104 - Bike Shop Secrets: Disc Brake Squeal, Internal Routing Issues, Suspension Service (incl. Fork Stanchion Lube), & Pedal Cadence. - Mountain Cog

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgin (00:20):
I wonder if people think that you
have that like on one of thoserecord buttons.
It's not no, you do it everytime I do it quite a bit and I
wonder if anyone still thinksit's what it's not.

Josh "Magellan" Anderson (00:33):
They think I'm smoking a bowl
Something or a bong or something.
I mean, that's why you're doingit.
I don't even know the rightlanguage.

Dane "Suspension Guru" H (00:38):
You're smoking the marijuana?

Yeah, I'm actually drinking a
sparkling ice.
Yeah, I'm actually drinking asparkling ice.

Dane "Suspension Guru" Higg (00:42):
I'm not drinking alcohol.

You know why?
Why I've been studying my datametrics and I'm finding out that
every time I drink it, like allmy biometrics on my data or my
body just go to shit every timeI drink Really, so I'm like so
I've been drinking a ton less.

Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgi (00:57):
Is that like when they say beer
gives you the shits?
Is it the same thing?

I don't know, but my resting heart
rate goes up.
My oh, you're figuratively shit, okay, yeah, yeah like so, like
my resting heart rate, my heartrate variability goes into the
trash.
My um, the frequency of my, mybreathing gets super high, like
everything goes crappy, and thenI sleep like crap and so it's
like wow, I don't think I shoulddrink as much as I'm drinking,

(01:24):
so I've just cut back a ton, notfor any other, that like I'm
just looking at the data, yeahWell, that's kind of cool, I
mean.

I think a lot of people have
sleep issues and a lot of peopleput back a couple before they
go to bed and don't think aboutthat.
You know what's happening totheir body, as those chemicals
are are are entering everythingin your body while you're
sleeping.

Yeah, one of the things I'm I'm one of
the things I'm doing for sureis like not drinking three or
four hours before bed, whichbasically means like right, when
I get off of work, I can havelike one or two drinks and then
I can't have any alcohol for therest of the night.

Dane "Suspension Guru" Hig (01:58):
Yeah , I my, uh, my wife a long time
when I would drink a sodaregularly like just for
everything and I still do I'm.
I've cut it down to like two aday.
You know, I try to unless I goto restaurants, but, uh, my wife
got me into drinking.

Yay.

Um , my wife got me into, uh,
drinking water, uh, more, causeI don't really drink much water,
right, and so now I drink waterbefore I go to bed.
So when I get home from work, Idon't drink anything but water
for the rest of the night, andyou know it's as much water as I
drink.
I don't get up and pee in themiddle of the night you know I
was going to ask you that, yeah.
So I I don't know if it's justbecause I'm drinking water and

(02:35):
not something else, cause Iactually think that I have to
pee more, like anything withcaffeine or something because
it's a diuretic right it pullsthe liquid on your body.
Yeah, yeah interesting I got adad dad joke, okay, um.
So I looked this one up.
It took me about an hour, uh,because I was being super picky
you really set this up to be andit's not a good joke.

(02:55):
I'm just gonna put that outthere.
It's not a very good joke.
It's kind of you know, I wantto say it's dirty but it's not.
But it made it.
It rung true with me because Ido this all the time.
So, um, how many bicyclistsdoes it take to screw in a light
bulb?

oh, how many bicyclists does it take
to screw in a light bulb?

I do not know uh 10 okay uh, so
you need one to change it andnine others to argue about the
aerodynamics, weight, lumens and, most importantly, color that
one.

That one would be good for tom from
outbound lighting they don'teven have 10 people man, that
one was really not good I toldyou, you know, but I didn't play
it off like it was good.
I feel like we need to.
We need, we owe our listenerslike a second one.
Okay, go for it okay so so, um.

(03:44):
So you know, I, when I wasyounger, I dated this girl.
She's beautiful um, super nicegirl, smart um, liked her a lot,
spent a lot of time with her um, but she had a lazy eye okay,
like not a big deal, except younever know where she's looking
yeah, and so like I had to breakout with her cause I was

(04:05):
worried that she was seeingsomeone on the side.

Oh man.

Is that me better Is?

it not any better.
Uh, your delivery was great,thank you.

Thank you.
So the joke sucked, but mydelivery was good.

Better than mine.
I'm reading it off my phone,which I had to save it as a
picture, otherwise my phonewould go to sleep.
So right now, man.

So, uh , it's a Sunday, yep, and uh, we
just got done doing a good ride.

Yeah .

Um, I do want to.
Um, well, we'll talk about theride in a little bit.
Um, but yesterday I dedicatedmost of the day to doing two
things.
One is watching hockey, becausethe NHL is back after the Four
Nations tournament, which wasfan-fucking-tastic.

Was it like the Lakers and the
Steelers?
Yeah, perfect yeah.

It's exactly what it was.
But then I also did bikemaintenance all day and I ran
into a bunch of um problems, uh,and so I wanted to kind of talk
about some of those things.
Okay, uh, if you're cool withthat, sure, and the first one is
, um, and this is kind of an ageold um problem that we've had
forever, and so I thought itmight be good, cause I think you
know everyone at some pointdeals with this, so I wanted to

(05:25):
thought you could share yourbike shop wisdom with our
listeners on a couple of thesetopics.
Um, and then, and then I have aquestion specifically about and
this is about hydraulic discbrakes.
Um, and we've put the dominion,um, uh, the haze dominion a4s,
yep, uh, so that's the fourpistons on lacy switchblade, so
it's kind of like a, you know,long travel trail or short
travel enduro bike kind of.

