I hate to admit it: I no longer like to do bike maintenance. That doesn’t mean I don’t do it. I still do. But I no longer look forward to it and that results in a lot of delayed maintenance as I wait for things to completely fail, make horrendous noises, or work so poorly that I don’t enjoy riding it. Then I have to do it. The problem with that last one is that I have more than one bike. So what do I when my bike doesn’t work well? I just throw it in the corner and ride another bike. Until it also falls apart and then I have to do some maintenance. I currently have two very old rusty, nonfunctioning bikes that haven’t seen a minute of maintenance in years; they sit quietly gathering rust until one day I will either swallow my pride and haul them to a proper shop mechanic or I’ll set aside a day(s) to actually get them fixed. One bike is hella old and has, believe it or not, tubular wheels and tires. The tires are completely shot and I’m ambivalent about replacing them simply because getting another tubular flat means I have to fix that one too. Fixing tubular flats is a punishment the Devil metes out. I used to do it and I always did a mediocre job. Then I found a guy who would repair them for me at low cost and for a few years I never had to repair a tubby. He retired, darn. Fixing tubular flats, glueing tubular tires to rims, and cleaning the rims of old cement are execrable tasks. But I love the ride of tubulars. Those who ride tubbys know what I’m talking about.
This lamentation is not about tubular tires, which no one is riding anymore except for a few old farts. It’s about doing your own general bike repairs and maintenance. And this is not about the lack of knowledge, tools, or where to get experience to do repairs although they too deserve their own lament. It’s about where you do your repairs.
Much of general bike maintenance and repairs is moderately easy (e.g. replacing cables, adjusting your brakes, fixing a flat, injecting sealant); some repairs are moderately difficult (e.g. regreasing bearings, setting up shifters, fixing a freehub); and some repairs are better left to professional shop mechanics (e.g. bleeding hydraulic brakes, setting suspension). Once you take a step in the direction of doing some of your own maintenance, you will it find it personally rewarding (“I can do this now!”) as well as saving you a little money. When it comes to doing repairs you have to have a good learning experience whether it be hands-on at a workshop, YouTube videos, or studying repair guides. Otherwise you’ll make mistakes that will put off all but the most patient of DIYers. But unlike a pro, who works in a shop with a dedicated repair and maintenance zone, we are making do with whatever we have at home.
I actually have a “shop” where I can do repairs. It certainly looks like a home shop to me and probably would to you. But it wasn’t set up to do bike repairs. That I increasingly abjure doing bike maintenance is now coupled with having to do it in a place that is borderline awkward and dissatisfying.
If you do your own bike maintenance or repairs, you are likely doing it in an ad hoc location such as your apartment hallway, the kitchen, or maybe outside on a patio. If you’ve got a garage, maybe you have a shop area. But having seen lots of garages they are rarely spacious because people are genetically programmed to horde and dump tons of crap in the garage. Where else are you going to store the stuff you aren’t sure you want to get rid of, your mementos (or your kids’ mementos), and your latest mega-haul from Costco? This is why some home mechanics end up working in their driveway: it’s got space, it’s near your tools, and at least when it’s not raining you can work comfortably there.
Our shop is dark, cluttered with lots of home repair stuff and tools. It’s also got an old bare wood floor that tilts and has so much dry rot that there are holes in it. On the plus side the bike tools are more or less in one place conveniently at hand and it has a bench. Other tools I occasionally need, like a mallet, tape, levels, a bench vise, are also nearby. That it’s dark is just because it was set up so you’d work at the bench, where there is indeed a decent shop light. But much of the bike maintenance is done not at the bench but on a portable bike stand I have to set up away from the bench. There’s some light there but it’s not like a proper shop, which has even lighting all around so you can see all around your bike. So I struggle to see depending on which part of the bike I’m focusing on. That forces me into using a flashlight, which takes up one hand and is awkward. The solution seems simple: get more lights. But that isn’t really possible in our shop. I suppose I could jerry-rig a work light but then I’ve got a cord running on the floor and it’s already tight in there. It’s better when you have even lighting anyway and a work light doesn’t provide that. This is why I used to work on my bike in the kitchen: it’s super well lit, has a level floor, and I can see tiny things I drop on it more easily than in the shop. Needless to say working in the kitchen is tiresome because I have to run back and forth to the shop to get stuff and working there interferes with cooking and food preparation. In the shop I can just leave midrepair and not have to tidy up to get stuff out of the way in order to cook!
