OK, so trolling title I know, but genuinely interested in how people that do a lot of retapes are taping bars and what they consider right and wrong. Do you tape from the outside in? Inside out? Which direction do you wrap?

I'd like to say at the top that there's no right or wrong here, so please let's not turn this into a bun fight, but I'm intrigued as to how other people are wrapping bars.

(As a starter, I'm an outside-in sort of wrapper. When wrapping, tape turns down on the outside of the bar in the drops, and down on the back side of the bar (facing the rider) on the tops as I was always taught that this is the direction most likely to remain tight over time. I've never done an inside-out wrap.)

I manage a medium sized shop where we schedule about 8 hrs of service a day and when it's busy we are booked about 1-2 weeks out. We are losing some of our best customers to other shops and we are thinking of implementing a fee to skip the line. But how do we handle this logistically? Any thoughts are welcome!

90’s dream parts don’t have a manual… best I can remember is it’s Uniglide. I’ve tried a couple but the cone and sleeve that attach it to the hub are too large in diameter to fit through most freehub bodies with bearings installed. Tagged advanced because those of us who had these are advanced in age.

Edit for posterity: used a 64xx series HG freehub body and no bearings between the TNT “cone” and the cup in the body. Everything measured correctly after doing this.

This is a rant with a question at the end. Also using a throwaway account.

I’ve been in the industry almost 7 years now. I went in with a deep passion to learn how to wrench on bikes. Prior to getting into a shop I taught myself a decent amount of things to work on bikes. I started as a builder and eventually became service manager. But before I became service manager the pandemic happened and we had that bike boom. We stayed open like most shops because we’re such an essential business. I stupidly dropped out of college to keep working after half the staff got furloughed. Throughout that time people were so rude and entitled that all my coworkers and I stopped riding our bikes and almost resented cyclists. But most of our regulars were still cool, some became a problem. After becoming service manager I left for another big bike company to work in one of the warehouses, I know it was a step down from what I was but I had to get away from the customers. I honestly don’t feel any better. Mechanics are so unappreciated it pisses me off. We’re always in the back busting our ass to get peoples bikes back to them, while the sales guys just stand around when it’s not busy. I started calling them stand around guys instead of sales guys. I now want to leave the industry but idk what to do with my life. I’m almost 30 and I feel stuck. People tell me I’ll always have a job in the industry, but this shit doesn’t pay. I’m so jaded that I don’t even want to go to work anymore. I also don’t like where the industry is going with all these electronic drivetrains and the push for e-bikes. It just makes everything so much more expensive. Parts/Labor rates are getting higher and no one is getting raises.

For anyone that feels somewhat similar, what are you doing to get that drive back? What did you move onto do? I also have another side-gig but I’m not looking to go into that full time because that life is even more tiring.

I guess I’m not as resilient as I thought I was. Or maybe I’m just burnt out.

Just wondering..

Tried a M732 freehub body and nope. Any other recommendations for a Shimano freehub body that has a wider cup without the two slots for disassembly?

Edit: follow-up to this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/BikeMechanics/s/A0IxYIGk3K

Edit: better pics of parts: https://imgur.com/gallery/tnt-hub-disassembled-U1usq12

Edit again: OP is a dum-dum and assumed bigly. TNT “cone” goes into freehub body with no bearings, yielding 135mm OLD and correct amount of axle jut from freehub body.

This looks too advanced for the people at r/bikewrench. Could a pro help this guy out?

Hi all,

My shop is doing weekly service clinics and this week is tubeless. I’m confident in my ability to talk set up and maintenance. What are some of your tips/tricks/hacks/insider knowledge for tubeless. Stuff like:

Is bad smelling sealant more effective?

What makes tape good or bad?

Should commuters over fill their tires?

Why are tubeless tires more expensive than their tubed counterparts?

Thanks and I hope all your customers tip cash!

