Am I this old?

I wonder how old I am that all I ever do is complain about how bad things have gotten and how good they used to be. I will admit we are not always the best judges of ourselves but I would suggest I'm a reasonable mechanic, or by many standards, a pretty damned good mechanic. I will admit I don't use a torque wrench but I defend that with a story about how at the beginning of the first wave of lightweight crap for bikes flooding the market (think Deda Newton stem) I went out and bought a relatively expensive torque wrench and when it arrived at the shop all shiny and new in its own special little case I was quite excited to give it a go and proceeded to use a torque wrench for the first time on one of the delicate magnesium alloyed stems with little svelte titanium bolts only to have the bolt snap before reaching the recommended torque. To say the least I was disappointed. One manufacturer, Moots, put out a news bulletin to its dealers explaining why the torque spec of the stem wasn't necessarily in line with what the bar was capable of and the large number of snapped Easton bars is a good indicator of the truth in that statement. Understanding what Moots was talking about and my experience with the first snapped bolt in my experience as a bicycle mechanic as a direct result of using a torque wrench I adopted the "tight enough so that it holds but no tighter" philosophy of bolt tightening which brings us to today's entry.

Qualifier: I admit I didn't use a torque wrench to install this lockring and that I may be completely at fault for not following the manufacturers guidelines for installing a cassette on their product. There, I said it.

But I've installed a cassette or two in my time, perhaps even thousands but definitely hundreds. The picture above is of the freehub body on my own personal DT Swiss 240 rear hub. It has something like 3000kms on it. I have installed exactly one cassette on it exactly two times. The second time I installed the cassette the little lip that acts as a backstop for the cassette sheared off and binded up against the hub flanges. If you look closely you'll see where the lower lip of the freehub body is pulling away from the splined part and a wave in the rim at the edge of the freehub body where it has deformed due to its breaking. As per my qualifier I admit I didn't get out my torque wrench but it's not like I've never installed a cassette before. I suspect you'll see torque wrenches brandished by shop mechanics a vast minority of the time when it comes to properly installing cassettes. To say the least I wasn't impressed.

It's very disappointing when you do your research, cast reasonable budgets aside (the replacement freehub body for this hub costs more than some entire hubs) and make an effort to buy "the best" only to have performance expectations undermined by an inferior or substandard product. I think DT makes some very good rims but I stopped using their spokes a long time ago for very good reasons (which I see irony in because DT has always been first and foremost a spoke manufacturer in my mind.) And even though their rims have generally been pretty good there have been lots of complaints about cracked eyelets in their single eyelet R1.1 rim.

And then DT invests in Pace so they can branch out into the world of suspension. Again, I admit that my investment in the world of DT owned Pace suspension forks is limited to one example and for someone who values a significant sample size before drawing a conclusion of the "worth" of something I have to concede that perhaps my belief that the DT fork isn't very good may be unjustified. We put a DT fork on a bike and the client rode it once for about five hours and in that time the fork went from stiff and light and excellent to, well, light. It developed a noticeable and performance compromising amount of play in it in a very short time. While one doesn't expect high performance lightweight stuff to last a long time one might expect a fork that cost over a grand to last more than a couple of rides without a major overhaul.

Where is this long diatribe leading? I get lots of questions about why I don't carry Brand A or Brand B. The short answer is that if I don't think it's a good product then there's not a whole lot of reason for me to stock it. I keep trying the new stuff, bring stuff in that sounds good on paper or in the ad copy but if it leads to disappointing results then I really have no choice but to pass on it when ordering inventory for the store. There's a couple of DT products that might adorn the shelves of bicycles but you'll likely see less of it in the future. And if you don't see something on the shelves that you wanted don't be afraid to ask for it. If there's a good reason why we don't stock it we'll tell you about it. We'll do our best to refrain from base arguments like "it sucks" and take the time to explain to you why we don't stock some certain item and suggest what we think is a better alternative. Usually it's more affordable too. It's important to us that you're happy with what you spend your hard earned dollars on. Hopefully you can appreciate that.