I hate being so useless at bicycle DIY. In fact any DIY.

[arabella]

Swapping out cable-operated parts can be a PITA if you need to snip off the end-crimp to un-thread the cable.   Usually, this will leave the stub of cable very short when it is re-fitted, and it will fray like a bastard.

You can usually twist the frays back into a cable quite well.   The strands tend to 'find' their correct lay easily enough.   Just don't release them till you've got a new end-crimp in place!

Generally, you'll only manage a couple of re-terminations before the wire is too short and you need to replace the whole inner anyway.

Or dispense with crimps which are single use only and make use of a chunk of wax (eg off gouda, edam etc) to do the job.  Just be careful not to knock in hot weather.  It warms up enough to be malleable in your bare hands, and t's reusable.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

..or strip a bit of flex and stuff the cable into the plastic sleeve.  Taking care not to stab your finger with the frayed end.

[Jurek]

Swapping out cable-operated parts can be a PITA if you need to snip off the end-crimp to un-thread the cable.   Usually, this will leave the stub of cable very short when it is re-fitted, and it will fray like a bastard.

You can usually twist the frays back into a cable quite well.   The strands tend to 'find' their correct lay easily enough.   Just don't release them till you've got a new end-crimp in place!

Generally, you'll only manage a couple of re-terminations before the wire is too short and you need to replace the whole inner anyway.

Or do this....


and this:



I'd guess there's enough there to snip off crimps maybe five or six times, before you run out of cable.

Tight?
Me?

[Glover Fan]

I guess I have 3 problems.

I have a short temper

I have no patience - See Above

I have no time in the day outside of work, riding the bike and attending to the family to work on the bike(s).

Don't get me wrong, i'm not 100% hopeless. I took off and replaced a hollowtech 2 bottom bracket at the first time of asking which I was quite proud of. Repairing punctures are a doddle and I have had to make bodges on the roadside a few times in the past. I can correctly tension a headset and I also use a torque wrench to tighten bolts, which at £50 means I'm not really scrimping on tools and in a nod to people above, the amount of times my bike comes back from the LBS with the incorrect tensions applied scares me A LOT.

[Jurek]

....... the amount of times my bike comes back from the LBS with the incorrect tensions applied scares me A LOT.

*Shudder*
I strip my own bolts, I really prefer it that way.

[mattc]

I wouldn't consider myself a technically adept person, but I find bike maintenance very easy.

<snip>

If a simpleton like me can do it, so can you.

"I wouldn't consider myself a technically adept person,"
Why not?



This does rather smack of false modesty

[TimO]

To be fair, most of us probably rarely use torque wrenches, because whilst that may be a valid value on a nice new clean bit of kit, when sat in the warm with plenty of time to do it, in less than optimal conditions, with a partially worn part, covered in gunge, you're a lot more reliant on judging that it's tight enough.

On the plus side, I'm sitting here watching the guys on the ISS replacing a unit, and they not only have to keep absolutely everything attached to tethers, so nothing floats off, they're also having to be told how many turns and what torque should be used on every fixing, and they then reply back how many turns and at what torque the tool required, as well as taking photographs of everything (which I can relate to, we photograph everything when we assemble an instrument, so should there ever be a query about the construction, we can look back at the record, and  inspect what we did).  It makes the average bicycle fettle look trivial!

[Jurek]

To be fair, most of us probably rarely use torque wrenches, because whilst that may be a valid value on a nice new clean bit of kit, when sat in the warm with plenty of time to do it, in less than optimal conditions, with a partially worn part, covered in gunge, you're a lot more reliant on judging that it's tight enough.

On the plus side, I'm sitting here watching the guys on the ISS replacing a unit, and they not only have to keep absolutely everything attached to tethers, so nothing floats off, they're also having to be told how many turns and what torque should be used on every fixing, and they then reply back how many turns and at what torque the tool required, as well as taking photographs of everything (which I can relate to, we photograph everything when we assemble an instrument, so should there ever be a query about the construction, we can look back at the record, and  inspect what we did).  It makes the average bicycle fettle look trivial!

I have to ensure that also happens in the course of what I do for a living - and that's hardly life-threatening, or astronomically [sic] costly - but that's more to do with having a very demanding client.

[mattc]

and they not only have to keep absolutely everything attached to tethers, so nothing floats off,

You mean like the piece of string attached to both my gloves? Just common-sense, surely.