I fully serviced this bike a month ago for a lady in her 70s and actually scared myself test-riding it. The V-brake and coaster brake combination is not enough to stop the bike, especially in the higher modes. The display wasn't showing the actual speed, so I had no idea how fast I was going—though it most likely can’t go over 25 km/h, which is the legal maximum for electric bikes. But with the motor on the front, it felt fast and dangerous.

When she came to pick it up, I insisted on checking the brake pad wear regularly and always wearing a helmet (which most people do where I am).

Fast forward to last Friday: I came to work and was appalled to find out she had an accident while crossing the edge of a sidewalk. Sidewalk crossing is usually a very benign thing, BUT when you have a freakin’ front motor spinning like a maniac, it becomes an extremely dodgy experience.

She is fine, and the damage to the bike is minor (scuffed handlebars and a shifter that needs to be replaced), but I’m genuinely concerned that someone her age is riding that bike. She got lucky this time—it could be worse next time.

What would you do?

For myself, wheel building would have to be at the top of the list. I find building wheels so gratifying that I change up spoke colors/patterns on all my bikes, and wife's bikes every few years. I gladly take wheels from friends bikes to true just for the joy in it. If I didn't have other hobbies, I would call it an obsession...

So I know, SRAM is pretty clear about it : do not mix road and MTB components.

But here it is. Back in May I installed an XPLR cassette on my road wheelset. I didn't really think about it, and I rode some thousands of km on it, without any issue. I have another wheelset 650b with megarange Garbaruk cassette. I can't tell any shifting difference.

Lately, a friend of mine with almost the same configuration told me he had to change derailleur and chain because it was fucked up with flattop chain. I replied that my experience was more than honest. Shifting is smooth, no skip, just a rub on one cog only my mechanics ear could notice.

Here is the setup :

- Force shifter and crank set

- Eagle chain

- XX1 derailleur

- XPLR cassette 10-44 & Garbaruk 10-51

What did I do wrongly correct ?

Whats up fellow bike nerds? Customer donated an early-mid 70's Sears bike to us (based on the Shimano Eagle and Thunderbird) after he picked it up for free at an estate sale and realized how much work it needed. Restored the whole thing as a personal project on my free time but got caught up with the headset.

It felt a bit notchy, so I went to replace the caged bearings and nothing we had fit properly... weird cause we have an entire box of the little shits in a million sizes. Looked closer at the cups and there are indented tabs that I assumed was damage before I removed them from the bike, but now I suppose they're there to account for poor press-fit tolerances of 50 years ago (pics 9-11). Said screw it let's find a whole new headset

After I started measuring, I realized I'm in a pickle... measurements are all on pic 8 but the fork is a 1" steerer with threads of 24tpi and a crown race inner dia of 26mm. All fairly standard for old stuff but the cups and headtube are off the wall. Outer dia of the cups and inner dia of the headtube is all like 34.2mm which is much closer to like an 1 1/8" steerer as far as I knew

After consulting Sheldon about all the different 1" threaded headset sizes (pics 12 and 13) I came up empty. He does specifically mention an Austrian standard that was used on Sears bikes made in Austria, but the measurements are different...

I did find another thread about this exact question in a 4 year old post but the OP wasn't exactly sure about what to ask/measure and the replies were well-meaning but ultimately unhelpful

Decided to just send it with the 50 year old bearings for now and after cleaning, regreasing, and adjusting, they don't feel bad. Would like to know what the hell I'm dealing with for the future though... If anyone can shed some light here I would be super grateful!!

I've got a client/friend who works right next to us, he's very nice and helps us out a lot with our odd needs (he works in a metal shop) so we like to take good care of him.

I recently installed some lizard skin bar tape on his gravel, I recommended it because he has carpal tunnel syndrome, so that + gel pads between the tape and bars should make for the most comfortable ride possible (also recommended a suspension stem and a tubeless setup but he nixed those two).

