Discoveries made during maintenance.

[GOATever]

I decided to give the bike I used for last weekend’s challenge ride a check and adjust today. There was a faint creak coming from the headset, so I took it apart to investigate. The bearings were fine, the compression ring and spacers were fine, then I spotted something. The star nut was almost out of the top of the steerer. I’ve never had cause to take the headset apart on this bike in the 4 years I’ve had it, so I guess it’s always been like that. I have a star nut setter in my toolkit, so I got the nut down to it’s correct 15mm depth. The creak disappeared as well, odd that . What hidden horror stories have you discovered on a bike you’ve bought?

[Jimbo.]

The star nut is only needed to preload the headset bearings. The creaking disappearing is almost certainly due to headset being taken apart and reassembled, and not the position of the nut.

[hondafanatic]

In ye olde days when I was still a school boy learning bike maintenance I decided to strip everything from my frame to get it painted a different colour...when I loosened off the stem bolt that clamped the handlebar, the handle bar fell in half and the two halves swung around by the cables.

I must have completely over tightened it and fractured it all the way around...one more heavy landing and it might have snapped in half!!

[GOATever]

Jimbo. said:

The star nut is only needed to preload the headset bearings. The creaking disappearing is almost certainly due to headset being taken apart and reassembled, and not the position of the nut.

Yes, the star nut is an anchor point, and once you’ve tensioned the headset, and tightened the stem bolts, you can chuck the top cap and bolt in the bin if you want, but having the star nut clearing the steerer was about to make life difficult regarding getting the tension.

[GOATever]

hondafanatic said:

In ye olde days when I was still a school boy learning bike maintenance I decided to strip everything from my frame to get it painted a different colour...when I loosened off the stem bolt that clamped the handlebar, the handle bar fell in half and the two halves swung around by the cables.

I must have completely over tightened it and fractured it all the way around...one more heavy landing and it might have snapped in half!!

I’ve done something similar in the past. I tightened the bar clamps down to what I thought was about 5Nm, on Carbon bars, when I later loosened the clamp to adjust the position so that the hoods were higher, the bar came apart. I guess I couldn’t judge the Torque very well .

[lufbramatt]

A bloke over the road from me asked me to have a look at the gears on his bike (bike shaped object made of scaffold tubes) as he must see me heading out on rides quite often. No problem...easy 10 min job to re index the gears I thought. Famous last words.....

Closer inspection revealed a collapsed bearing in one pedal, the other was cross threaded at a jaunty angle giving a weird sideways rotation when pedalling- I can't get it out of the crank. The bottom bracket was loose, as were the rear bearing cups, good few mm of movement at the rim. Went to tighten the bearings to discover the rear axle was banana shaped so I couldn't adjust the bearings. New axle on order...

Should have denied all knowledge and sent him to the bike shop....

[GOATever]

lufbramatt said:

A bloke over the road from me asked me to have a look at the gears on his bike (bike shaped object made of scaffold tubes) as he must see me heading out on rides quite often. No problem...easy 10 min job to re index the gears I thought. Famous last words.....

Closer inspection revealed a collapsed bearing in one pedal, the other was cross threaded at a jaunty angle giving a weird sideways rotation when pedalling- I can't get it out of the crank. The bottom bracket was loose, as were the rear bearing cups, good few mm of movement at the rim. Went to tighten the bearings to discover the rear axle was banana shaped so I couldn't adjust the bearings. New axle on order...

Should have denied all knowledge and sent him to the bike shop....

I’ve seen bikes that have been bought from some places that sell bikes, amongst other things, with full on hilarity all over the place. Including, but not limited to, the forks being on back to front, gear cables in the brakes, brake cables in the gear mechs, sprockets in the cassette back to front, cassettes hardly torqued up at all, directional chains on arse about face, headsets that haven’t been tensioned adequately before the stem bolts have been tightened, headsets tensioned to the point you’d need to be Magnus Ver Magnusson to turn the bars, directional tyres on back to front, the list goes on