When it ain't broke: Your best stories of gear holding up.

[giverdada]

I saw a post in the classifieds about a rider accidentally bunny hopping onto the edge of an unseen pothole, and cracking his carbon rim. I have done the exact same thing, resulting in radially-laced spokes exploding out of a Ringlé Super8 flange and a completely dented Sun RhynoLite. But that's not a great story.

Please reply with your stories of horrid abuse of equipment wherein the object was subjected to circumstances that should have ended its functional life, but the object continued without failure.

I guess this is like the verbal version of those videos of guys cutting framing nails and cinder blocks with their CPM3V custom knives, then using the same knife to push-cut paper.

The first set of wheels I built was for my first road bike, a Cannondale 500 frameset handed down to me from my uncle. I used Shimano 600 Tri-Color hubs, Wheelsmith Spokes, DT Swiss brass nipples, and Mavic MA40 32-hole rims. Finished it all off with Fond de Jante rim tape. I was damn proud of that wheelset. Built it back in 1996, when I was 15, using a Bicycling Magazine special-mechanics-issue publication and a Park truing stand that I still use today. That wheelset lasted forever. It saw me through my first triathlon (ill-informed, I know, but hey, I was 15!), all of high school, into university and out of road bikes, into bike commuting, into my first times getting hit by cars, the worst collision I had been involved in yet (bars and stem bent, wheels remained true). I took the wheels into a shop to get trued up once when I figured they would have some magic I lacked, and the mechanic laughed at me, said that the rims came out when the Cosby show came out. Last I saw of those wheels, I used them to build up a singlespeed commuter for a friend who had done a bunch of babysitting for us. They were still going strong, still spinning like butter, still stupidly true with only one minor flatspot in the rear. In 20 years of riding the crap out of those wheels, I only repacked the bearings twice. Phil's. When it ain't broke...

There was this other time, in university, when I was trying to teach myself to become a freerider, so I went around after dark and hucked myself and my bike off of low-lying objects. Picnic tables were my maximum height at the time, and I had no technique or mentor, so I just kinda wheelied off the edge of things, hoping to land without flatting. Concrete everywhere. No speed or transitions. Just huck, land, repeat. Anyway, lots of equipment abuse because I had no idea what I was doing. Turns out I kinda messed up my takeoff from this one concrete ledge to the pavement, and ended up casing the crap out of the landing. ALL front wheel. The fork took the entire force of me and my bike and my stupidity and my fear. I was surely going down. I was going to get hurt. Maybe I'd lose some teeth. No. That Marzocchi Z-5 (lowest end model with huge 145mm travel) not only took the impact, it ABSORBED all of the shock (and stupidity), did not send me over the bars (where I belonged), and then GENTLY pushed me back to upright, all without a whimper. Took it, fixed it, sent me on my merry way. I brought it to a shop a few years later to give it some TLC; they said they'd check the seals as those usually needed love first. When I picked it up, they told me the fork was in amazing condition, seals were perfect, all they could do was change the oil, and even that was pretty unnecessary. Marzocchi Z-5. Tougher than my stupid.

[cmbicycles]

One of the first times I went mountain biking, early 90's pre-suspension for all of us, a friend showed up on a Murray. We adjusted the seat in the parking lot and the seat binder bolt snapped, but since we had some vise grips in the trunk so held the seat clamp with those and went riding. Bike actually survived some decent trails, probably helped that the rider was 120 lbs soaking wet, but the seat held just fine.

[giverdada]

vice grips!!! amazing!

[ultraman6970]

I have done that trick with vice grips (we call them Caiman like the animal in my country), when i was a kid the clamp broke in my bmx bike, used a tiny v.grip to hold it, worked pretty well.

[Gummee]

I can tell you that Mountain Exage from 'way back when' held up to my abuse as a broke-arsed college student.

Otherwise, I don't have much off the top of my head

M

[cachagua]

Remember the Lambert bikes imported from England in the 1970s? Remember the cast aluminum (or "aluminium") forks that came on those things, that kept shattering and dropping people on their faces so often the CPSC quit letting them into the country? They actually bought mine from me, gave me full retail for the whole bike, so they could destroy it as part of their testing.

But not before I rode it for a couple of years, back and forth to high school, all over north Atlanta, nose-wheelies and bike-frisbee in the shopping-center parking lot, up and down badly eroded hiking trails in the river valley, all with *only* a front brake. (A useless second brake in the back? I'm so sure, who needs the extra weight! No front derailleur and no inner chainring either, for the same reason. It was 1X before 1X was a thing.)

Never had a problem. That fork was solid as a rock. Who knows the plastic surgery I could have gotten, if it had cut loose? That was before helmets were invented, too, of course.

Come to think, was that the bike I rode with the long, long 3TTT stem, which I'd drilled for the front brake cable? Ah, youth.

[soulspinner]

34000 plus miles on a Campy bb. Its still in there

[SoCalSteve]

Originally Posted by soulspinner

34000 plus miles on a Campy bb. Its still in there

Yeah, but will ever be able to get it out?

[soulspinner]

Originally Posted by SoCalSteve

Yeah, but will ever be able to get it out?

Um Um not sure...

[BobC]

Lemond Revmaster spin bike.

Abused for 15+years. Literally have not done a single thing to it. Refuses to die.

**Except I did replace the used, beat up speedplays when one finally locked up & almost sent me flying (now that would have been a story)

[quickfeet]

I'm not a massive fan of Shimano the company, but I have multiple pairs of m959 pedals with tens of thousands of miles on them and they still spin like silk and have never been repacked. Just bought another nos set too. I cannot kill them, they are the only things that have not ever been "upgraded"

[shovelhd]

I had a double rear flat on a group ride once. I had given my second tube to a fellow rider, and I don't carry patches. Instead of making the call of shame, I rode my 58mm generic carbon clincher 8 miles home on the flat. Climbing and descending were "interesting". The edges got a little chewed up, but they're still my main road wheels today.

[Gothard]

Edco competition hubs. Have them since 1990. The front is still in use. The rear retired to the trainer because 8sp. They have the grease port. Of the 3 sets I have, I had to change (1) bearing, 5$.

Mavic Ceramic rims. Look like the day I built them into wheels over 25 years ago.

[Kontact]

In the early '90s I was riding around screwing with the shifting on my Cannondale and rode right into a curb. The bike bounced right up over the medium high curb and I ended up stopped with the front wheel on the sidewalk and the rear on the street.

I weighed 140 pounds, the fork was an SR aluminum and the wheel was a 32 hole original Open4 CD rim with 20c tires.

No dings, bends, pinch flat or loss of true. I hit that curb so hard, I was shocked that nothing happened.

[William]

Still have DA 7400 group in rotation that just won't die. Had it since new and it's been on a few different builds. One brake/shifter started to gum up once but flushed it out with WD-40 and its worked fine ever since.






William