I add my congratulations on trying something new and out of your comfort zone, especially skills that can add to your love of cycling. I've thought since first reading of your Nevada bike adventures and mechanical challenges you should try learning to work on your bikes . I guess it was around 2008 that I decided to stop paying for bike mechanic work and learn to do it myself. I bought a half dozen bike repair books, appropriate bike tools to get me started and took a couple classes at my LBS. I started out with basic stuff like installing a derailer or swapping cables and gradually added to my skills from there. Sometimes I would get stuck and head up to my LBS to ask a question. Also RH the bike guy rocks . I still check his videos when trying something I haven't encountered before like blasted grip shifters, so many models and different cable threading in many.I don't like' em but some of my family and friends do so I occasionally work on them.
Eventually I bought the extra tools for removing and installing headsets and bottom brackets and learned about the tricky French bike idiosyncrasies. I'm a slow mechanic and couldn't keep up the pace expected in a bike shop but can now strip down a vintage frame in 30 to 40 minutes. It takes me about a day or day and a half to build it back up to a rideable bike depending on 'Murphy's Law' challenges the rebuild throws at me. I like riding best but wrenching has become a bit of therapy for me. It's very satisfying to have a bare frame/fork and parts everywhere that I build back to a whole bike with my own hands and then go out and enjoy riding it with a big smile on my face. In this chaotic world it's satisfying to take the chaos of a bare frame and fork and a myriad of scattered parts and bring it all to nicely functioning order. All that said ...if someone gave me a modern carbon fiber wonder bike I would not know what to do with it. I would be concerned I would break something on the expensive thing. The vintage bikes are tough and I don't worry about breaking stuff although I occasionally in the learning process have done that.I've learned not to 'gorilla' stuff. I would just encourage you to be patient with yourself and steadily add to your skills. Buying a cheap vintage bike in need of love and repair is a good way to learn . Get the appropriate tools , take it apart and then put it back together at your leisure. You might even team up with your sons to learn together. One thing about the bike community in general is a large number of us are willing to provide help if needed. Good riding and wrenching, Paul in Dallas -- 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/1501913069.2530462.1677004448173%40mail.yahoo.com.