(05:46):
Yeah, um, and her front, andit's got a big rotor, it's got
two or three rotor on the front.
Uh, it's got a shimano rotor onit, okay, which I know it
doesn't have the haze rotorsbecause they don't make the haze
rotors with center lock andthese actual tires have center
lock.
So, um, we couldn't put hazerotors on there, but they seem
to fit just fine and they workokay yeah, hazel hazel, get mad,
but um, we've had pretty goodluck with those rotors and that

(06:09):
break, no problem.

Um , some company, every company,
is like you gotta use our stuff,you know, and it's because they
test to that stuff and and sothey can't really you know one,
they don't want to be like yeah,shimano stuff's great because
they're selling their stuff yeahplease.
But two they are testing totheir stuff.
They want the brake to be thebest that they've tested and

(06:31):
have the best experience for therider, and so they'll always
kind of be like you got to useour stuff Practically.
That's the difference betweenrotors sometimes is a big one
and sometimes not at all.
Like TRP makes one that isextra thick is a big one and
sometimes not at all.
Like TRP makes one that isextra thick.
Yeah, and if you don't use theTRP rotor with their brakes,
you'll get a very differentexperience than if you use their

(06:52):
rotor.
And so sometimes it matters andthen sometimes it does.

So if you're matching brakes to the
rotors um, talk to your bikeshop.
They can probably help youfigure out.
Yeah, If it'll work if it'll bea big difference or not.
Yeah, in this case I talked toyou.
I talked to to the Croto andsaid, hey, what do you guys,
what do you guys think?
And you guys both thought itwould work All right.
So so there's a whole bunch ofthings I want to talk about here
.
But but I got a squeaky.
Make a resin rotor for the A4.

(07:16):
It does not make a resin padfor the A4.
They have a semi-metallic and ametallic.

I think they call it
semi-metallic and centered.
Yeah, so those are there tooand this has been something
they've been doing forever.
A lot of bike companies their,their brakes will have different
names, so, like Shimano isresin and metal, and then other
companies will be organic, yepand metal or centered or
something.
So, uh, you kind of have tofigure out which one they're

(07:50):
saying.
And then there's companies likecool stop and mtx, and there's
a couple of other companies.
There's a bunch, yeah, wherethey make a bunch of different
versions, yep, and so usuallywhen I'm looking to bring pads
into the shop, I have tworequirements.
One, that is, there's onethat's quieter and then one that
tends to last longer, andthat's usually kind of what you

(08:11):
end up with, one or the other.
Sometimes you can get both inone package, it just depends.
And then if you're on adownhill bike in Arizona because
we don't have wet conditions ifyou're on a downhill bike and
you're just going through yourpads too fast, you go metal.
And then if you want a littlequieter pads, you're more
cross-country and you just don'twant to make a noise.

The usually the softer resin pads so
so they've got semi-metallic onthere.
You know purportedly thequieter version of the two
options there's a centered and asemi-metallic and, uh, can't
get this thing to quiet down,okay.
So so the first thing I do isI'm Lacey, had like dropped her
bike recently and I'm testingthe wheel out and there's like a

(08:52):
chunk in the wheel, okay, likeyour chunk in the break.
You can hear it's like clunk,clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, okay
.
And so I inspect the rotor andfind out that it's it's like
bent, and it's bent in a weirdway, not in a way that you can
repair it, I don't think, unlessyou, like heated it up or
something.
Then I don't know what you'redoing.
So, long story short, Ireplaced the rotor.
Okay, put a brand new rotor on.
Yeah, uh, it's the same rotor.

(09:12):
Xt 203 center lock ice techokay, a good rotor brand new.
Um, get it on.
Go through the bedding process.
It's still squealing like crazy.
Take the, take the pads out,get some really fine sandpaper.

You can tell me if I totally did
this wrong so far.
You sound like everybody else,so that's good.
Yeah, you're doing whateverybody else does Okay.

I don't know if that's good or bad
, but we'll see.
Took some sandpaper, laid itdown on the on the concrete
concrete, so it was completelyflat.
Yep, Put the pad on top of itso I got a real nice flat and
just kind of there was blackstuff on the outside of the pad.
Yeah, Glazing, yeah, whateverglazing.
Yeah, Got all that stuff off.
Got down to where the padlooked brand new again.

(09:59):
It didn't take much.
Put them back on stillsqueaking like a motherfucker.
Okay, what can I do?

Man , there's so many variables so I
got to throw that disclaimerout there, because we see all
types of situations that causethat.
There's been some weird ones inthe past.
There's been some really commonones.
Usually when a bike comes intothe shop and it's got squealy
brakes most common that we seeand I'm not saying this is your
case, but the most common thatwe see is somebody has

(10:29):
contaminated the pad somehow.
So pads tend to be kind of aporous.
If you were to look at themreally close with a microscope,
they look kind of like sponges,yep, and all of those crevices
will take in oils and sohandling with your hands you
want to avoid that, um so don'ttouch the actual pad surface or
your rotor.

