Huge Shout Out for Dave Kirk and Joe Bell

[Tim Porter]

In mid-August, it became apparent that one of my 3 Kirk bikes, while in generally great shape after 14 years, had an Achilles heel: its cable guides under the top tube had corroded and failed, probably due to the salty Newport, Rhode Island atmosphere in which it had spent most of its life.

I emailed Dave and he immediately responded that I should send it to him and that he'd repair the cable guides, check alignment and generally make it all good--at no expense to me. The next step would be that he would send it on to Joe Bell for refinishing.

By the time I got the bike to my home in NY and had the frame stripped and packed into a Bike Flights box, it was Sept. 10. [I posted about sending it away in the Workstand thread here.]

Thirty-eight days later, on Oct. 18, I had the bike back in my hands and it is beautiful! Dave replaced the guides with stainless steel units and confirmed the alignment was still perfect. At least 12 of those 38 days were travel days and there were additional travel days between Bozeman and San Diego, so I'm pretty confident in saying that Dave and Joe turned this bike around in three weeks.

Neither Dave nor Joe charged me a dime for this work. Both said that to them, satisfaction for a lifetime was something they prize, at least as much as satisfying their customers at the time of delivery. Joe made a point of trying to reach me 2 times before I was actually home and on the third call he gave me some advice on building up the bike again so that the places that were rusty might not suffer the same fate again. (Basically don't scrape off any paint in the course of reassembly, such as facing the BB or the head tube.)

I'm thrilled to get one of my most favorite bikes back so quickly. I'm treating it to a new set of Campy 12 speed mechanical/rim brake components and carbon wheels. Big, big thanks to these two masters of the craft for this above and beyond response. Tim

Some pics: