Yesterday I finally got around to swapping out my three-year-old components for a new gruppo, and as I started working, I chuckled to myself because I knew something would go wrong somewhere along the way. It always does. I strip some critical bolt. Or cut a cable or housing too short. Or the pedal wrench slips when I've got all my weight on it, and the palm of my hand gets punctured by a couple chainring teeth.
Everything was going smoothly yesterday until I tried to tighten down the bottle cage on the down tube. The bolt just turned and turned but never got tight. I quickly realized that the little threaded insert in the tube had come loose and that was the thing turning. Sheesh...it was impossible to tighten down the bottle cage. I don't ever recall putting too much torque into it, and I would think it could be fixed under warranty. Trouble is, I only have one bike and I don't want to be without it.
Only solution I could think of in a pinch...
JB Weld. The stuff is awesome, and can stick just about anything together. So I chipped away some paint around the insert, wiped it as clean as I could, and then dabbed a bunch of JB Weld all around the thing. It was dry by the morning and I cranked down the bottle-cage bolt no problem!
Here's pre- and post- hack pictures...
Of course, when the time comes to sell this frame, I'll probably have to knock off a few hundred bucks from the price!
2 comments:
I'm sorry this comes a little late Marco, but there is a tool for fixing the loose bottle mounts. It is somewhat like a rivet tool. There is a threaded screw in the middle that threads in. Then a squeeze of the handle presses against the frame while pulling the mount back up against the inside of the frame. Tightens it right up. Few shops however have it or have heard of it. A buddy of mine, Kris Wells at the UCSD shop had the tool when I encountered this problem.
Jake
Now you tell me! Oh well...
I've used JB Weld for some other pretty crude hacks. A couple of years ago I crunched my Zipp carbon rims really bad on some potholes. They were cracked right through the braking surface and all the way around. Plus, one of them was caved in. I didn't know about the crash-replacement policy, so I liberally applied JB Weld just like bondo on a car body. After sanding it down, it was smooth enough for braking and seemed to be pretty strong. Then one day Tomo Hamasaki saw the wheels after a race and said "Aacckkkk! Don't ever race next to me with those things, they'll explode without any warning!" and to show he was serious he got me some Reynolds wheels to replace them with. They were bullet-proof and I used them for a couple years before coming back to the Zipps. The current models of Zipps are also very strong so I don't think I'll be using anymore JB Weld on them!
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