There’s an urgent need for bike builders – could you help?

biker phil wrote:

Many bike shops need decent mechanics full stop. Google bike builds hall of shame, have a laugh at the bikes from Halfords and Tesco etc etc with fork wrong way round, front disc calliper opposite side to brake caliper. Hilarious.

Halfords seem to come in for a lot of stick here. They actually feature only once in the Hall of Shame blog. The majority seem to be supermarket and catalogue bikes.

Sriracha wrote:

biker phil wrote:

Many bike shops need decent mechanics full stop. Google bike builds hall of shame, have a laugh at the bikes from Halfords and Tesco etc etc with fork wrong way round, front disc calliper opposite side to brake caliper. Hilarious.

Halfords seem to come in for a lot of stick here. They actually feature only once in the Hall of Shame blog. The majority seem to be supermarket and catalogue bikes.

When I worked as a bike mechanic, I had a series of maybe half a dozen customers who had bought their bikes at the local Halfords, all with the same fault; the front brake cable was wrapped around the head tube, so that when turning, the cable tightened up and the brake came on.  A couple of them said that they'd taken it back because of this fault, but were told that it was right.

The problem with Halfords is that most of the mechanics are good, but, like everything else, people always remember bad service, and that gives them a bad name.

Depends on the bike shop but I suspect just from seeing the boxes everywhere that most major brand bike shops still just do the "take out of box, attach handlebars to stem, attach pedals" approach. 

I'm not denigrating it and they probabaly check indexing and brakes etc as well before passing it onto the customer, but the bike build is normally the younger staff job with the more experienced doing the repairs jobs / major servicing.

I've bought two bikes in boxes, one (a Raleigh child's bike) from Halfords, one (a basic Dawes mountain bikes) from random eBay seller. In both cases there was a little more it than pedals and straighten/attach bars, but not much. Nothing that anyone used to maintaining their own bikes would struggle with. They were both some years back though.

I'm level 3 EAL (trained at the brilliant Cycle Systems Academy). At the end of the Level 2 course, as our final exam, we had to build a bike up from scratch - frame completely stripped, forks separate, all components and cables ready on the bench, all the right tools - to "showroom ready" state. I managed mine in 64 minutes, with only the saddle angle cited as an error by the meticulous trainer. 

There were no nasty suprises though, unlike the Halfords bike I built up for a woman who'd had it delivered partly assembled with zero instructions. This particular gem had a front derailleur / axle length issue that meant the chain ground against the inside plate in 1st gear. Had to angle the derailleur non-parallel with the chainrings to make it work. Messed with my ocd something awful. 

64 mins? Well impressed!

I've taken longer to remove a very stubborn seat tube

Depends how much is wrong with it and how much the mechanic cares.
They can expect to earn significantly below the national average.

Rick_Rude wrote:

If ever a level of complexity was over egged!! Bikes are at the very bottom of any mechanical hierarchy. Anyone should be capable of sorting their own bike out. I replaced a steering rack on my car just following a forum post on an owners website. About the hardest thing to do on a bike a true a bent wheel or get a headset in, most job can de done with one of those £30 Halfords toolkits if you've got a run of the mill bike. I know that sounds arrogant but I've always been of the give it a go yourself ideology and it's fun to take stuff apart. Occasionally you break stuff but you're rarely losing in the long run. One of my mates HAS to have his bike serviced by the lbs and he'll take it for really minor stuff like derailleur indexing adjustment even though all he had to do was turn an adjuster. If you're going to do anything with your time off., stop riding for a day or so and take your bike to bits and rebuild it. Before you know it you'll be swapping groupsets.

As an ex-bike mechanic, let me assure you that fixing almost anything on a bike is beyond the capability of most people, and a lot of my work came from people who'd tried, failed and made things worse. 

Classic case was a truly arrogant twat, named Steve B, who tried to replace a cable in his RH STI, screwed it up so badly that a new shifter had to be fitted.  He also tried to avoid paying, but fortunately, the FSB legal department made mincemeat of him.

I've never received payment with such deep gratitude.  He really was the worst person I'd ever had to deal with, and a mechanical idiot to boot.

..., but fortunately, the FSB legal department made mincemeat of him.

/quote]

You don't mess with the KGB!!

Bike maintenance is easy, if all things go well. Where the issues, and skill, is in it is:

1) Having the right tools and knowing how they work. Screwdrivers and hex keys are fine, but fitting press fit BBs, or correctly torqueing bolts not so much. At home you can do without, but not so much when building for someone else.

2) Having the skill to make it all neat and tidy. Well wrapped bars or neat cables. Also things like threading internal cables.

3) the skill to know what to do if something it wrong.

I am happy to do my own bike work, but I would never do it for other people, especially not for money.

Anyone who believes that working on modern bikes is "simple", servicing charges are a "rip-off" and getting your gears to work perfectly is about turning a barrel adjuster by half a turn is suffering from Dunning–Kruger effect and should be sent to a compulsory work experience session in a proffesionally run workshop.

The fact that there’s more than enough work shows that bike mechanics provide a valuable service. Keep up the good work - it is important and appreciated.

This because people don’t acknowledge that skilled bike mechanics do a valuable job. A fully skilled bike mechanic who can service complex components deserves much more than the pittance they generally receive. 

That can be said about many jobs. It has come to light during these trying times. 

Yep. Hence why I've stopped.

That's because they are key workers