lines out to allow for enough adjustment to move the brifters down the handlebar if the customer wants that.
To connect the brake lines to the master cylinder ports on each lever body, the mechanic has to push the lever body firmly upward against the protruding 55mm of brake line, to hold it securely in the olive already fitted inside the handy-dandy "convenience" fitting provided by Shimano. The brake line retracts into the bar as you try to tighten the nut really quickly to stem the outpouring of brake fluid that begins as soon as you start to press the line into the fitting. The instructions say not to clamp the bars tight until everything is installed and the bike is on the floor. They're snug, but the bolts are recessed for "aerodynamics" and to make burnt-out veteran mechanics want to grab a sledge hammer. There's a good reason that we don't keep a fire ax on the premises.
I had already had to install a new barbed fitting in the brake lines, using only the 55mm of exposed line, restricted by the angle of the handlebar next to the exit hole. The line for the left brifter went in successfully, but the right one squirted brake fluid out the fitting because the olive had gotten dislodged and crimped. I had to yank that apart, insert a new olive, and finagle it back together.
The whole process took hours longer than a build on frame of a conventional bike from 20 years ago, because of the delicacy of carbon fiber and the challenges presented by routing everything inside as much of the bike's structure as possible. A video popped up on my YouTube feed presenting the pros and cons of disc versus rim brakes with surprisingly good balance. It stated that the weight and aerodynamic drag of disc brake setups requires that the lines be run inside the handlebar and frame. If you want to be racy, and bomb down alpine passes in the rain -- and don't we all? -- you simply must have disc brakes and internal everything. However, the video did acknowledge that rim brakes have many advantages, particularly for the self-supported cyclist. They're lighter, much easier to maintain, and proven over more than a century of use. The video admitted that the industry has simply declared war on rim brakes and forced riders to adapt. For high-end roadies, this means expensive replacement of entire bikes to get the current top of the line.
All the way back in the first decade of the 21st century, industry observers had noted that the industry had burned off the casual enthusiast by making things so complicated and expensive, so had shifted to sucking more and more money out of their remaining pool of addicted users.
In automobiles and bikes we had long been told that racing was the proving ground for technologies that made their way into our own vehicles to make them safer and more efficient. That might have been true for a while, but it was mostly gone by the end of the 1990s. Now it just makes our vehicles more expensive, complicated, and disposable. That afflicts the entire price range. You can't "buy quality" anymore. If you want something built to last, find something in good shape that has already lasted since the end of the era of durability, and keep fixing it.
New bikes suck. And it's damn sad. I can fix an old bike and release it with full confidence. I never feel confident about any of this new shit. You're always going to be waiting for it to sprout some mysterious ailment. And the industry will be desperate to sell you a new one.