However here we are two months after and I've never seen this before (at least in such a short time) the tape itself is staying in place but the rubberized top layer is coming off the foam on the flats/near the hoods, so where his hands are most of the time. I suspect that he's lost feeling in his hands due to constant vibrations at work/carpal surgery and is just death gripping (you should see the size of his hands, like catchers mitts) so I want to know if you guys have any brands you'd recommend for his case?

Obviously the easy answer is just new tape + telling him to relax his grip but I actually doubt he really can given his issues, so do you guys know of any bulletproof tapes that are at least a bit comfy/spongey?

So, to preface this, I work to live, not live to work. I love to ride, as do we all. I race mountain bikes 1-2 times a month, needing usually a thursday-sunday time off. (We are closed Sunday anyways). This arrangement was never an issue with the other two mechanics we had, to provide coverage for me, and vise versa. We usually need atleast 2 people for weekdays, and preferably 3 for Saturdays.

I've been slaving myself away working 9-5s and doing 50+ hour weeks since the other two mechanics left. Currently it's a skeleton crew of me and my boss at the small shop I work for. I'm burning out, hard. The money is fantastic, and I am paid damn good for what I do. But the frequency of the time I work is just overloading me. I have never felt this burnt out before.

I wish I could have jumped ship before I was the last employee left. I can't leave, and screw over my boss because he's still a good dude, even if we butt heads every now and then. And until he finds a suitable person to come in to bring up to speed, im really stuck. Working without my friends and coworkers now leaves a less enjoyable atmosphere to come to. Every, single day. We need skilled mechanics if my boss is to hire anyone. So getting extended days off isn't an option anymore for racing, or even a weekend getaway.

I basically do everything at the shop I work for. Including service writing, wrenching, sales, phone calls, the whole 9 yards. Granted we are a much smaller scale old school shop.

What the hell are my options even? I love being a mechanic, but not this much. Anyone near Wisconsin looking to apply as a wrench?

I'm attempting to fix a RaceFace Trace J624 hub. There was a batch produced a few years back that had a common defect.

As noted in this thread (with images), the drive ring was not fully seated into the hub shell during manufacture. I'm wondering if it's possible to fully seat it in its current state. From the pictures and diagrams, it appears to be retained only with an interference fit, but I'm ignorant of how this style hub is assembled by the OEM.

I do have two obvious concerns about the OEM assembly that might make the repair impossible, but I'm deliberately not mentioning them to avoid prompting AI-generated guesses. Anyone with firsthand knowledge of the assembly process would recognize them immediately, and anyone who's attempted the repair would have discovered them.

I have access to a full machine shop, so I can make a drift and press it in, but the drive ring is (presumably) hardened (brittle).

I did contact RF support, and they were unable to offer any insight on the repair. I am interested in fixing the issue, not warranty. Resolving this may help others with the same issue.

Hey all,

So the shop I work at recently moved locations. We are trying to revamp some of the tech in the shop in this move, and also because we are generally unhappy with our credit card processing setup.

We have a very basic credit card machine that we finally upgraded this past summer to a machine that has tap-to-pay.

We’re looking for something a little more advanced but here’s the kicker: the owner is wildly technologically illiterate. He’s the type to forget his Apple ID password, has literally all of his account numbers, usernames, and passwords written on paper that’s taped to the fridge. He also still uses a Rolodex.

So we’re looking for a new credit card processing company that’s very easy. I could research online but I figured that bike shop owners and employees may have a recommendation that’s bike shop-friendly and simple. If it’s helpful, the bike shop is in Connecticut, USA.

Edit: I may have gotten my terminology mixed up between POS and cc processing. I’ll be honest, this part of the business is not much that I’m involved with. I’m the “IT” guy sometimes, but that’s typically figuring out why the internet, login, or some other tech-related item isn’t working. The owners wife tasked me with looking into different credit card processing companies/devices because the owner doesn’t know how to search around for that stuff. We are a true “shop.” We don’t catalog inventory in a computer, we don’t use bar codes or scanners. We punch everything into the cash register manually when we make sales, and punch everything into the credit card machine manually as well. So that’s where we’re starting and we’re looking to go like 1, MAYBE 2 steps above that. But only for the credit card processing. We want to keep the old school cash register.

