Confessions from the fuckwits

Dales Cannon

lightbrain about 4pm
Staff member
Replaced the pneumatic tyres under the big compressor with some nice nylon casters and then gave it a long overdue oil change. Made up a lovely catcher thingy from a drink bottle to slide under the compressor base because the drain sits back on the base plate and any spillage runs under the baseplate and everyfuckingwhere. So the catcher did its thing and carefully channeled 58.3% of the oil back under the base and thence everyfuckingwhere. Sigh. Degrease and rags... Then the breather which is some weird rubber cup with a marble in it decides it is too old to be flexible and dies. And the thread is 3/8" bsp which is not a size I have spares of so I turned up a piece of nylon and screw that into the hole with a breather on top until I get to the fittings place to get nice brass fitting to sit the breather on. Shit. And to top it off I only spilled 129mL of the new oil on the freshly cleaned compressor. Sigh. At least the old oil still tasted ok.
 

Fred Nurk

No custom title here
Minor fuckwit episode.
I'd finally managed to get hold of some replacement bearings for my creaky botttom bracket and had enough time to swap them over. Mounted the cups one at a time, knocked the bearings out, and then proceeded to press both new bearings into the cups, in-situ in the frame.
Cleaned and double greased all the crank interfaces including the funny plastic spacer that I'm still suspicious is what's actually causing the random creak. Finally tightened up the crank, all is well, only to spot the fucking BB internal spacer sitting in the bag waiting to be fitted.

Gave up and left it. The 'spare' BB I'd swapped out had a whole heap of sandy gritty shit on the spacer so I figure I'm up for swapping out bearings again in a year or so.
Do yourself a favour and put the internal sleeve in. Without it, the muck that was all over the old one would have been in the bearings. With the sleeve in, your bearing life will be several years (unless it's a FSA BB 'cos they're just shit).
So in an extension of the fuckwit episode, as well as offering repentance... I'd decided it was a good idea to fit the BB collar, just couldn't be fucked getting around to it. Went for a very brief test ride, verified the ol' BB creak had indeed been rectified. Promptly forgot about swapping in the collar until I got invited on a Hambo ride. Figured it'd be ok, we've had enough days of sunshine that the track should be dry.

Wrong. After the second very damp creek crossing my drivetrain was making the most heinous noise. It disappeared by the time I got back to the car, so with renewed determination I again pulled the cranks off, removed the BB and fitted the spacer. Holy shit there was a lot of crap from the creek that had settled in the bottom of the frame. Glad that's done before I really fucked the bearings and likely crank spindle.
 

ozzybmx

taking a shit with my boobs out
Just mix some of your chainwax PTFE in there... she'll be right.
Got some Silca Secret chainwax coming ;)

Looks like the god of fork oils, Dougal from Shockcraft recommends gold/supergliss in both legs as the migration to the Grip damper is not an issue.

I'll put that in there and order some Motorex 2.5wt, then put it in next service.
 

fjohn860

Alice in diaperland
Anyone else broken a bleed cup off in a shimano lever? Hahahahahahahahaha.

I'm always very careful threading it in not too tight but for some reason when I went to remove it last night it just wouldn't unscrew and it sheared off. May have just been a case of cheap Ali plastic over a few uses (maybe the measly 2 mid-strength beers were a factor).

Anyway, because the bleed screw hole is fairly deep and the port is in the side of the hole not the bottom I was able to twist a 4.0mm drill bit through the offending plastic by hand whilst holding the lever upside down (luckily I already had the brakes off the bike as I was replacing the hoses, barbs, olives and nuts). Also, luckily I have a litre of mineral oil too as once I'd fixed the fuck up I flushed a shit load of fluid up from the caliper through the lever.

Time to make an aluminium (or maybe stainless) bleed cup :D
 
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