If you do repair and maintenance, you will drop stuff—tools, debris, oil, tiny screws, bolts. The best floor is flat, light colored, free of other stuff, and easy to clean. Whenever I’m working in the shop on my bike and it involves tiny screws, ball bearings, springs, or anything that can roll, I think, “If I drop this, I’ll never find it again!” Many times little objects have rolled under the cabinets or through holes in the floor (never to be recovered). I find a lot of tiny stuff I drop but it isn’t always easy and there goes the time. Unlike Roger who will drop stuff, not care, and get another screw or whatever, I persist in looking for the dropped item because I’m anal—well, also because stuff I drop tends not to be easily replaced; I don’t have spare quick release springs hanging around! I’m not getting more deft as I get old so this is an ongoing, recurrent problem. In the kitchen I eventually will be able to find whatever I’ve dropped (except if it rolls under the refrigerator) much more easily since the shop floor is uneven, worn, bare wood, i.e. dark brown. The shop floor is also stained with an untold amount of dirt, grease, chain wax, oil, WD-40, Locktite, caulk, and paint, which makes it even harder to see things.
Since the repair stand isn’t next to the bench, I struggle to find places to put things down such as tools and parts off the bike. There isn’t one convenient place. I’ll put a screw on the drill press stand, a hex wrench on the tool bin, or a chain link on a plastic bucket for example. Then I have to remember where I’ve placed all that stuff and I often forget and have to search. This is especially bothersome for me because I am preternaturally tidy and organized: “every thing in its place and a place for every thing.”
If I have a suggestion to any of you who are doing or contemplating doing your own bike maintenance, it would be to pick a place that—
(1) is well lit from all sides;
(2) is out of the way of other activity;
(3) is spacious enough for you to set up and move around your bike confortably;
(4) has a floor you don’t mind spilling or dropping stuff on it (and is easy to clean up);
(5) and has surfaces where you can comfortably place your tools and any parts you are removing or adding to your bike.
Do most of us have a location like this? No. What often fits the bill is the garage. When I was younger I did maintenance in a variety of places—on the common patio (when I was in a dormitory); in the living room (when I was living alone in a third floor apartment; in the garage (when I had housemates); in a small shop area in a garage (in Bob Humason’s old place); and now in the “shop”.
Those of you who have a shop specifically for bike repair are blessed.
The Back Story
What provoked this lament? I had to replace an ancient Shimano Dura Ace 9-speed shifter. This shifter was becoming increasingly difficult to shift. Shimano mechanical shifters progressively get gummier and then fail as the grease inside the shifter guts turns to crud with age. The known solution is to shoot the guts with a ton of WD-40 to dissolve the old grease and then later add a good oil lubricant. No problem, right? I’d done it before with other shifters and this one wouldn’t be different. Except it didn’t work. I tried this three times and the shifting got worse, not better. I don’t know why, and I’m tempted to do something that I (and very few others) have done: take apart a Shimano shifter to find out. (Eek!)
I shouldn’t complain. This shifter has over 27,000 miles on it and hasn’t seen a lick of maintenance since Day One. That’s pretty good. I’ve certainly gotten my money’s worth, which was zero dollars because I inherited it from Roger after he upgraded his road bike many years ago. The problem is that replacing this shifter is not easy. Shimano still makes older tech 9-speed shifters but they are hard to find. With Shimano shifting [pun intended] to CUES the actuation ratio of the rear derailleur and shifter is now different so new shifters are not compatible with old derailleurs and vice versa. So I can’t use a CUES 9-speed shifter without ditching the rear deraileur as well. The CUES rear derailleur also doesn’t have the capacity of the mountain bike derailleur I have on the bike. So that solution was a non-starter. The only remaining 9-speed shifter is in the Claris range, which is toward the bottom on its old group hierarchy and is on the way out. The other complication is that I am using an old Shimano Flite Deck computer. You probably have no idea what that is. Before Garmin came on the scene Shimano made bike computers. The Flite Deck was a compact cyclocomputer with none of the fancy GPS stuff. But it did mate with Shimano’s shifters to show you the gears you were in. You didn’t need to look back at your rear wheel to see what gear you were using; it was displayed on the screen. Shimano has long ended Flite Deck and none of their later shifters uses Flite Deck. I like Flite Deck because it shows me exactly what chainring and rear cog I’m using. The Claris shifter doesn’t include Flite Deck capability. Eventually I found a used Dura Ace shifter on EBay and I was praying the shifter guts were in much better shape than mine was and that the Flite Deck internals were intact. (I have had one Dura Ace 9-speed shifter where the Flite Deck circuitry apparently failed.)
This whole process took about two months not just because I was dillydallying but because I was dreading having to replace the broken shifter. There was nothing to intimidate me as I had done this type of repair several times. But just the thought of having to spend the time—and it always takes me longer than I think it will—futzing around, making silly mistakes, losing stuff, dropping parts, and always, always, always encountering something I didn’t anticipate—had me dreading the task. I got the used shifter and it sat in the shop for weeks as I got up the courage to finally tear the old shifter off and put the replacement on. Today’s there’s a heat wave and it’s 95F and I’m not riding. An opportunity to TCOB.
On paper it all looks super easy: undo the brake and shifter cable, unbolt the broken shifter, put on the replacement, redo the cables, check the shifting on the rear derailleur—voila! Of course it didn’t go quite that easily in real life. Of course I had to take off the handlebar tape to get the shifter off. The Flite Deck wire is attached to the shifter with tiny screws. The cover inside the shifter over the Flite Deck wires has an even tinier screw (!); I had to go in the house to look for a jeweler’s screwdriver to get them off because my Phillips screwdrivers were too big. I did not drop any of these tiny screws, which has to be the first time ever. Of course I was cognizant of the fact that if I did drop one, I’d likely never see the screw again and there were no replacements to be had. Although I wasn’t rushing I was getting increasingly impatient and skipped a few steps I normally would not. For example, to get the replacement shifter level with the other shifter I should have used a level. But I’d have to take the bike off the stand and then try to level it by hand while trying to hold the bike upright. Instead I relied on the old brake cable housing (since I hadn’t removed it) to snug up to the shifter to set the correct location (even though it didn’t look right). The cables all went back on easily except I skipped oiling them. They weren’t smooth but I didn’t care. Adjusting the shifting took some time. It should have been quick because I was reusing the old shift cable. (A new one would stretch.) But after about ten minutes of futzing I got it “good enough”; I’ll probably have to readjust it later and probably clean and lube the cable (or replace it altogether). Finally the handlebar tape: I just rewound it back on even though it was getting tattered. All told: almost two hours. It should have taken me less than an hour. A lot of wasted time was directly related to the shop not being set up well for doing this kind of repair and partly for me forgetting certain steps because I hadn’t done this repair in maybe five years and had to backtrack.
Of course we all know the real solution to this mishegas is to get electronic shifting. No more mechanical shifter guts to fail, and when it breaks you can’t repair any of it—you have to replace the whole shifter, and that process is better left to a pro so you don’t have to do it. Keep in mind that my Dura Ace shifter lasted 23 years and 27,000 miles. That electronic shifting would have that kind of longevity is open to question. How long did you say your iPhone lasts?
When I was done, I was ready to be done even if it wasn’t completely “done”. When I ride the bike, that will be the acid test. That’s two hours of my life I’m not going to get back. But how did I feel afterwards? Besides relief that it’s no longer on my to-do list and gnawing in the back of my mind, I felt satisfaction that I got it done. That sense of accomplishment and independence is worth something but maybe not two hours of my life. But I’m slow, forgetful, and any methodical sense I had is…now, what was I saying??