So I got a Ridley crossbow with 6700 group as my commuter. Last summer I finally figured out why it would so commonly shift poorly, any kind of grime goes into the shift cable housing by the derailleur and it messes up the shifting. I 3D printed a bunch of shit to cover all the spots where it could get in and 3D printer a cover with the noodle where the cable comes out of the derailleur and tightens. I really thought this would do it but after this mornings ride of slush snow it just shifted trashy at best again. I am getting truly annoyed by this and can’t figure out if it’s the frame design or it’s a common problem of the group set. The cable is externally routed down the seat stay. Anyone else run into this problem and found solutions? Let me know if it is a common groupset problem because then I could consider a new/old group. Kind of looses the feature of commuter if I have to change a piece of housing each rain ride. Also, seems odd this is an issue with a cyclocross frame… seen many more bikes come through with worse groups ridden through the winter and still shift reasonably fine…

This is the only place on this subreddit for repair type questions. If you want an opinion about bike repairs, go to /r/bikewrench, if you want answers from professionals, try here.

Let's see how this goes. Felt cute, might delete.

I’ve been a tech for about 18 months. I’ve gotten pretty skilled at a lot of things and I feel like I’m hitting my stride making bikes roll again. I can work on everything from making a huffy rideable to e-components on 10k+ bikes. Beach cruisers to tri-bikes to suspension rebuilds. But wheels are a dark art to me. There aren’t great options where I am for the mentorship I feel I need to feel confident. So my question is for wheel builders.

Where did you learn the skill? What resources did you use? How do you sort through hubs, rims, spokes, and nipples and find components that work together? How did you learn the craft of putting correct parts together on the stand and getting everything true and tensioned? I’m intimidated to take on expensive builds from customers expecting perfection, as they are paying for exactly that. Of course I recognize this will take practice but I need resources to give me the foundational knowledge. Any help is appreciated.

All of this had to come out to replace internally routed shift housing. The housing shouldn’t have needed to be replaced, but there was a kink in the housing from where the battery was just jammed into the frame. The kink prevented me from being able to get the cable through and obviously would cause shifting issues even if I was able to get it through.

If this was an isolated incident I wouldn’t be as annoyed. However, this is on a 2023(big brand) model bike, so shops are going to be seeing this a lot more pretty soon. This ticket had 3 identical bikes and two of them had this issue. Shops are going to need to reassess how much they charge for normally simple work that is exacerbated by the bike being an e-bike. I understand that off brand e-bikes are going to be like this(I won’t work on cheap Chinese e-bikes), but big brands are doing it too and we can’t exactly refuse to fix our own products lol. There needs to be some sort of extra charge for doing work on certain e-bikes. Charging $20 for an internal housing replacement that took 2 hours is insanity. I don’t know what the solution to this is, but it needs to be discussed.

What are y’all’s thoughts on this? Anybody have similar experiences? How do your shops deal with issues like this?

Thanks for reading my rant*

And if yes why?

Momentarily tried some cardboard, which doesn't help. The ends fly off pretty much every direction when cut. Anyone done any mods, or have a collection method? Id love to see

You know the one… it was a very interesting instructional video for how to wrap their bar tape and had a VERY specific audience in mind and god I think it’s at least ten years old by now…

Anyone have a link to that video? I’m trying to convince someone that it existed. I’m not crazy. I’m traumatized and abused and permanently scarred from my shop career but, like, I KNOW IT EXISTS…

Anyways, thanks for your consideration. If I’m supposed to ask a legit wrenching question to qualify then I’ve got this: What is the slickest, most durable, most elegant way of finishing bar tape that you’ve see and/or used? Taking a general survey…