Today's public service message - check your components regularly for signs of metal fatigue!  Creaks, ticking noises, stress marks, wrinkles or creases in the metal, and corrosion are all bad signs.  Also, don't over-torque lightweight components! 

This bike had stuck & stripped bolts which made getting the old pivot bearings out rather a challenge.  Here you can see Aaron working his magic...

Here is the bolt he removed, and the nut it was threaded into.  Mission accomplished! 

Now all the bearings can go in...

Here are another few photos of the problems we've seen in the repair shop recently...

This tire had the tread completely worn through in many sections, including this one where you can see the tube sticking out through the tire!  It's amazing the tire wasn't flat when it arrived...

These brake pads were badly adjusted, and when they dove off the bottom of the rim, the brake arm started to hit the knobs of the tire itself.  These wore away parts of the aluminum arms, and made the braking feel pretty awful (as you might imagine)! 

Next week - photos of something much nicer.  We promise. 

For today's photo, we give you another ugly example of what northwest winters do to bottom brackets. 

The amount of sand which has made its way into this fairly new BB30 is just astounding.  Of course, they've been spreading it all over the roads these last few days, so I'm sure we'll see more of these in the near future.  As you can imagine, the bearings feel less than smooth!

If you've been riding in the rain (as most of us have at this time of year), chances are the inside of your bottom bracket looks like this:

Even when the outside of your bike looks clean (as this Seven did), water finds its way into the bearings.  There it displaces the grease and causes rust.  The rust wears the bearings out, making the cranks harder to turn and slowing you down.  Yuck! 

Bottom brackets should be pulled out during the winter, cleaned, and regreased.  Even the new cartridge units need this type of service, since the water will get in eventually despite the better seals! 

In the winter, our bikes take a beating.  For commuter bikes, extra maintenance goes a long way to making many of your parts last longer, and keeping the bike on the road! 

From now until the end of the year, bring in your hardworking bike for service and get a standard tune-up (usually $100) for the price of a basic tune-up - only $50! 

If you schedule in advance to have your tune-up during the week between Christmas and New Years, we'll also throw in new derailleur cables & housing - an additional $45 value.  $145 worth of work for only $50! 

Call or email us to schedule your tune-up today!

This is a great example of why these are our favorite commuter tires of all time.  The photos are a little blurry, but that is in fact a nail that went completely through the side of the tire - and didn't cause a flat.  The customer was completely unaware of the nail when they brought their bike in for other work.  Believe it or not, we see similar examples with these amazing tires all the time.  All we had to do was pull it out, but we took the time for a few photos first! 

We get to work on interesting bikes sometimes: here is a very early suspension fork which needed rethreading.  This model was apparently the fork of choice for some of the original repack mountain bikers in the 1970s!