I'm a little worked up... (Long Rant)

So my poor bike, Fiona (a Kestrel Talon with internally routed cables), has not had an easy start. I ordered her online and she came with one very damaged wheel that I got replaced right away. It was a little tough to get the front wheel on and off but I haven't bought a new bike in a long time so I thought that was just the way they are now. A local mechanic at a shop I respect (but I don't really know this particular wrench) said everything looked good and he switched out her standard for a compact double. I've ridden her a lot. And I've dropped my chain to the outside a lot. I'm reasonably good with basic mechanical stuff so I keep working on front derailleur trim, sometimes it would shift great then it would start throwing the chain again. The cables stretched out and I tried to tighten them but the internally routed cables do not have a barrel adjustment for the front derailleur. I ended up tightening it at the derailleur attachment and damaged the cable slightly in the process.

Fiona and I continue on our riding adventures throwing chains for some time. I should have taken it back in but I really thought it was because I wasn't getting her trimmed up right and that was something that I should've been able to manage. The bike shop is busy and I didn't want to have to leave her for a few days either.

In comes my friend Tom. Tom is a crackerjack bike wrench. Unfortunately, he lives 3 hours away from me so I only see him once in awhile and usually on a tight schedule. We're going for a ride and he puts my front wheel on, notices the tightness of the dropout and tells me my drop out was damaged. Argh. Tom to the rescue, he fixes it in the parking lot by levering the dropout open with a large wrench while holding my delicate carbon fork with his hand. I nearly had a heart attack. In fact I forgot to thank him I was so anxious about my fork breaking. Dropout fixed.

A month later I'm still struggling with the derailleur. Poor Tom gets several phone calls from me and talks me through tuning the trim. Works for a while, then doesn't. I go down to visit him and ride and he notices that they never realigned the derailleur to the new compact in the up/down position on my bike. Argh!! He fixes that in 2 minutes, again in a driveway somewhere.

In the process he comments on the cable fray and encourages me to get the cables replaced as the one frayed part is close to traveling into the frame housing.

Yesterday I took my bike to a "new" (new to me but known around town and well respected) wrench with his own shop. He's a good guy and let me watch and explained a lot of what he was doing while he was doing it. He agreed to replace my cables but ran into trouble getting a guide into the frame to route the new cable. Long story short, I spent more than an hour with him yesterday trying to make it work and when I left the shop, my new derailleur cable was not through the frame, the old cable was gone and there was no guide in place to route the new cable. Now I'm stressed. I have no idea how he's going to get the new cable in and how long it will take him.

I'm a little frustrated and just needed to get that off my chest. Thanks for listening.

Aaarrrrgh. What does Tom say about it?

Is this a Kestrel thing or a Fiona thing? Don't you have a fairly important ride coming up? Can they give you any kind of time frame at all? If not, it might be worthy of a three hour trip.

I am sorry, this must be so frustrating.

Will keep good thoughts that Fiona is intact soon.

I have had that same issue with a couple of bikes this summer. The way that I solved this issue is to use a couple of magnets along with some very fine welding material, and coaxed the welding wire into the hole with the magnets. Once the welding wire is through the holes, superglue some fine fishing line to it and pulll it back through. Once the fishing line is through(be careful not to pull it out of the holes) superglue the cable to the fishing line and pull through. It does indeed work, but it definitely needs some patience and persistence!

For future, before you pull out the cable, super glue the fishing line to it and that will solve the problem. Many of the early 90's frames did not have internal cable guides, so don't assume that yours does. This applies to both road and mountain bikes.

Good luck and keep me posted!

((((((Fiona and Wahine)))))

and RideBikeMe, I'm so impressed! Can you and DebW open a bike shop for TE'ers?

Thanks Ridebikeme, that's some great advice!! I'm going to talk to the mechanic about that today. Welding wire huh?

Teigyr - Tom hasn't said anything to me about it because he's out of contact at the moment. He's super busy with Mountain Bike OR this weekend. If the above suggestion doesn't work I may be trying to track him down.

Yes, I'd love to to open a shop for TE"s... where would that be? HA! What are your thoughts Deb? What's your suggestion knotted? HA! Just teasing....

Well, you two are practially neighbors, so I guess the shop would have to be in your neck of the woods.

Hmmm, a 4 day drive to get my bike fixed.... well, if it was you guys! :D

Looks like Ridebikeme is the MacGyver of wrences "well, I have a toothpick, piece of a chewing gum wrapper and a parasol handle. We'll be out of here in no time" ;) :rolleyes: :D

My bike is whole again!! I called the wrench to see how he was doing and to suggest the McGyveresk solution provided so thoughtfully here on TE and he told me he had it done. I asked how how and all he would say was finger magic.:confused:

Yippee. Fiona has working cables!!:D:D

Ahhh I'm glad to hear that you have your bike back!!

Now Trek, if I can figure out what to with your bubblegum wrapper in the course of a bike repair I'll keep you posted HA!:)