That's the other thing um it is uh, uh
, the right way to clean a rotor, I think is with rubbing
alcohol yeah, so we tend toclean it with rubbing alcohol to
get any oils off of it

Dane "Suspension Guru (11:00):
sometimes you will use abrasives to scuff
it, to try and take the glazingthat may be on the rotor, and
sometimes that works, sometimesit doesn't.
So when you get these weirdcircumstances, the hardest thing
is that trying to figure outwhat's actually causing it.
So I'll give you an example ofa weird one that bike mechanics
dealt with a while back withavid brakes on specialized.

(11:22):
Okay and um, the specialized onone particular bike made this
weird brake mount that was kindof um they used to have instead
of post mount.
They had international standardist, yep, and they would stick
up, you know.
And then you'd use an adapterto get a bigger rotor.
Um, what was happening is thebrakes were fine but they were

(11:44):
kind of vibrating because thethe, the mount and the adapter
brought them up so high thatthey could be.
They were too high, you knowthey were too far away.

So the frequency like it was actually
chattering Yep, yeah, and so wewere.

We were specialized dealer and we
were dealing with this andtrying to figure out how to fix
it.
And this is a while ago, so ifnobody remembers this, don't
worry.

Beefy mouth to like.

No , the weirdest thing because we
had to work with Specialized butthen we had to work with Avid
at the time was making the breakand Avid at the time would give
you brand new brakes, you know,like they would do anything,
Like they were amazing.
And back then so we would put abrand new set of brakes, brand
new rotor on, and it would stilldo it.
And at that point you're like,okay, wait, it's probably not

(12:27):
the brake.
At this point We've replacedeverything.
What Avid found out because theywere having problems too and
they would go to the pits atraces and try and figure the
same issue out is because thatsetup was so far away from the
actual beefiness of the frame.
Yep, it would vibrate.
And so they figured out andjust, I don't know if it was

(12:49):
trial and error or whatever, butthere was a banjo on this uh
caliper and instead of having itshoot straight to the frame and
kind of um, kind of taper downto the frame and then gets it
zip tied to the frame, whichthey do, they had this banjo uh,
point straight down and then doa curve tied to the frame,
which they do.
They had this banjo pointstraight down and then do a
curve, which kind of gave anextra brace.

(13:09):
It used the hose as kind of abrace to stop that vibration and
it worked.
And so there was a wholegeneration of specialized that
every time we brought them intothe shop we would build them
that way to get rid of thatparticular problem that caused
those noises.

So, so let me just let me back up
again.
I'm going to come back to whatyou just said.
So is it possible?
Cause I ordered some new pads,um, which get delivered tomorrow
, Cause Lacey's got to ride onTuesday.
Otherwise I wouldn't havegotten from you guys, but you
guys are closed on Monday.

That's cause we want to ride our bikes
, which is totally fine.

No, but just know I'm going to buy
things from Jensen every once ina while when we're close.
Don't go with Jensen.
It was the only place I couldget them, but I knew we'd
deliver them fast.
But is it possible that thepads got something on them and
they got contaminated?
And even after I sanded itthey're still contaminated.

Yeah , absolutely Cause um.
So I'm going to talk realgeneric about this stuff,
because your per your instancemay be different than everybody
else's and the biggest thingthat we see is this
contamination Right, and that umis usually the pad picks up
some sort of oil, um, eitherfrom skin or a lot of people
don't realize when you'rewashing your bike, it's the
water is splashing oil from yourdrive train over to the brake

(14:31):
or just from your bike ingeneral.
I mean, we we get bikes inwhere the seals are blown on the
shock and they're leaking allover the break.

Yeah, that's pretty obvious.

Yeah , but um, we even have, you know
, squealing issues on brand newbikes.
Where you're in, like your case, where you're trying to figure
this out, contamination usuallymeans that something's gotten on
the pad, the number one thingthat everybody does, that bike
shops tend not to do, and I'lltell you why this is Is sand
them yeah.
Or they sand them, they torchthem, they put them in the oven.

(15:05):
I can't tell you how manythings I've seen people do.

Right.

And you read stuff online and
everybody has some suggestion.
Just put them in the oven.
Do this yeah.

Rub them on the concrete Use a file.

Only go vertical with your file, or
no?
No, you got to go horizontal.
Whatever, they come up with allthese different things when you
go to a bike shop.
Most common, the bike shop'sgoing to be like we're going to
put new pads on, and here's why.
Uh, because I have seen thatscenario where people spend so
much time trying to get thatsqueal out of that particular

(15:41):
pad that's been contaminated andit's deep into the pad.
It soaks it up like a sponge,and so the bike shop has to
charge you for that time.
So you don't want to pay thebike.

It's actually cheaper just to replace
the pads on it.

Yeah , and then it's fixed and done.
You don't want a mechanic likespending all that time doing
that stuff and charging for it.
And and I've had theseconversations on chairlifts with
buddies you know at at pits,you know at races and yeah, you
know you can sometimes get acontaminated pad to stop
squealing, but it doesn't stopvery well, um, it's still not

(16:14):
stopping.
And so you're using a lot morefinger force, uh, and pulling a
lot harder to get the samebreaking power and so, um, so
this contamination thing thathappens is really common, uh,
and that is something that iscauses the number one I would
say squeal.
If it's not like water, likewhen you go through water on any
break, it'll squeal for a whileuntil it dries out.

(16:36):
So, but if there's a lot of oiland oil you know getting it's
kind of will stick around.

So my second plan was to take Lacey up
to the top of pistol Hill andjust have her run laps, holding
her front brake, the whole waydown.
That's not going to do iteither, right?

