Oh man, I have a lot of stories about self-teaching myself bicycle mechanics. A few years ago I found a NOS Panasonic lugged mountain bike frame. It didn't have a fork. I paid all of 40 bucks for it at a bike swap. I bought a chrome Tange fork with a 1" threaded steer tube and a cheap Tange headset. I installed the headset (something I had done plenty of times before), it felt off, but I built up the rest of the bike with spare parts anyway. I took it out for a spin and while the bike rode great, the headset was really tight if I spun it one way and it would loosen when I spun it the other way. I took the front end apart, re-installed it, and the same thing kept happening. If you have ever looked at the cheapest Tange headset installation instructions, they are photocopy quality and small. I new something was wrong but I had done everything correctly. I gave up on the project for the time being. Every once in a while that bike would look at me funny and I'd throw it in the stand and tear down the headset, look at the instructions, and put it back together. It never went together correctly. I figured it was a bad headset and planned on buying a new one some day. Well, someday I did and as I unpacked the new part from the box, I noted that the bottom bearing cage was reverse of how I had it installed on the other headset. I looked at the instructions again, this time like a magic eye poster, I could see it...there was a slightly darker line on the bottom indicating the the cage should be oriented up. I loosened the headset nut, flipped the bearing cage, put the fork back in, tightened it all up, and smooth as butter. I have had the same issue with IKEA instructions. I am not a visual learner.
On my very first good adult bike I installed a rear rack and fenders with the fender stays outside the rack struts. An elder kindly pointed out that there may be a better way. I used to think I had to wait until a patch on an tube was dry enough to pull the plastic cover off. I took forever to patch a tire. A kindly elder pointed out that there is no need to remove it, you just throw it in the tire and go. The first wheel I ever built was terrible in so many ways. The worst part was this: I had a friend crashing in my pantry and he had some bike tools. He showed me how to lace a wheel and gave me general instructions on how to build it. "Get the spokes tight but don't strip the nipples." Okay, I grabbed the spoke wrench in his kit and got to work. At a certain point I could feel the spoke wrench starting to slip so I finished truing, stressing, repeat. Cool, done. The wheel would not stay true, were wobbly, flexy, and just awful. I kept throwing it in the stand and trying to fix it. It was only after some bike shop stalking that I noticed that there were different color spoke wrenches. I casually asked the shop keep what the difference was. Oh, of course, there are different sized spoke nipples. I had borrowed the red Park Tool wrench, I needed the black one. Yikes. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/5895ec99-09af-4943-a257-f7c504cf8b7f%40googlegroups.com.