Citizen Mechanic vs. Commercial Bike Shop

Have you ever heard someone disparage a mechanic by saying they were "just a parts replacer?" Have you ever wondered why your local bike shop replaced something that you saw in a YouTube video could be fixed by what appeared to be a simple and effective procedure? Do you mistakenly assume that a "real professional" always has a speedy and economical solution to problems that you yourself found too intimidating or difficult?

Much of the time, bike repair is a matter of replacing parts. Worn chain? Replace it. Maybe the freewheel or cassette is toast, too. Broken spoke? Replace it. Bent rim? Replace it. Whether you replace just the rim or go for a pre-built replacement wheel depends on the quality of the original and the willingness of the customer to pay for the time and skill of the wheelbuilder.

In the days of mostly cup and cone bearings, purists would replace the loose ball bearings every time they overhauled a hub. If cones were pitted, you might have access to replacements for those as well. In high end hubs like Campagnolo, you could even pop out the cups from the hub shell and put in new ones. Short of all that, you would just clean up all the parts and reassemble with fresh grease.

Bottom brackets and headsets also used the cup and cone format and could be overhauled in the same way.

Steel frames and forks could be repaired by someone skilled with the torch. My old Eisentraut only has five original frame tubes out of eight. The chainstays were replaced in 1985. The seat tube was replaced in 1996. The road frame I use now was salvaged by my torch-wizard friends after an untimely roof rack accident struck it down when it was new. This is parts replacement to a high standard.

Through the 1990s, wily mechanics could often contrive solutions that didn't succumb to the plug-in concept that the major component companies were trying to desperately to establish. The industry has won that war now. The technological enslavement of the consumer is nearly complete. Everything has to match or your gears won't work. You can make some minor substitutions in hydraulic brake systems, but you need to know what you can get away with before you commit yourself to a gnarly downhill on whatever you cobbled together.

Shocks and suspension forks may be serviceable by a qualified technician or a foolhardy amateur. You need tools, and a clean place to work. You will be replacing parts inside there.

Some hydraulic brakes and cheaper shocks are not meant to be serviced. They have to be replaced outright when they fail.

The precision demanded by riders today puts them at the mercy of the industry. The reliable mediocrity of friction shifting and rim brakes was easy to perfect, because it wasn't perfect to begin with. The best of it was beautifully made. Tolerances were precise, but the functional stakes were low. Rider skill mattered much more than perfect integration of the drivetrain. It was like, "Here's your violin! It's up to you to learn to make it sound good."

Service was straightforward. Shops could perform many repairs in a day, because procedures were simple. Services that went deeper, like custom wheelbuilding, rim replacement, framebuilding and repair, or painting would command higher prices and require more time. It all had an artistic quality, right down to the way you could mix all of your componentry to personalize your bike or fit your budget.

Our shop has a reputation as the place to bring your older bike. That's my fault, because I will always try to keep one going. However, our overhead keeps going up, cutting into our ability to provide economical service. For instance: back in April, a customer brought in his old Panasonic road bike for a complete overhaul. Another customer, who lives near him, had recommended us because we had done a lot of work to prepare that rider's old steel road  bike for a tour through Canada a couple of years ago.

The Panasonic turned out to have a lot of problems, including a stem rusted into the fork. I managed to gain access to the headset bearings to do sort of an overhaul, but I couldn't secure the bearing very well because he was using an old reflector bracket as a spacer, and the bracket obscured the wrench flats on the top cup. This was a common flaw in bikes of the era attempting to comply with the pointless and ineffective reflector mandate in the industry. I couldn't remove the stem to replace the bracket with a simple spacer. 

The rider made his tour, but had to stop at a shop en route to get the headset tightened again. As soon as he returned from his trip he contacted us to take drastic action on the stem.

A machinist who helped me with the remnants of a cold-welded seatpost had used sodium hydroxide to dissolve the aluminum. I was going to do that, but before I dove in I consulted my mentor, Diane. She sent me alternative procedures that were less scary than building a science project volcano with lye.

Diane's procedure used PB B'laster, leverage, patience, a hammer, and, potentially, open flames. Still less scary that the bucket of lye. I used a slightly modified version. I also did it at my home lair, rather than tie up the shop and stick the customer with our standard hourly rate. The job would have cost him more than $500 and stood in the way of everything else in the repair queue.

