S.O.S

Hello, yes, AA please. No, no, it's a bike, a guest bike. No, it's not mine, but I am an AA member. It has a flat tyre, again. Yes. The seventh in around three rides. No, no, I don't have a pump, it was out of my pack because I was patching tubes again and forgot to put in back in. The tyres? Continental Race CX... Hello, er, hello...

 

Mechanical Mayhem Day...

Cracking day of mechanical destruction and incompetence, mostly other people's for a change - started off with William, Dave's lad, noticing that his chain felt a bit rough, it was 100% dead on a new cassette. Doh... Fitted a new chain for him before he went off to Dalby, then headed out into the Peak.

This bit involved no mechanicals, just chickens, tea and cake.

Spotted the universal symbol of distress - upturned bike with head-scratching riders at the bottom of New Allotments. Broken chain and no chain tool. Or multi-tool. Or joining link. Fixed it and gave them my spare link. Good karma, I thought.

Twenty minutes later on the Roych, upturned bike number two with rider flagging me down - 'Do you have a pump we could borrow?' Er, and the rest, an inner tube and some tyre levers. Because the spare tube had a big hole in too. More karma.

Looking back down the approach to Jacob's Ladder. A nice walk for a slow, unfit,
technically useless excuse for a mountain biker.

Last steep climb of the day. Turned left at the top of the cobbles. Keeping it smooth and, boof, snapped chain. So much for karma. Fixed it by taking out dead links and pushing pin back in and minced home very carefully.

Popped in to see Dave Next Door who's been building some Kona carbon hardtail as a race bike. The headset looked odd. The headset looked odd because for some reason, Dave had managed to fit the top bearing cover, the dome-shaped thing, in place of the crown race. On a zero stack, fat-tube headset. With a large hammer and a screwdriver.

Thank god for crown race removers. Disassembled it in the grip of a special sort of wonderment. Dave is a qualified mountain bike leader and has passed a test of his basic mechanical skills. Not sure I have much confidence in test standards any more.

On the plus side, I had some nice cake at the farm near Barber Booth. And I have vague hopes that there may be just a little good karma left over if I don't laugh too much at the headset thing. I did promise Dave I wouldn't tell anyone about that particular debacle though. No karma whatsoever I guess then... Oh well.

Fork hell

I'm essentially conservative when it comes to my own bikes. I don't see the point in changing things that work well, I tend to replace like with like unless something comes along that's either a definite upgrade or free, preferably both...

... so the trashed Pushed Pike - anodising worn off big time, gritty slurry getting in past seals and gungeing up fork as a result - on the Pace is a pain in the butt. It's a brilliant fork, eats rocks at speed unlike a standard Pike, and has a steamroller-like implacability to it.

One problem, they don't make Pike Air U-Turns any more.

Rats. I've bored 'them as ought to know' stupid with questions, been confused by the new RS line-up with multiply revised Revelations in 2010 and 2011 spec, thought about Sektors, tried to work out which other RS fork will take the Push damper gubbins currently in the Pike and the answer seems to be to buy a Revelation with the dual wotnot rebound damping and stick the Push damper in the coil Pike that's currently on the Blue Pig.

Or I could stick the coil Pike on the Pace and Push it then put a cheaper Sektor on the Pig. Or I could hang around eBay with my hands in my pockets, whistling quietly, until a suitable donor Pike appears. Or... I could just buy a bloody fork, stick it on the Pace and then go ride it.

And then there's colour. The Pace looks right with black forks, but mostly 2011 Revelations seem to be white. And what is a 'titanium spring tube' anyway? Hmmmph...

Sod it. White 2011 Revelation RLT Ti it is. And if I don't like it. Or it looks wrong. Or both. I can simply stick it on the Blue Pig and put the Pushed coil Pike on the Pace. Or could I buy a 140mm Maxle Recon and stick the innards from the Pushed Air U-Turn in it. Or I guess I could just go ride my bike.

Sorry, just wanted to share my inner turmoil. If the Revs were readily available in black I'd just buy the bloody things. Or I could get a Sektor and save 200 quid. Or...

My gormless battle against the forces of evil...