So so what I do to fix a brand new
bike, the squealing?
In most cases it's the bed inprocess.
That is really the issue, andthe bed in process can sometimes
be really straightforward andeasy and sometimes it can be
really a pain in the ass.
And um, it's funny because oneof our listeners has this they
have these bed in machines.
Yeah, that you can.

(17:10):
Uh, most of the time, a bikeshop owns one.
Yeah, especially if you got badweather and you're indoors a
lot and you don't want to beoutside riding a bike for 20
minutes trying to bed in thebrakes, and or you just don't
have an area to do that, likeyou're in a, a mall that just
doesn't have space.
Um and uh, this bedding machinewill actually turn the wheel.
Yeah, um, it'll sense, Ibelieve, the force.

(17:33):
Uh, I got a little tutorialfrom our listener, brian, about
it, but I didn't really memorizeit, so, so I may get some
details wrong, but it it sensesthe force and then you, it tells
you when to apply, apply thebrakes and it gives you kind of
uh, you know, an idea of how tobet in, which is really cool so,
and I imagine you can do it alot faster yeah, something

(17:55):
that's automatically much more,much more um, are you guys?

are you thinking about getting one?

no , they're super expensive, yeah,
and we can just ride it outsideso in arizona doesn't matter
but the bread and bed in processis kind of different on
different brakes.
The idea is to get the brakesto mate with the rotor and then
two things happen you need toheat them up when you do this
and when you do the you justheat them up by using them yes,

(18:21):
yeah, you don't want to take atorch to them you don't want to
put them in the oven.
That's not what you're doing.
What you're doing is gettingthem to basically put the brakes
on and get them hot enough towhere some of the material from
the pad starts bedding in to therotor and that creates an
abrasive uh surface that they,they both enjoy.
You know, if that, if thatmakes sense, um, and then what

(18:41):
happens is that you get morebite, uh, when this happens, and
you tend to have less noisebecause they're at the same time
, they're kind of beveling andthat's something that people
don't think about is they'rekind of conforming to the angle
of the rotor.

Yeah.

So one of the things that you may
be dealing with is if you had amisaligned caliper or if your
caliper isn't perfectly straight, for instance, and there's two
different planes of straightness.
So there's the side to side,and then there's also, basically
, if your post mounts aren'tflush, and so there's tools that

(19:18):
we use to basically mill thoseand face them they call it
facing and that flattens themout, because sometimes the fork
will have a slight angle to it.
So when you tighten down thecaliper, no matter what, you've
got one edge of the pad hittingthe rotor and the other side has
got the opposite edge hitting.

(19:39):
And so they come in at an angleand they will take a while.
So I have bed-in brakes forlike 20 minutes.
No joke, so hard that I'vebeveled that pad to where the
noise goes away, because nowthat pad has it's worn down it's
worn down on those edges and sothere's a way past it.
But sometimes if it's bad, youknow you, you can't get past it

(20:02):
and you have to go, uh,basically machine those post
mounts so interesting.

So when you guys set them up
initially, well, first of allSumart makes that little tool.
I gave you one that actuallyspreads the except except
doesn't work.
Works great for me.

Yeah , on four piston.

Well, you can just do two at a time.

Oh , okay.

Yeah.

Can you Cause?
Usually when you push two out,the other two want to push.

Yeah, I think you're right.
I think I've only used it onthe two piston.

Yeah , and that's that's the first
thing I said when I saw thattool.
I'm like, hey, this will onlywork on two piston.

So all we need to do though, we're
going to try to solve this righthere, but all we need to do is
replace those washers withsomething big enough, does make
sense, because it's just amagnet oh, oh, I got you, I got
you, you can so on that tool,we're talking on that tool
anyways um, and then I've gotthis, another little tool that I

(20:58):
put on my rotor and it slides,you know, inside between the
pads and the rotor.
Yep, and then I loosen thecaliper.
I pull the brakes, tighten thecaliper bolts, then I take that
little tool out and it's just alittle spacer on each side.
That gives you, like you know,I don't, I don't even know how
much, but just enough to wherethey're not touching.

(21:19):
That typically lines it up.

Like that usually works.
We do, like I do, the cheatermethod all the time.
Where what's the cheater method?

you kind of have the caliper bolts
fairly you want them cincheddown to where like still move it
, but yeah, like a quarter turnwill tighten it, but it still
can move.

And then you pull the brake and
hold the brake and you want toyou, you want to have the wheel
kind of pushing towards the pador pushing the caliper, as it's
clamped on the rotor, towardsthe either the stay or the fork,
so that it's not backed off,and then you just kind of snug
those down and then you canusually go to town, where that
usually doesn't work.
So that's kind of a rule ofthumb.

(21:57):
That kind of works sometimes,but not all the time.
Uh, sometimes, though, thedepending on the brake bolts,
how the brake manufacturersdesign them, if they have the
caliper positioning washers, youknow those conical ones
sometimes those develop a memory, so I have to break them apart
and kind of spin them around, uh, so that they don't have the
same memory, because sometimesthey'll try and put the caliper

(22:19):
at the same angle.
Um, so there's lots of littletechniques that you kind of run
into trying to figure this out.
In other words, there's noright answer.
Yeah, but my most go-to when Ihave a problem break is I need
to sight the caliper.
So I need to look through thecaliper, usually through the
brake pads you're just lining itup?

yep, yeah, so you can see.
You see light on both sides.
Yeah, shine a flashlightthrough the flashlight or a
light box.

