Things You've Learnt From Fettling

[wreck rider]

The large mallet, used for tent pegs in the summer, should not really become your go to tool for all those delicate micro adjustments.

 

[Tim Hall]

When fettling a fixed wheel bike, if it is in a stand, put a toe-strap round the seat tube and rim.

Ooh, there's a blood sacrifice saving idea. Noted.

 

[Poacher]

The rear dropouts on the Bob Jackson frame I bought second-hand nearly 40 years ago measure 120mm rather than the 126mm I'd always assumed. No wonder it's been such a struggle to get a 130mm hub into place.

Maybe I should consider a fixed/SS option instead.

 

[GuyBoden]

What have you learnt from a spot of DIY fettling, the easy way or the hard way?

Patience..........................................

 

[bpsmith]

Patience..........................................

Spot on there!

For a number of reasons, I have found that I am less stressed more recently. I have also noticed that working on the bike goes a lot better now. Definitely down to not panicking when something doesn’t go to plan.

 

[Tim Hall]

Saying out loud where I've put the bit I've just taken off, or the tool I've just used. This helps me remember where it is, saving hours of fruitless searching.

 

[alecstilleyedye]

righty tighty, leftey loosey, apart from left-handed threaded pedals of course

 

[TheDoctor]

If you remove the bolt but not the washer on a square taper crank, your crank tool will then remove the thread quite effectively if you lean on it hard enough.
Everyone within earshot will then learn some new words...

 

[Vantage]

Patience..........................................

Guaranteed it'll be the smallest job that sets off the biggest chain reaction of other jobs needing doing and it always happens when I'm on the strictest time limit which will inevitably get my blood pressure high enough to blow Mt St Helens a second time.
Straight after that happens, the Allen key will round off.

 

[bigjim]

Always take the bike for a couple of runs around the block after you have done any work on it.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

A little and often prevents the big fails...

 

[Ming the Merciless]

It always go wrong in front of an audience no matter how experienced you are.

 

[Skanker]

Don’t fettle in a boat until you find a way to block things from falling into the bilge, it’s too deep to rescue tools from and stinks of old oil and diesel!

 

[MontyVeda]

When i was a kid I was always rummaging in my dad's toy box (tool box), much to his annoyance. Then at some point around the age of 8 I worked out that all his steel bone shaped things were something to do with the little hexagonal things on my bike, and started loosening the seat post, wheel nuts and brake blocks and tightening them back up again. The biggest learning curve was when i found a spanner big enough to fit the headset on my Raleigh Tomahawk and undid that, only to watch all the tiny ball bearings scatter all over the garage floor. The challenge was to put it back together before Dad got home from work, otherwise i'd get a bollocking. I'm sure only 20% of the headset bearings went back in but it seemed to work afterwards.

When i was about 10, Dad got hold of an old frame from a workmate and some wheels from a skip and various other bits and we built a bike together, which first meant stripping the frame back to the metal and repainting it. I got Dad's big spanner and suggested we removed the forks. Dad suggested we didn't. I insisted it was fine, we just needed something to catch all the ball bearings in. I remember his perplexed expression to this day as I undid the forks and let the bearings drop into a big stork margarine tub, he was probably wondering how i knew what was going to happen.

I was a terrible as a kid for dismantling stuff then trying to put it back together before Dad found out... I think I almost always got away with it too.

 

[Salty seadog]

Don't suck what you can't see.