@Criggie i have definitely found myself in situations during covid where the only bb i could order that meets a certain compatibility need is ceramic and big money
2-3 times over the past couple years it's been someone replacing an broken SX or NX eagle rd and the literal only thing i could get to replace it was XO1
no i wouldn't do something like that, those situations usually turn into them finding some random thing aftermarket or whatever
i'm lucky to work somewhere that doesn't fuss about that
@MaplePanda most shops most of the time use a flat rate and stick to it, such that the agreed upon estimate is what the customer winds up paying
i knew of one shop once that tried to use stopwatches as a genuine way of keeping things fair, i.e. you pay for the time spent and no more or less, and it basically doesn't work. things go off the rails and take longer than they're "supposed to" in bike shops too often.
but otoh the retail/repair industry has been slowly navigating it's way through margins and parts getting lower and service and local available expertise being the main thing that customers actually need. there's a lot of history with shops going by the philosophy that the real profit is always going to be in bikes and parts/accessories/clothes, and service mostly is there to be a loss leader or cost of doing business or whatever. that's all slowly getting flipped.
Computers went through this starting in in the 386-486 era... you could buy the same part from anyone, so it was a race-to-the-bottom with alternate sellers being a dollar cheaper than the other guy for identical items.
eventually the hardware sales were a nice-to-have but not a business in itself
with bike parts, a lot of it is the mfgs simply doing what the can to keep as much margin for themselves as possible and not really caring who spends what on overhead to have a brick and mortar shop
*they can
and more stuff available direct to consumer or from lower overhead operations in general
i have no problem with it, but it has caused a lot of turmoil
I so-want a finger sander - and a welder, and a mill, and a bandsaw, and a bigger lathe, and 3 phase power, and more space to set it all up.... and and and
Been idly wondering how hard it would be to build the frame I want myself.... but every time I get stuck in there's a lot to learn.
there's kinda a paradox in that there are legit, simple ways of doing a frame or two with minimal tooling, but studying how to do it with truly minimal tooling is a massive time commitment
if you already know how to braze or weld thin walled stuff and are good with hand filing then that's a plus, but those are skills that need serious development if one wants to make a frame for themself
me neither - seems to be a technology that skipped bikes. I mean - you get boat hulls and masts made from fibreglass, and car body panels and seats, etc.
> The reason glass fibers aren't used much in bicycle structures is that its stiffness is much lower than carbon. It is about 1/3rd as stiff as standard modulus carbon.
so much lip service paid to each human being a unique entity and a wealth of individual experiences and perspectives, and it's true, and then you both manage to say that at once.... that's the universe playing tricks right there.
@Michael that is a great question and is a good example of why life in bike service is hard, and why for most of the history of the industry service was looked at as a cost of doing business type affair
In automotive it's still a headache for them to navigate, but they're basically more hard line about it and for cultural reasons, customers are more accepting of that.
navigating the customer interaction and getting on the same page about reasonable expectations and costs is the difficult thing about those kinds of bikes.
@NathanKnutson I had something like that today. I'm at an outdoor equipment place similar to REI. Guy comes up with this stool he liked and he yelled at our newest employee because it cost $97
@MaplePanda Depends what's going on - there's no signal for "I'm going straight ahead" I tend to make and hold eye contact for things like that, or just stare at their tinted window where they should be.
i only played devils advocate there because i have 100% had to tell a person the only thing can get them is ceramic and 5-10x the price of the normal thing.
i've long wanted to do an experiment where i get a new in box dept store level bike and meticulously break it down and make it as best as i can possibly make it at whatever cost in time it takes, and then see how well it works.
That sounds remarkably unfun. "Yes sir, I can get you a new brake - our supplier says they expect stock in June 2024"
My bike shop does fixed/hourly depending on the task. I was glad of the fixed rate for the screeching rear brake or i'd still owe them £1000 in labour.......
@NathanKnutson But they don't, the western world has conditioned them that they have to go spend on stuff. Otherwise they wouldnt need to keep going to work to keep the hamster wheel going
And the 'stuff' has to be at least as good as what the neighbours have
Yep, cheap/bso city bikes can work ok. But ones that pretend to be MTB's are just straight up dangerous and should be banned
@AndyP But people want it that way, everyone prefers new shiny factory-made stuff. If you give someone something self-made, it's always like "but it's not as perfect as an industrial product"
So the question about servicing PD-M520's Is that really a thing? I've had 2 sets of those and the first set I wore out the cage that holds the cleat before needing to service bearings. And at £30 for a pair of pedals I think if they did need servicing then new pedals would be easy choice
And speaking of wierd questions. Who tries to make an aero jacket by adding a 1m shark fin on the back. Whilst riding a super upright hybrid? Just buy a road bike ffs
I'm going to go ahead and say simply taking the jacket off and riding in base layer is going to be ~10W faster than jacket+modification
Also, good luck wearing shark fin in a crosswind......
@Criggie Related to your answer, some of the recent thinking coming from aero testing for time trials suggest filling the void at your front (between body/arms) is quite important. People been wearing hydration bladders on their chest
So, CX racing. If my CX bike came with a 50/34 crank and I currently use it as a winter road bike. In the imaginary situation I decide to try some CX races - do I just stick knobbies on it and pretend its a 1x10 with 34t front ring?
agreed. I've done enough MTB to know how riding on grass/mud feels. And sure it'll be a bit cross chained, but pretty sure 34/11 is likely to be enough for me. I might be strong in terms of W/kg, but my raw power is pretty unremarkable
In fact overall i'll probably be utterly terrible at CX. But there's actually ~4 races within a sensible drive distance this year and it might be fun to do something different
@gschenk yeah that's a good idea. from what i've seen it's also difficult to get the real thing in that genre here in the US - some companies do sell nice Dutch bikes here, but not cheap ones.
just opened the screws on the bottom of a cheap Suntour XLR coil suspension fork and a ton of thin brown liquid came out. Was this water or is it supposed to be lubricant? Doesn’t happen to the guy in this video on a very similar fork: youtu.be/BIJPeh-D8D4?t=201
If it were a nice fork I would say no but it probably doesn't really matter here, with the qualifier that with a proper suspension grease you typically put a lot in on a fork like that. Having a lot there for water ingress to gradually deplete is what makes it low-maintenance.
If you cram it full of a higher viscosity grease it could be sluggish or weird so I probably wouldn't do that.
It only ever retailed as a €50 fork. It was only ever decorative and not designed to work or last. Good news is whatever you do to it probably cant make it work any worse
@Michael thats about normal for a cheap coil fork. they spec a coil that only works if you are 90kg. and there's probably minimal/no damping so if you are heavy enough then its just a pogo not suspension
I'd be looking for how the water got in before making any holes. But I honestly think you can do whatever you like and not harm the functionality of the fork because it probably didnt have any functionality to begin with
@Criggie That's for when people realise how bad a fork it is so they can make it into the rigid fork they should have got in the first place :P