Dane "Suspension Guru (22:41):
Sometimes we'll make a light box which is
kind of like just a.
Just think of like fluorescentlight that's rectangular.
You can the ground.

Yeah.

And so you can get a good view.
And then you can really kind ofstart to see it.
And sometimes you have to sightstraight down.
But sometimes you have to lookthrough the pads, like you're
the rotor from the rotor side,okay, so not straight down
through the pad, the hole that'susually in the caliper.
So the key there is to makesure that you're really getting

(23:09):
that thing perfectly aligned.
That'll reduce it before you gowith the bed in process.

Right, right Okay.

And so trying to get that as
straight as possible make sureyour torque is good on your
bolts so that there's nothingloose, yep, and then repeat the
bed in process.
This is why brakes are a painin the ass.

It's a pain in the ass.
Yeah, I mean like I was justlooking down.

we one topic, we're 23 minutes in
yeah I know, are we really jesus?
And we're not.
We've just started because, ohman, get me started on fluids
and like your tool.
Let's talk about your tool realquick.

Okay, sumart makes this tool.
That, I think, is super cool.
Yes, and it will push.
You know, like historically,when you pull the pads out,
sometimes the pistons are, likeyou know, still out.
They're self-adjusted.

Yeah , they're self-adjusted.

So I used to just take and I don't
know, bike mechanic taught methis years ago I used to just
take, like a tire iron and pushthem back in.
Yep, yeah.
But then, like, I ended upgetting one and I didn't
understand this because someonehad done a lever bleed, uh-huh,
and they didn't.
They didn't, um do your padsout, yeah and they didn't put a
block in yep, and so what endedup happening was there was more

(24:20):
fluid in the system, exactlyright, that happens a lot and so
I couldn't.
I was like losing my mind.
Yeah, I couldn't get thepistons.
I didn't understand what wasgoing on.
I couldn't get the pistons.
I didn't understand what wasgoing on.
I couldn't get the pistons backin.
I ended up chipping one of thepistons because they're ceramic,
which is shitty but and then Iultimately figured I was like
sat back and like what thehell's going on here and I was
like, oh, there's probably toomuch fluid in the system.
So I, you know, uncapped it atthe, at the, at the lever, and

(24:43):
pushed them in and a little bitof fluid came out and I was like
, all right, that's exactly whatit was.
But I bought that.
In my struggle to figure outwhat the hell was going on, how
I was going to fix this, Ibought that sumart tool, yeah,
and it worked awesome, but I wasonly using it on a two piston,
to your point, because it's onlyset up to push two at one time
yeah.

So describing this tool is
basically it's got two plates onit that are look like the, like
a rotor or like like a brake,their washers piston, yeah and
um, and then what happens is, asyou screw it, there's a wedge
that comes in from one, bothsides, that evenly pushes them
outward, yeah, and so you put itbetween the pistons.

(25:21):
As you tighten it, it evenly issupposed to push those pistons
back in, which is what you wantto do.
So, um, but the first thing Isaw when I saw this tool is I'm
like that only works on twopiston, it won't work on four.
And when you have a four pistonuh system, they are all linked.
So if you push one in, theother three will move slightly.

(25:41):
Uh, if you push two in two,other ones will move.
You've got to push them all in.

So we just got to mod it, so it pushes
all four at the same time yeah,and then I've got a.
I've got a thing in my head Idon't know that I can explain it
in words right now, but I got athing in my head that I think
will work.

It would be easy to make a piece
that goes in there, but that'sall I'm saying.
But you would have to make thatpiece.
Different size for differentcalipers, right, because the
length of a four piston pad isnot always consistent is
different yeah, so it gets alittle complicated.
The two piston is way easier, so, um, so that tool scared the
shit out of me when I saw it,because I'm like this is not
good because this is marketedtowards consumers.

(26:14):
And you touched on exactly whyit scares me.
Because, uh, shimano is a goodexample.
They make, uh, ceramic pistonsand it is very common that we
see a ceramic piston cracked orchipped or broken because
somebody's trying to reset theirpistons and they've, you know,

(26:35):
under whatever reason, they'vegotten something in there to try
and buy it back.
But maybe they didn't crack thebleed port open.
They didn't know that part ofthe the process.
They didn't know that they couldbe overfilled with like my dumb
ass well, and, and then thatgets expensive because I had to
replace the brake.
Yeah, yeah, I mean maybe you canbuy that piston.
I don't know, there's likeaftermarket ones that we've

(26:58):
tried.
Sometimes it's a they'll.
They'll just leak right off thebat.
You know like you can go onebay and and amazon and get them
.
Um, we got one set for a Um,and I think we were able to get
them to work, because so the waythose pistons work is there is
a seal in there, you know, uh,and it's usually a square seal.

(27:18):
So once the piston either comesout all the way or cracks,
you've now get a get all thecrap out of there, and then
you've got to get the new pistonin without cutting that seal.
And so if that seal, and so ifthat seal has been cut either in
the cracking process or just byputting the new one in, it'll
start leaking and, lo and behold, you'll have contaminated pads
before you know it, Probablyhalf of our listeners that have

(27:40):
never worked on a disc brakebefore like what the fuck are
these guys talking about?
Well, yeah, and this is really acommon thing that changing your
own pads should be easy.
But the first thing you shoulddo is check online or go to your
local shop for a quick tutorial.
The first thing you'll hear ata bike shop in most cases that
you need to get some sort ofbleed apparatus that attaches to

(28:01):
the lever.
And you know you'll.
You know, a lot of people lookat us like what are you talking?
I just want to put pads in.
I can do that, you know, butthese hydraulic brake pads, they
self-adjust, which means that,uh, the hydraulic system is
designed to push in fluid andthen the caliper pistons retract
a certain amount just amillimeter to something exactly

(28:23):
and that gives you the freespinning otherwise your rotor
would constantly be so um, shoutout to park tool.

