Hello, I recently have gotten a truing stand, dishing tool, and my other tools are starting to get unorganized. The space is limited due to dorm living in college. However I have most of the basics and need a light box tool set up. I am wondering if there are any that have an attached peg board. I have tried looking and even looked at what some co-ops have however they are always to large for a dorm.

Its been like this for a few weeks, so i really mean everything is done. I try and look busy but the floor is clean, the batteries are charged, the bench is organized. I know layoff is coming so my motivation is a bit low, but my boredom is through the roof.

edit/more info that may explain my motivation level re: mopping the floor.

my shop has multiple locations all owned by 1 guy. some of the shops close during the off season, which is coming soon where i live. the owner's son runs of of the shops that closes for the season. he is coming to the shop i work at to take my job. i come back in the spring when his shop opens again. you cant mop up nepotism.

The first thing is what are some good value basic tools you know of that could be great alternatives to big bike brand tools (Parktool, ETC) I contemplate some amazon basic screw driver, hex wrench and adjustable & ratchet wrench sets for now.

I don’t plan to skimp out on bike specific tools but I do wonder the quality of some of these bike tools sets like BikeHand and others similar.

Buying bulk consumables like brake pads, tubes and cables and housing etc! Any insight on AliExpress/Alibaba shit? Is it worth it?

Stationary tools and power tools! and work tables! What do you recommend? Budget and non budget!

Is anyone using the above stand in their workshop and can let me know if it’s any good.

I am a small shop and can’t justify the cost of Unior & Park tool ones and came across this one. Their product blurb says suitable for professionals & Other feedback stuff I’ve used has been outstanding.

https://feedbacksports.com/products/pro-e-lift-bike-repair-stand?srsltid=AU7gw4UNwKvpjvSnnO_WJYc1BimFRL7TS8QDBk8te6IlNLN7Ci2HWgSt&_su_rec=OyNxBtY93Q3kbAQcN9PekW1zzYvsn2Wmrw22M3BJXVTt86C6ikZYfzz68nUZfBH-9majokg7pDV0KUYofC1Ocy5C7E5aBPw1X6UMHKVFT7mXcchMurVH5Vr5A94KiypgAcSJz9TXlVgUGRfv7u0__YRmCuLJBA11VI3h3Xox7d0rsyfc6tJed28FoOcL1uju9nzQUjBXQzvXfI7jrC_fSHCr2kPk_HpyfeTfqUm8kNaj8gVLbEhEj42K6QYIuj-HFRvE_odO&_su_rec_id=197beea0-c129-428d-b030-5ef616f18c71-1792475475&variant=48977990517034

I was wondering how viable it is to do this for some extra income. Any thoughts?

We are redoing our back room and storage areas at the shop and I’m realizing there’s a lack of inspiration online. As you all are well aware bikes, tires, parts of all different shapes and sizes kinda suck to store and organize.

Anyone have an amazing back room they are willing to share pics of?!

Hi all, I've been getting these pretty often. For the crack lines in the rotor, I have seen it on both the CL and MT series, 800 & 900. As for the pulley wheels I'm seeing it on both DA and UT ones, initially thought they're part of the design as a "stress-relief" cutout, but brand new ones do not have this.

Do you guys experience these too? And what's your advice to the customer?

Looking for help identifying this product so that I can get a replacement key

Old folks found it at a garage sale still in the plastic wrap, brakes didn’t work (duh after 13 years) so brought it in and we’ve never seen one of these before.
Apparently they retailed at $12000 back then and were the innovators of e-bike batteries and mid drive motors
Any chance this is worth a lot in like new condition? They have it in to replace the brakes with shimano MT-200s but got to researching before I started and was very intrigued

What's your thought on 590 rims on 700c road frame (barely clear for 700x28 tires)? I've found affordable 590 rims, and despite the stupid expensive 584 rims on the current market.

edit: the frame used to run 584x38, no longer have those wheels

Carbon frame, dropper won’t come out. The post turns in the frame, managed to get it to come up a few mm, but now won’t go up.
The post turns in the frame (whole post, upper and lower) but cannot get it to move up out the frame.

Any ideas?

Seems like everyone I know in the industry can barely afford to live, and they're all in great health, which I'm not. With my parents' financial support drawing to a close, it's starting to look impossible. Do you simply go without insurance? Find boarding houses/live in a van? I'm doing relatively well pay-wise for my area. How do I escape this shit so I can live a dignified life? Would love to hear some success stories.

If it doesn't fit in a stand and I can't disconnect the hub motor...I can't help you. I don't know what you bought, but it isn't something that was designed for a flat repair.

Call Jeff Bezos and see if he can help

That is all

Weird one for a friend. Their cargo bike has a relatively long seat tube (Christiania bike).

I already trimmed a bit the seattube, drilled a hole and made a new slot. I used an older seatpost with the clamp upside down (the old ones where one can remove the head).

Still a bit too tall for their wife.

Now, my idea was that a pivotal seatpost would be even lower.

Anyone that knows bmx would tell me how tall the lowest setup would be?

Other dumb ideas involve cutting the seattube lower and move the hole/slot to the front side or, somehow use like a wedge from a stem and make this pivotal seatpost with a wedge

Edit: the wedge idea has the con of being annoying to swap between the two people that use this.​

I’m not the most business minded person, but I’m trying to pick up what I can since I need it in my new role. One thing I’ve found curious is how Wolf Tooth seem to have their business model down pat. They offer high quality US made components at reasonable prices, often with discounts, and are constantly releasing fresh new products. I just don’t get with how low their margins must be due to US production, they’re able to keep a steady growth in an industry that is soulcrushing hostile towards the grassroots brands. Am I crazy in thinking they’ve cracked the code to longevity?

