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Had a day where every bottom bracket I touched was seized solid
Three bikes came in on Tuesday, all with the same problem. First was a rusty old mountain bike, crank arm wouldn't budge. Second was a commuter that looked clean but the cartridge unit was fused like it was welded. Third was a road bike someone tried to swap themselves and left the cups cross-threaded so bad I had to use a blowtorch to get them out. By the end of the day my arms were dead and I smelled like penetrating oil. Anyone else get those runs where the same exact failure keeps showing up?
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sethm582mo ago
Is it just me or does the universe sometimes decide you're gonna fix the same problem over and over until you've had enough? I swear there's a pattern with bikes and appliances and even cars where you'll see nothing but seized bottom brackets for a week, then it's all frozen seatposts, then all stripped pedal threads. Like the mechanical world has a rotating cast of failures that all show up at your door at once. I've had days where I pulled three rusted-in headsets out of old Schwinns and another where three different customers brought in bikes with broken spokes on the same rear wheel side. It makes me wonder if there's some cosmic algorithm that delays all these failures until they hit the same shop on the same afternoon.
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mason.drew2mo ago
Oh man, YES. This is so real it hurts. I had a run last fall where four bikes in two days all had the same exact seized seatpost problem. Two were aluminum posts stuck in steel frames, one was steel in steel, and the last was some fancy carbon post that somehow bonded itself to the frame. I spent more time with a pipe wrench and PB Blaster than actually fixing anything. And my forearms were wrecked for like a week after. It's wild how the universe just lines up the same nightmare job and sends it your way back to back like that.
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