Josh "Magellan" Anderso (28:29):
They've got really good youtube videos,
yep, yeah and so, and they havesome good ones on breaks.
So check out park tool and, andyou know, we've I've been
talking with park.
We're going to get them on thepodcast sometime soon, which I'd
like to do yeah, it'd be cool Ireally like their products.
Um, it'll be more dorky thanthis episode yeah all right, one
one, one more question on discbrakes.
Um, and before we drive our, sowe don't drive our listeners to

(28:51):
completely crazy, okay, forthose that don't give a shit
about disc brakes, but, um, isthere an aftermarket company for
pads that you would recommend?

Uh , that is a loaded question.
So like cool stop, like Italked to those guys yeah, we,
I've used cool stop beforeduring covid.

we tried everything out jaguar is a
is like a distributor's brand.

That's kind of a generic pad um guys,
my rep's gonna hate me.
I think it's mtx mtx yeah,absolutely they're.
They have her great things.
I have two sets of them.
I need to put them in bikes andtry them.
Um.
You saw today that I'm kind ofunder breaker, like I don't, I
don't, I don't have big brakeson my bikes um so he's riding a

(29:34):
bike that is like an endurostyle bike or whatever and, uh,
definitely, if I was riding thatbike, I would put, like you
know, freaking.

What are the new?
What are the new?

the new ones.
The new ones are coming with.
Uh, the shram mavens.

Yeah, mavens, I put Mavens on that
bike right, but I look it downand Dane's got Dominion A2s on
it.
Yeah, two piston brakes Twopiston brakes.
I'm like what?

Yeah , and they're titanium ones, so
they're light, with carbonlevers and everything.
They're so cool, so cool.
But yeah, they have big pistons, they have, they have plenty of
power for me and yeah, youdon't break, I don't, I try not
to.
I used to have a team called nobrakes, I mean our goal was to
not use our brakes.
So right, um, but uh, when Ibreak, I'm used to, I like brake

(30:18):
brakes.
That that modulate, it's reallyimportant to me and uh, so I'm
not a huge fan of shimanobecause of that, because
shimano's tend to put all theirpower right at the beginning
yeah and then, as you pullharder and harder, they don't
deliver an equal amount to theequal amount that you're pulling
harder.

We talked about this.

It's like a on off switch versus a
dimmer switch yeah, and sramI've been happy with because
they are dimmer switch, dimmerswitch.
Um haze are a happy mediumbecause they have a really nice
levers that have kind of a leverlike a power modulation yeah,
it's.
It's like it changes the ratio.
Okay, and so as they come on,you get a decent amount of bite,

(30:56):
but as you pull harder, you getharder and harder, in a good
ratio, and uh, so I haven'tneeded too much.
They're single piston padsaren't like tiny little
cross-country you know, eventhough these are carbon and
titanium.
They have titanium bolts andcarbon blades.
Even though that they're thelightweight cross country one,
they're not like.
They're still beefy.

(31:18):
Yeah, they're they.
They have a good size piston sothey deliver a lot of power
with that one, you know twopiston caliper.

And.

I don't need any more.
I put on like the world'slightest brake on my last e-bike
and I.
I was fine on trails, honestly,but I took it to sunrise and I
about died so that's a bike parkyeah, yeah, yeah, I doing a
chair chairlift.
Riding was bad with those wasscary, yeah, and they were
stupid light though like okay,but you didn't.

You still haven't answered my
question.
Okay, is there an aftermarketbrand that you would recommend,
or do you would?
I wouldn't recommend any.
Do you recommend the oem?

I , I.
We tend to be more oemorientated, because if you have
a problem, that's the firstthing they're going to ask you.
You know.
So, like, if your brakes aren'tworking or they're squealing or
doing something, the firstthing they want to know is did
you mess with their system?
You know, and so you know thereare a lot of cool brake pads out
there.
I think the MTXs are the onesthat I'm hearing the most about.

(32:17):
Um, but sometimes you know youcan get the wrong pad.
So Magura is notorious formaking way too many types of
brake pads and gets confusing.
Um, god, who's?

there it's like analysis paralysis you
have too many to say, too manyoptions, so you can't figure out
what the hell to buy.

Yeah , there's another company that
we used to do a long time ago.
It wasn't cool, stop.
I can't remember who they were,but they had gold in red.

Yeah, yeah, I know who you're talking
about.
I can't remember the nameeither, but I don't know why I
want to say Ibok, but it wasn'tit was it was something, uh,
something automotive ormotorcycle brand.
Okay.

I can't remember.
Um, God, that's bad Cause I didrun them for a while, but they
were confusing also because theywouldn't name the same stuff.
So you also get to this userease of like.
Hey, I just I either want themto last longer or I want them to
um, you know quiet, be quiet.
And if you came in and said Idon't like that they make noise,

(33:14):
we have an option.
If you came in and said thatI'm just wearing them out too
fast, we have an option, or itdoesn't it?