Like the Buzzcocks said:

"Turn up early in time for our date

But then you turn up late

Something goes wrong again.

Need a drink go to the pub

But the bugger's shut

Something goes wrong again

Something goes wrong again

And again and again and again again and...

Something goes wrong again.

Ah something goes wrong again

Something goes wrong again

Something goes wrong again..."

You get the idea. But the question is, where do you cut your losses. Where do you say, that's enough and look for help. Talking bike maintenance, not life, though they have their similarities. Funny how simple faults in both escalate into WWIII. So, just for the sake of argument and illustration, it starts with a worn bottom bracket in a Cotic Road Rat, maybe a cheap Isis one that's been thrashed senseless for, oh I dunno, 18 months or so.

And the grease that it slicked through its threads has long since gone. With the result that the bottom bracket and the frame have built up a touchingly intimate relationship. You know the stuff, they are so close that they don't know where one starts and the other ends. Sweet.

 Before...

So it begins. With moderate persuasion. And nothing moves. So it's out with the Plus Gas, the world's most elusive fluid, and an overnight soaking. But still nothing budges. Maybe this is the point where a sensible person says, enough and resorts to, 'professional help'. But not this idiot. Bolt the extractor in place and use a lever, a very long lever, the upright from a bike stand, erm, maybe. Not that I'd know of course.

And that sick feeling when what ought to be the bottom bracket succumbing to ungentle persuasion actually turns out to be the steel tool stripping the alloy splines from the bottom bracket. Ooops. And then you notice that the insert on the other side, that you thought was slightly truncated, has in fact sheered and two thirds of it is still screwed into the frame.

At which point anyone with half a brain would seek professional help. But, I'm quite stupid and stubborn and somehow the external bit of the bottom bracket ends up getting sawn off and chiselled. Ooops. Not a good idea. Not even sure where it came from.

And this is the defining moment, where it is, of course, too embarassing to slink off, tail between legs, to a professional mechanic and explain, haltingly,  just how it is that your frame is clinging stubbornly to the stunted, battered remnants of a bottom bracket, with no obvious way of getting it out.

But of course, that's the nub of it. Going past the point where your mistake is redeemable. Jumping off the edge. The moment familiar to anyone who's ever dismantled a transistor radio. Or a toaster. Or a VCR player. Or an STI shifter. Or an iBook for that matter. When you know, at a gut level, that if you undo those screws, it will never go back together again. But you can't stop. You have to break it. To see how it works. Or just because.

Step away from the seized bottom bracket. And think. Hard. Furrowing your brow will concentrate thought waves more thoroughly.

Anything is preferable to the humiliation of turning up at your local bike shop with a frame in which the bottom bracket is not just seized solid, but all means of turning it have been perversely removed by an idiot. You could like and say your mum / mate / the dog did it, but that's not going to cut it. They will know instinctively you are solely responsible and, as soon as the door closes behind you, the workshop will reverberate to howls of scornful laughter.

So... competing solutions. Hacksawing through a hardened steel axle - exactly how much holiday do I have left again? Then the revelation that if caustic soda can remove stuck alloy seatposts from steel frames, then maybe it can do the same - ah, good God, Keanu Reeves is a flat-faced wooden excuse for an actor, sorry, random channel hopping - to an alloy-cupped bottom bracket in a steel frame.

Nasty stuff. Chemical gloves and goggles, plasticene cups and seals to hold it all in place. The careful pouring and re-pouring for three days, watching bubbles rising and the solution turning a filthy grey. And refresh. Then one morning, the liquid's gone. Enough aluminium dissolved to let it through. Disebelief. Rinse, chisel, hammer, bang, and it's out, mostly. Paper-thin, alkali-ravaged aluminium and the mangled remnants of something that used to be and now isn't quite.

 Something that used to be...

A thorough rinse to remove the residue, which amazingly didn't kill the paintwork, then in with a new bottom bracket complete with copious amounts of copperslip. And a deep sigh of relief, because now no-one need ever know just how stupid I really am. And really, I am quite, quite stupid. But there you go. I guess most of us have done something similarly dim and maybe even got away with it sometimes.

 Caustic soda'd...

Next time, I'll know when to stop. Er, right...