Bike Maintenance

So I work at a shop. I work on bikes. I often make light of the fact that customers don't notice silly little things before they go bad. DTP is a prime example of a person with lots of bike experience who doesn't know how to work on a bike much.

But, much to my chagrin I have been riding two bikes that have loose cranksets/bottom brackets. Not fall of the bike sort of loose--that is still only a DTP thing (in a triathlon last summer). Just so that the cranksets wiggled just a bit, maybe at most a 1/16 of an inch at end of the crankarm. On the Lapierre it was a bottom bracket issue. The cranks were tight against the bottom bracket, but the drive side bottom bracket cup was a half turn loose. I felt stupid. Not sure for how long that has been going on, but it is fixed now before there was any damage.

The other bike was the Fuji. The last time I rode it was at the Vikingman half ironman. The bottom bracket cups were tight, but the crankset was about 3/4 of a turn loose. Both Cranksets were from FSA and were carbon. One a K-Force and the other a SL-K. Both times it was my fault for not checking them and not the fault of the cranksets. I went over the Fuji before the race but did not check the crank for tightness. Silly me. Doesn't really matter if the bike shifts crisply if there is not crankarm to turn the cogs. That error could have cost me the race and all of that training.

Anyway, lesson learned. Check all the bolts on your bike often.

Also, in other news I am sick. A cough accompanied by aches and pains. Had to miss swimming today because of it. My boys are still getting over the same thing and we are all cranky because of it. It has been a "fun" day.