Josh "Magellan" Anderso (33:18):
doesn't stop enough.
As soon as you get start startinto a bunch of spectrums people
start to freak out, so youdon't have an aftermarket that
you'd recommend.
You've got mixed experiencewith them yeah, I would say you
guys typically recommend to yourcustomers the oem pads.

Yeah , yeah they they seem to be the
most consistent and we gotburned a lot during covid yeah
it made us pretty gun shybecause there was so much crap
out there.
We had brake pads that we werebringing in just because we
couldn't get anything where thewhole brake brake pad material
would separate from the backingplate and just shoot out the
shoot out the brake and so you'dyou'd have no brakes, right?

(33:53):
That's shit, it's really badyeah.
Because people were scroungingfor any anything that they could
get.

Right.
So all right, I'm going toswitch to uh to leverage your
suspension experience here, Um,but first I want to ask you a
question, Um, do we have in oursuspension products on our bikes
?
We have fork in the back shockor fork in the front, shock in
the back.
Do we have dampeners?
We have dampers.

We don't have dampeners.
No dampeners like a squirt gun.
This is making you damp.

So we have dampers?
Yeah, no dampeners.

No , okay.

Yeah.
So for all of our fellowpodcasters out there, it's a
damper.
Stop saying dampener.

You're going to make me look that up,
because what if we're wrong?
I know.

Well, like, we're going to look that
up before we publish this, thesuspension guru.

Even if we're wrong, I'm going to
publish it like this that's fine, I I get twitchy about that
because, uh, way back in the daymy buddy just was, I was saying
it wrong and he goes it's.
Are you making things wet?

and I'm like no, he's like stop
saying dampener I'm gonna, I'mgonna google this while we're
sitting here yeah, that itbasically.

This came from me working with
somebody who was a um literaryarts major and like would
critique everything that I wroteand said and for grammatic,
grammatic, uh, clarity, and uh,are you looking it up?
I'm looking it up, yeah and itmight be synonymous man, no man,

(35:23):
I I swear it's not.
We're gonna look it up andwe'll put it in the notes both
are correct, but damper istechnically correct.
Yeah, dampener is like yeah,it's like a mister, you'd have a
mist.
Have you seen misters you canget for your bike?
You can strap them to the frontof your bike and they will make
you wet and cool as you ride.

That's a dampener hang on a second.
So I got, I got, I got, I gotan interesting.
Let's read this here are yougoing off?

of ai.

No, yeah, of course all right, let's
see here.
So damper is only a noun,refers to something that deadens
, restrains or depresses.
Okay, a adjustable plate forcontrolling a draft, one that
deadens vibrations, there you go.
A dampener is someone orsomething that dampens, so a so

(36:07):
damper, dampener, damper, oh,dampener can both refer to one
that deadens sound vibrations,but damper does not work for
something that makes somethingslightly wet.

So if you Wait, say that again so
damper, like damp, like I'm damp, yeah, so damper doesn't work
for something that makessomething wet.

Yeah.

But dampener does.

I think we've just confused the
shit out of ourselves and ourlisteners.
Right now, I don't think wehave a good answer you know what
else bugs the shit out of me?

yeah , if your brake line for your
front brake is run on theoutside of your fork to your
brake, this is just somethingyou don't like.
Oh yeah, you know how toiletpaper should go over the top.
I like it underneath.
No, that's bullshit.
It should go over the top, buthow do you rip it?
Then you just pull down.

If it's from the bottom, you've got
the right angle to rip it.

No , it comes out like crazy.
Here we go.
No, it doesn't.
No the patent.
If you look up the patent for atoilet paper roll.

Are you fucking kidding me?
I'm not kidding.

You can google that.
But your brake line foreverybody out there listening
needs to go on the inside of thefork, and here's why, because
there's bike shops all over thecountry there's.
Half of them are mad at us andhalf of them are agree with us
right now.
Here's why we live in thedesert.
It's rocky if you fall and yourbrake line is on the outside it

(37:31):
gets cut.
It can get cut If it's on theinside.
It does not.
Here's why it goes on theoutside, because people line it
up with a little holder on thefork and it points it towards
the outside and it has to make aharder curve to go back to the
inside.
Yeah, and so they don't.
They think that it should goout there because they're just
following that line.
Yeah, they don't realize thepracticalness of it going on the

(37:54):
inside.

And the design is actually for it to
go on the inside, theappropriate design.

Yeah , the tricky part.
So this came about withMarzocchi.
Back in the day, when they weremade in Italy, they would put
their stupid cable managers onthe back of the fork at the
right, at the wiper.
You know it would be back there.
And what we found out later,because we're american and we
have a, our rear brake is on theright, yep, and our front brake

(38:19):
is on the left, right overthere.
That was opposite and so itwould actually flow correctly
with a uh left or for with aright hand front break Gotcha
yeah.

Okay.

And so we didn't know that Manitou
did the same thing with areverse arches.
So it gets real confusing.
But if you follow of likefunction over fashion, it needs
to go on the inside so that youdon't accidentally cut that
thing open If you, if you crash.

Yeah, I mean.

anyone that's looked at us knows that
we foul function over fashion I,yeah, I mean I, my kit does not
match my body, that's for sureall right, um stands, just came
out with a new product.

Okay, uh, this is a, uh, a type of
suspension lubrication for yourfork.
I think also for your shots,like the rim company okay yeah,
that is designed to be put onyour stanchion okay um I don't
even know about this, right, itjust came out.

I thought you might not.

