I shipped my bike recently and had a bike shop put it together, which I'm not qualified to do. I
took it for a ride recently and all went well until I parked it and secured it for 10 or 15 minutes
while I got a soft drink. When I returned, I didn't notice anything wrong until I started riding it.
I eventually figured out that the pedal was bent out of position. Shortly afterwards, it fell off.
It cost me almost 40 dollars to have it fixed because not only was the pedal screwed up but the
threads on the thing (?) it fits into were ruined so the thing had to be replaced also.
When I picked up the bike at the shop and rode away, at first the pedal felt funny, as it had when
it started going bad, but that feeling quickly went away and I think it is probably ok. I have no
idea how to check it, though.
It's tempting to think that the damage to the pedal was the result of recreational vandalism or that
someone simply didn't like having bicycles parked in that spot or that someone might have walked by
with a handtruck and hit the pedal, but upon reflection it could just as easily be the result of it
having been improperly placed when the first bike shop put it back together. There is another
possibility too: I have to bring it in and out of an apartment and there are a lot of opportunities
for the pedals to bang against doors on the way in and out of the building, so maybe that eventually
did in the pedal.
I'm trying to figure out how to prepare better for future problems like this. One thing would be to
learn more about repairs so that I can simply scavenge parts and do repairs myself. I don't know if
this is a particularly advanced repair job for someone just starting out. If so, having spare parts
to bring to a bike shop with the bike might knock my costs down to just the labor of installing it.
Another idea that occurs to me is to install pedals that can be folded up when they aren't being
used, so that they stick out less and don't bump into things. I don't know if such pedals are
available. Alternatively, what would be wrong with pedals that consist of a round bar and which
don't rotate and which are one piece with the aforementioned thing that pedals normally attach to?
That way it is less likely that the pedal can be damaged and that it and the thing will needed to be
replaced. As one pedals, the same kind of surface will always be presented to the shoe. If it is
desirable to have the foot fit inside something, as I've seen on some bikes, it can be attached to
the bar and rotate around the bar. That would probably be a lot cheaper to replace if anything
happened to it.
I talked to one bicyclist I passed on the street and asked him if his bike has ever sustained any
damage while being parked and he said not really even after a year or so of parking it. So I think
that even if it was vandalism, which is in doubt, it was exceptional and I should probably continue
to feel comfortable parking my bike. At the same time, I have to be prepared occasionally to make
significant repairs in the bike, so I think I need to start collecting spare parts and tools. The
bike shop didn't seem to sell the tools that, according to Rob van der Plas' book, "Bicycle repair,
step by step", they would have had to use to make this particular repair. I'm not sure where I would
get them and how to know that they were of good quality. Maybe it isn't a good assumption, but I'm
inclined to think that a repair that needs to be done once is likely to be needed again sooner than
one that has never needed to be done.
Ignorantly, Allan Adler [email hidden]
****************************************************************************
* *
* Disclaimer: I am a guest and *not* a member of the MIT Artificial *
* Intelligence Lab. My actions and comments do not reflect *
* in any way on MIT. Moreover, I am nowhere near the Boston *
* metropolitan area. *
* *
****************************************************************************