[TimO]

I dunno, would you want to fettle a wheel after a visit from the fairy, where every tool and consumable had to be connected via a tether, and you yourself would be attached by at least two tethers at all times, to the bike.  I imagine it would get annoying the dozeneth time that you got a tether caught in the wheel, or chain, or tyre or whatever.

(They're currently counting up whether they've got all of the tools that they took out, presumably because aside from the fact that loosing a tool could be a nuisance, but also it could be jammed somewhere that it shouldn't be, and cause problems later).

We don't photograph things to save money, or because that'll save a life, but because there's so much information that you couldn't more easily document.

Should we have a problem in flight, a photograph can be inspected to make sure a component is fitted correctly, and is the correct component for that matter.  You can identify incorrect wiring, badly fitted screws, even something as bad as an overheating component (although I'd rather hope that this would be noticed earlier).  It's a useful mechanism for removing some of the more obvious potential failure mechanisms, and should we work out that we did something wrong, it'll tell us to check it next time.  If we could visually identify a mistake on a flight instrument after launch, there's normally not an awful lot that we can do about it!

[Hot Flatus]

I wouldn't consider myself a technically adept person, but I find bike maintenance very easy.

<snip>

If a simpleton like me can do it, so can you.

"I wouldn't consider myself a technically adept person,"
Why not?



This does rather smack of false modesty

And you are somewhat of a nipple.

Friends?

[mcshroom]

..or strip a bit of flex and stuff the cable into the plastic sleeve.  Taking care not to stab your finger with the frayed end.

I use a small bit of insulation tape. This also allows a bit of colour coordinating with th rest of the bike

[mattc]

I wouldn't consider myself a technically adept person, but I find bike maintenance very easy.

<snip>

If a simpleton like me can do it, so can you.

"I wouldn't consider myself a technically adept person,"
Why not?



This does rather smack of false modesty

And you are somewhat of a nipple.

Hmm. I think your first post was actually the more constructive.

But think about it:
either your comment was false modesty - unintentionally, perhaps,
or you're saying the OP must be a simpleton (or worse) if he can't do this stuff.

Neither is very helpful.

IMHO, as they say!

[Hot Flatus]

Let's allow the OP be the judge of whether he has found my posts helpful. If he hasn't he can just ignore them. What isn't helpful is you letting your audaxtic tendencies run away with you on somebody else's thread.

[L CC]

buy proper tools for each job as you do it. Trying to make do with a pair of pliers and a cheap adjustable spanner  would try the patience of skilled mechanic, let alone a beginner. Admittedly, this will cost more than getting the LBS to do the job, but the tools will pay for themselves over time.

This is another reason I won't/don't do it. The only 'proper' tool I have is a pedal spanner. My finances are too tight to invest in decent tools I may never need again.
I don't have a workshop, or a stand, or time to get filthy and frustrated. I don't like cleaning and fixing bikes, I like riding them.
I use my (increasingly less) LBS sufficiently frequently that if I'm not happy with what they've done, I take it back. And again. Or I don't leave the shop till it's ok, in the case of the pre-PBP big-ring-failure.
I suspect I probably could do it, but I'd have to want to.

[Tim Hall]

Swapping out cable-operated parts can be a PITA if you need to snip off the end-crimp to un-thread the cable.   Usually, this will leave the stub of cable very short when it is re-fitted, and it will fray like a bastard.

You can usually twist the frays back into a cable quite well.   The strands tend to 'find' their correct lay easily enough.   Just don't release them till you've got a new end-crimp in place!

Generally, you'll only manage a couple of re-terminations before the wire is too short and you need to replace the whole inner anyway.

Or do this....


and this:



I'd guess there's enough there to snip off crimps maybe five or six times, before you run out of cable.

Tight?
Me?

Alternatively, if the crimp isn't squeezed on bastard hard, it can be pulled off with a pair of pliers, cable jibbled with and then a new crimp applied, no cutting needed.

[Chris N]

Swapping out cable-operated parts can be a PITA if you need to snip off the end-crimp to un-thread the cable.   Usually, this will leave the stub of cable very short when it is re-fitted, and it will fray like a bastard.

You can usually twist the frays back into a cable quite well.   The strands tend to 'find' their correct lay easily enough.   Just don't release them till you've got a new end-crimp in place!

Generally, you'll only manage a couple of re-terminations before the wire is too short and you need to replace the whole inner anyway.

Or do this....

...

I'd guess there's enough there to snip off crimps maybe five or six times, before you run out of cable.