Hard to say if everything I did contributed to eventual success. B'laster alone wasn't doing it, so I aimed a torch up the inside of the steerer tube from the bottom of the fork crown. Still nothing, but it was emotionally satisfying. The next day I went the opposite way and blasted it with Finish Line Chill Zone. On that day I finally felt and heard progress. With a pry bar on the handlebar and the fork crown clamped in a vise, I finally heard a CRACK. Reversing the pry bar I got another CRACK. 

I continued this for half an hour, reversing the direction of the pry bar over and over, while gaining a degree or two of movement. After a few hours I could see a tide line beginning to rise. The whole time, I was hosing the area with alternating B'laster and Chill Zone. I had also put the bike inverted in the workstand and whacked downward on the stem with a sledge hammer hitting a piece of wood.

The stem began to emerge, but still only with continuous effort. There was no sudden release of the grip of rust and friction.

Notice here that even after days of emptying penetrating solvents into the area, some of the rust was still dry. 

The stem came out minus its expander wedge. I had tried earlier to devise an extractor with another stem bolt threaded in from below, through two old crank arms and a stack of washers, to draw the wedge downward. It didn't move at all. And look at the length of that thing. It wasn't quite as long as a Nitto Technomic, but it was nowhere near its minimum insertion. Buried! 

I expected the wedge to look a lot gnarlier than it did when I finally got it to come out.

Here are all the tools used in this multi-day process.

Back at work the next week, a mountain bike with weak rear brakes waited for me. El Queso Grande said "clean the pads and rotor." That's one you can find on the Internet in many versions, including the fun ones that involve fire. Here's the thing, though. Pads cost roughly $20 and up. It takes the better part of an hour to pull the old pads out, solvent clean, sand, solvent clean again, light them on fire (heh heh heh!), and put it all back together so you can test ride it and find out that it didn't cure anything. Repeat a couple of times with some minor variations. Get interrupted for various things like bike rentals or walk-in urgent care. Next thing you know, half the day (or more) is shot. Put in new pads. Still get noise. Replace the rotor, finally everything is working quietly. Coulda gone straight to that in that first hour and been done with it. Sometimes the cleaning thing works, but in my experience it's usually just a way to play with fire a bit before actually fixing the damn thing.

A consumer might have time and inclination to fool with stuff for hours, and maybe settle for a half-assed result for the satisfaction of DIY. But in the commercial shop, time is money, and other riders are impatient for their machines.

In the 1990s we did a lot of improvising because we could and we had to. It paid for itself because we got the reputation as the place that could fix anything. But the industry had already declared war on being able to fix anything. And riders were demanding performance at any cost. They weren't satisfied with an old-fashioned bike, no matter how beautifully crafted. They needed vehicles for the ego, to showcase their risk tolerance and ability to heal.

The thing is, durability really is obsolete. How many riders want to own their bike for decades and ride long distances unsupported? How many are going to do their own work, buying all the tools necessary to do it right? Mountain bikes have evolved to withstand heavy impact forces and to stop more or less quickly on steep, rough descents, but the machinery that does this has lots of moving parts, pressurized gases, and fluids that need to be contained. Suspension linkages have lots of bearings, and bolts to check for torque. Tubeless sealant has a very limited lifespan compared to inner tubes. The bikes that seem so indestructible actually need much more attention than the machines they replaced.

Car dealerships have a sales floor and a service department. In virtually all cases, these have separate staff. This is also true in larger bike shops, but in smaller shops the guy turning wrenches might have to stop that and work the sales floor or set up rental bikes. The service area itself which sufficed for decades is now way too small as we need a hydraulics department, an e-bike department, and an ever-growing parts department.

Some jobs that we've done in the past, like rebuilding a three-speed hub are time-consuming, which makes them costly. As far back as 1980, shops could -- and did -- buy complete replacement three-speed rear wheels for less than it would have cost to have someone open up the old one and replace what was worn. Last time I priced Sturmey Archer parts they weren't all that cheap. And there are a lot of variations, not all of which are supported even if you wanted to tackle it.

Independent mechanics can adjust their overhead and cultivate the patience to dig into mechanisms that the public and the industry have left behind. I keep hearing about people who live right in my own patch of woods who "fix up bikes for people." I have no idea about their tools, work standards, or capability, but they're out there. I also know of two amateur frame builders within a 40-mile radius. One has done a repair or two for us on steel frames. In a sufficiently populated area you might even be able to eke out a living at it.

As service gets more technical, a rider has less and less assurance that they will be able to find it anywhere they need it. Even if you learn how to do a lot of it yourself, what tools are you willing and able to lug around with you? I keep recommending a return to elegant simplicity.