Archived Bike Building Troubleshooting

[Flowmotion]

Hey all, so I have been given bike building shifts this week. Haven't built a bike since last holiday season. I'm good with tools and it's easy enough to assemble a bike. However, dealing with defected bikes out of the box put a stop to my assembling today.

What do I do when a bike has a stripped bolt/nut in the stem that holds the handlebars? Defect it out? Order parts?

I had a good flow going today until this 20 in Magna bike. I was doing my safety check and put some pressure on the bars and they slipped when I had already tightened the bolt that clamps the handlebars. Not only did it slip, but it also stripped the powder coat underneath. It is a pass through bolt with a washer and nut on the end, and the bolt is oddly custom as it sets in this slot on the stem.

The kicker is this was two bikes in a row. I had a pallet of the same bikes that came off the truck. When I got to this particular style bike, it gave me trouble. Now I know I could have just asked someone, but it was 30 min until the end of my shift, and any other builder in the building wasn't in. I did try and go look up best practice on Workbench, but there was a line to use the signing pc. I just decided to cleanup and backstock what I built. I'll be in tomorrow building bikes again and I put a note on those two bikes.

 

[Joejoe12]

We defect them out and keep what we can for parts

 

[jadzia]

Magnas are the most annoying to build. It's technically not best practice (because it's working off the clock for him) but I always text or call our more experienced builder if I have a problem or question. I dunno if your other builders would be okay with that, but mine is.

 

[Flowmotion]

Well, I googled some tips with worn bolts and nuts prior to my shift. I just cleaned the bolt with a rag and WD40 and worked the nut up and down the bolt to reshape the threads. Worked pretty good. Also, it turns out our PMT has a rethreading kit in his shop.

 

[Ringwraith917]

I have a ziplock bag full of nuts, bolts, washers, etc that I have collected from various defected bikes over the years. It comes in handy in this kind of situation. Also, multiple instances of the same defect on a holiday shipment of bikes is pretty much expected. One year, every single rear reflector on this one pallet of Deelite bikes was broken.