Tight?
Me?

Alternatively, if the crimp isn't squeezed on bastard hard, it can be pulled off with a pair of pliers, cable jibbled with and then a new crimp applied, no cutting needed.

Cables are consumable, disposable items.  If you need to re-thread then replace completely.

[Pickled Onion]

buy proper tools for each job as you do it. Trying to make do with a pair of pliers and a cheap adjustable spanner  would try the patience of skilled mechanic, let alone a beginner. Admittedly, this will cost more than getting the LBS to do the job, but the tools will pay for themselves over time.

This is another reason I won't/don't do it. The only 'proper' tool I have is a pedal spanner. My finances are too tight to invest in decent tools I may never need again.
I don't have a workshop, or a stand, or time to get filthy and frustrated. I don't like cleaning and fixing bikes, I like riding them.
I use my (increasingly less) LBS sufficiently frequently that if I'm not happy with what they've done, I take it back. And again. Or I don't leave the shop till it's ok, in the case of the pre-PBP big-ring-failure.
I suspect I probably could do it, but I'd have to want to.

Very good point.

In my case it's more "have to" than "want to" - it's 15 miles to my LBS and he moans like anything if asked to do anything on a Saturday. I have a kitchen and turn the bike upside down rather than a stand. But I do have a pair of park tools cable cutters. They cost £20, the OP paid £15 labour to fit one cable, so doing the job twice would pay for the cutters - apart from the time, and if you don't have the time then paying someone else to do it is eminently sensible.

[Hot Flatus]

I don't get this notion of not paying for tools. With the exception of wheels and BB, most jobs just need allen keys and cable cutters.

[L CC]

I don't get this notion of not paying for tools. With the exception of wheels and BB, most jobs just need allen keys and cable cutters.

And a stand. And space. And 'decent' snips. And gloves, or proper hand cleaner.

[L CC]

buy proper tools for each job as you do it. Trying to make do with a pair of pliers and a cheap adjustable spanner  would try the patience of skilled mechanic, let alone a beginner. Admittedly, this will cost more than getting the LBS to do the job, but the tools will pay for themselves over time.

This is another reason I won't/don't do it. The only 'proper' tool I have is a pedal spanner. My finances are too tight to invest in decent tools I may never need again.
I don't have a workshop, or a stand, or time to get filthy and frustrated. I don't like cleaning and fixing bikes, I like riding them.
I use my (increasingly less) LBS sufficiently frequently that if I'm not happy with what they've done, I take it back. And again. Or I don't leave the shop till it's ok, in the case of the pre-PBP big-ring-failure.
I suspect I probably could do it, but I'd have to want to.

Very good point.

In my case it's more "have to" than "want to" - it's 15 miles to my LBS and he moans like anything if asked to do anything on a Saturday. I have a kitchen and turn the bike upside down rather than a stand. But I do have a pair of park tools cable cutters. They cost £20, the OP paid £15 labour to fit one cable, so doing the job twice would pay for the cutters - apart from the time, and if you don't have the time then paying someone else to do it is eminently sensible.

Madgett's charged me £5 the last time- but are 25 miles away, now. Chris S works for free other rewards.

[Hot Flatus]

I don't get this notion of not paying for tools. With the exception of wheels and BB, most jobs just need allen keys and cable cutters.

And a stand. And space. And 'decent' snips. And gloves, or proper hand cleaner.

Stands are great but they aren't necessary. Space? The bike isn't fussy where you service it.

Gloves? Hand cleaner? MTFU.

 

[Palinurus]

Cables: I use crimps now, but for a while I'd pre-cut the cables, take them to work, dip them in a fairly aggressive water-soluble flux of my own formulation (which was developed for an industrial process- not specifically for tinning brake cables!) then dip in a solder bath, rinse and re-trim.

Damn neat job.

I don't do it any more since we don't have the solder bath on much and it doesn't seem right to warm it up just to do a cable.

[Biggsy]

I don't have space for a stand, just enough to turn the bike upside-down.  No-one has to justify why they don't do bike maintenance - fair enough to get someone else to do it! - but nearly everyone could if they wanted to.  The best benefit is the knowledge and confidence you get from it.

Not that I practice what I preach all the time.  I should be fitting new Ergos, rack and mudguard instead of writing this message.

[Hot Flatus]

Cables vary in their quality and resistance to fraying. Campag are great. One of the LBS sold me some cables that went in the bin after I noticed that they frayed as soon as clamped.