"My brakes were squeaking, so I sprayed oil in the calipers..."

Yes, it really happened. I didn't do the check in, but David told me about it.

"I think I made it worse," the customer concluded.

Gee, do ya think? So there's a set of pads headed for the trash.

The next day a customer bought three of the last four adult size bikes we had, and not cheap ones, either: two Specialized fat bikes and a gravel bike. She also asked if we could fix a flat front tire on a 650B mountain bike they already had. It had blown out when they were inflating the tires. This happens for various reasons, especially if the tire had been very low and the beads had come loose. The rider enthusiastically pumps it up and the beads fail to catch the rim because the tube is already sneaking out underneath the edge of the tire. Or the whole rig might be old enough that the tube has rotted out. We couldn't know for sure until we saw it.

The tire was off the rim in the classic explosive blowout position. The customer had left to transport two bikes home. She was due to return in an hour or so for the third new bike, and for the repaired bike if I could have it ready. I dug into it.

The blowout had damaged the bead of the tire, so I had to replace the casing as well as the tube. The blown-out section of tube was about 16 inches long, indicating considerable force. It had actually deformed a section of the rim. The side of the rim flared where the blast had originated.

I have reshaped damaged rims in the past using blocks of wood, and the vise, and large hammers, but that was usually when the rim was bent inward by an impact. Going the other way was going to be trickier. I needed the perfect block. A cut-off end of an adult-size wooden hockey stick turned out to fit. I put it into the rim channel and wrapped some cardboard from a parts box around the outside. Squeezing this sandwich in the vice coaxed the rim back to be usably near  parallel. I had to reposition it and repeat the squeeze a couple or three times, but that's what happens when you're using rectangular things to reshape something round.

When the customer arrived we reported on our findings. She told us that she had read that the tires take 90 psi. It was a classic case of too much information. The psi rating was written smaller than the load rating, so she saw 90kg and misread it as 90 psi, when the maximum pressure was actually supposed to be 50 psi. Many bike tires don't even have the load rating molded onto them.

"Did you put 90 in the rear, too?" I asked.

"Yes," she answered. Torin and I leaped simultaneously to disarm that bomb.

The customer is a triathlete, who is used to putting very high pressures in her skinny road tires, and hadn't bothered to think critically about volume and intended use. She just looked for a number and tried to follow instructions. Torin repeated several times that the fat bike tires would be rock hard and maxed out at 20 psi. "Keep them between 7 and 12," he told her.

Try to be nice. Try to be nice. Try to be nice...

Home Mechanic Week continues. On the stand before me is a Cannondale Flash 29er with Avid Elixir hydraulic disc brakes. The customer got mad when the rear brakes acted up out on the rail trail, so he ripped the pads out and flung them into the undergrowth. He also managed to lose the screw that secures the pads in the caliper.

He had tried to make things work better by blasting both brake calipers and the bottom bracket area with spray white lithium grease. Wasn't I just talking about grandpa grease?

The front caliper still has pads, but the customer says, "They don't work very well." Apparently, a blast of lithium grease does not enhance brake performance.

People feel free to mess with their bikes when they wouldn't dream of ripping into their car, their electronics, or the plumbing in their house, because bikes are kid stuff. Has anyone told the bike industry this? That whole Tour dee France thingie is just a bunch of overgrown kids in short pants who have figured out how to get paid not to grow up. It ain't a real man's sport, like football,  or NASCAR.

The customer says he only rides on the path. I will recommend that he ditch the hydraulics completely, in favor of a mechanical system less vulnerable to abuse. Grandpa grease will still contaminate the pads, but he won't have to worry about caliper pistons. I'm having to reseat the pistons and bleed the system as a result of whatever was wrong in the first place, compounded by his completely unhelpful intervention.

Customers do the darnedest things, part 3,657

"There's something wrong with my brakes."

Look closely at where the barrel adjuster for the lever has ended up.

The rear tire was weirdly worn only on one side, like it would be on a car with bad alignment. We finally figured out that the intrepid young rider had been foot-braking against the tire to make up for the lack of a functioning rear brake.

Here's the front quick-release on the same bike:

Neither wing-nutted nor closed correctly, it was jammed up tight with the handle sticking out like that. You can just make out the mangled spring sticking out by the fork, too.

If you ever needed proof that bicycling is basically a safe activity and that humanity is bizarrely protected from the consequences of its own thoughtlessness, here it is. Disaster did NOT occur. Eventually, they got the bike to the bike shop and the nice mechanics made everything all right. No problem!

Your results may vary, of course. Having things properly connected is always a better idea than just stuffing it together in some vague approximation. You could be the unlucky one who actually has something come apart so badly that you're in no shape to enjoy the lawsuit afterward.