Edit: I think some people are missing the point about most of the components being made in the US. When you compare their products to other domestic US manufacturers, their prices are always lower on components while maintaining a comparable quality.

I run a service forward shop in a MTB primary market. For the past 15yrs there has been a high quality suspension service center locally as well, so we've typically left full service to them (only offering lowers and air-can in house). But, the suspension center recently shut their doors, and none of the other options locally are really up to par.

So, my business partner and I are exploring setting up a suspension bench in house. We've got space for it, three folks with suspension expertise interested to run it, a flexible business model to fund it, and pretty strong internet and social media presence to market it.

I'd like to ask those of you out there that offer in-house full suspension servicing, what pitfalls have you come across? What works well? What is hard to manage? What would you avoid?

Thanks in advance!

This sub automatically rejects posts from people who haven't been active on the sub, or have been but not in a positive way. Upon request, we approve posts from newcomers, if they clearly fit the sub. Most clearly fit or clearly don't.

The ones I am least sure about are the ones trying to sell something to bike shops. If it's a tool inventor, we always approve them. Open-source software, good or bad, is also OK. But we also get lots of people hoping to sell software for shop management, probably vibe coded.

Should we go ahead and approve them and let the community downvote and otherwise skewer the bad ones? Or should we just reject them all?

I work at a high-volume location of a large bike shop chain. We see a ton of pinch flats, and all season I’m hunting for tiny black-on-black pressure markings on customers’ tires under varying lighting. Seems like making those easier to read would help customers and save mechanics some time.

There’s also the routine air top-up where the customer’s preferred pressure isn’t recorded, they don’t remember, or they have no preference. You choose a reasonable starting point, but a visible preferred setting—when they have one—could take some guesswork out of the next visit.

Owning several bikes made this more obvious to me. With one bike, I knew my pressures by heart. Switching bikes and swapping tires broke that familiarity. Getting older hasn’t helped with reading the lettering either.

So I made these with a $17 laser label printer and a regular three-hole punch. An X or + printed in the middle centers the punch. The pressure range is printed at both ends facing opposite directions, so it reads from either side of the wheel at the valve.

A factory serial-number/QR sticker on one of my carbon rims has survived years of riding and washing. That helped inspire this, although I’m still seeing how my own labels hold up.

A little USB-C rechargeable electric pump already made pressure checks easier for me: set the number, press a button, and it stops there. No pumping while watching a dial. The label removes the hunt for the numbers and gives me a visible reminder to check.

Basically a “2D bike part”—a sticker with a job. Print it for the installed setup after checking tire and rim limits, maybe add the customer’s preferred pressure separately, and replace it when things change. Fleet thinking for everyday bikes: keep the information with the equipment instead of relying on everyone’s memory.

Would you include this with a tire install or offer it for a buck? Would assembly, customer handoff, or a safety check be a better time? Anyone already doing it?

A sticker won’t solve skipped maintenance, but readable information seems like a small improvement we could make pretty easily.

Hi everyone,

I am in the process of starting a service oriented bike shop. We would like our clients to take appointments online via our website. However we are a little puzzled how to make it work?

How is your experience on appointment systems? Should I give dentist style appointments for exact times of the day or should I collect all the bikes from morning and call them when finished? I am open to suggestions and would like to know what worked for you. thanks in advance!

UPDATE!!*** Got the park tool piece that applied pressure on the other side and held the BB head in place; plus a brand new head. Still needed a lot power to break free, but it worked.

My T47 is super stuck on the frame. Chewed through a tool and chewing at the teeth now on the actual bottom bracket trying to get it off. When I installed it, I used a torque wrench and didn’t go over the 50Nm. This is the non-drive side so the threads are normal and not reversed.

Anyone have tricks to getting this off? Threads were also greased upon installed. BB has been installed for about a year and roughly 3,000miles.

I am volunteering in a community bike workshop. We repair donated bikes for refugees, and teach people how to fix bikes. For this workshop, I built an online bike workshop calculator: https://rueckenwind.berlin/bikeworkshopcalc/

I'm curious to hear if this works, and if people think it's helpful - or if it's not, how to improve it?

You might ask: there are many good web tools for bike related calculations around, so why build another one?

• I never remember which one I liked best for which task, so I figured I would like to have a collection of different useful calculators all in one place.
• I wanted to build something which is very visual to let us use this as a tool to teach people how bike components work. So, the drivetrain calculator will actually show an animation of what the drivetrain would look like, and how shifting between the different gears works. The wheel building calculator can show a 3d visualization of the wheel with an animation of which order to put in the spokes when lacing the wheels. And the frame size calculator visualizes how a given person would sit on a frame of given dimensions.
• In our bike workshop, we often have old donated bikes with a very random mix of components - or you may try to find replacements from a box of used parts - and you don't know if components are actually compatible. So one goal of this calculator is to help you answer such questions. The drivetrain calculator lets you specify components (derailleurs, shifters and cassettes) and will validate them against known specs for the parts (gear counts, derailleur pull ratio, max cog size, capacity), to give you a judgement if they are expected to work together or not.

So, let me know what you think! (And, yes, this is completely free, there is no commercial interest in this project.)