Yeah, I thought you stumped me, yeah,
so.
So this is like a, like an oilthat you put on your stanchion.
Yes, it's supposed to help fixsticky whatever suspension
products.

Yeah , so and.

I my hypothesis.
You're going to say this isstupid, you shouldn't do it.
What do you?
I know you don't know about theproduct.
You had to research it, figureit out.
But like what is your thoughtabout putting some type of
lubrication on the stanchion,not disassemb?
So?

this has been around forever, pretty
much since suspension's beenout.
Yeah, so they've had astanchion lube, so I use Maxima
and then SC makes a good one.
Okay, there's a bunch of themout there.
So, you're a fan of it.

No.

I don't use it.

But you just said you use it.

No , I've tried it and I've tested
it and it's a good product, but,like everything, it depends on
your climate.
So, for instance, what thatdoes is it helps keep the rubber
on the outside moist.

Yeah.

I like that word moist yeah moist
, and it allows it not to likestick, and so I've actually used
it more on droppers than.
I have on forks to like stickand so I've actually used it
more on droppers.
Okay, and I have on forks.
Um, the only thing is, if youdo that, you just need to kind
of take off the residue so itdoesn't attract the dust here,
right?
so here we have this moon dustdust that is just so small that

(40:44):
that that external lubricant cankind of get curled into the
wipers and right, that's, that'sbad and bring more debris
inside okay so now here's thething I do suspension for a
living.
And if most of the wipers on themarket are built to keep stuff
uh, to keep stuff out, believeit or not uh, then, to keep

(41:07):
stuff in.
There's not a lot of forcethat's trying to force it out,
but a wiper is built with a lipseal and then it has an opposite
seal on the inside.
Sometimes they even have what'scalled an energizer ring that
holds it tight, and so kind of.
They're two access doors, right, right, and so the one on the

(41:28):
inside is keeping the oil in andtrying not to let it out.
It is doing a good job and it'sprotected from UV, so it
doesn't tend to dry out as bad.
It can get messed up with likecuts in your stanchion or just
time.
You know friction and thingslike that.
The outside wiper is meant tokeep stuff out, and so when you
introduce a lubricant on thatone, you, you may, it may curl

(41:52):
enough under use to where itlets the dirt in and then the
one on the inside is notdesigned to keep stuff out, so
you don't ever put this stuff onI don't know, and personally I
like a clean seal.
So and this is what I teachpeople in the shop is, I have
like an old tube sock, you know,keep it in the car and then
when I'm done with my ride, Iwill just kind of do that kind

(42:12):
of buffer motion back and forthand clean my, my whole station
and the wipers.
Yeah, yeah, I'm just kind ofgetting the dirt away so that,
as it's being used, it's lesslikely to pull stuff in.
But here's the key.
I also service my suspensionand that is the biggest thing
that will help all of that,because there is a a foam ring

(42:34):
and there is a process by thethat the most forks are designed
to bring moisture up to thoseseals and keep them moving and,
in fact, when they're freshlyserviced, you'll actually see
some of that, uh, that liquidcome out.

That, yeah, we call it the weeping.

Yeah , weeping, yeah, you'll see
those little rings.

Yeah, so that's normal.

That's kind of normal.

Yeah, okay.

Um , it's, it's normal as far as if
it's not creating a drip andit's not running down the side.
So if it's a freshly serviced,you'll see it, but if it's an
shock or fork that has not beenserviced in a long time and you
a while, that's a bad sign andthat's the time when people tend
to put those products on and sothey tend to go past their

(43:16):
service interval and they'rekind of trying to limp along but
maybe not even realizing it,and they're not realizing that
their fork may need service, notjust this external one part
lubricated.

Is there a general rule for how
many hours or how many ridesbetween services on the
suspension products?

So there's two services on most
forks.
They call it a lower serviceand then a full service.
For us, anyway, we kind of havea generic timeframe, because
one company will say 125 hourson a full, or one will say a
hundred hours, you know, and sowe just say a hundred hours, uh,
or roughly a year, um.
And then the half service, uh,they say most companies will say

(43:57):
50 hours and some companieswill really push you.
So Fox really wants you to dothat 50 hour service.
We don't actually do a lot ofthose in the shop, uh, we do
more full services, um, mainlybecause we don't have a lot of
water introduced on our trailsso you're not riding in in dirt,
mud and rain and so there's notas much debris getting in

(44:20):
because there's no liquidpulling that debris in, got it?
The liquid is the transfersurface.

And then what's the going rate?
Like I know what you guyscharge, but like what's the
going rate for these servicestypically?

Oh , man, man, I.
That's something I actuallyneed to go around and figure out
around the country.
It's like about 150 to 175 fora fork and then more for a rear
full service.
Full service, yeah, um, a lot ofbike shops can perform the 50
hour it's.
It's not super hard.
You just have to have a coupletools and some fluids and some a

(44:53):
little bit of know-how.
It's not crazy hard.
Um, and so like, when we do alot of suspension for other bike
shops, we tend to almost neverdo lower service because I think
that's something.
In fact, I've gone to shops andshown them how to do, yeah,
lower service, because I feellike that's something they can
absolutely do.
Um, we do the damper serviceand the air service and there's

(45:14):
a lot of clamps and specialtools, special bleeding systems
and stuff.
So it tends to be a lot harder.
Uh, my biggest issue that Ihave is that when that shop
doesn't tell you they say theyserviced your fork, that's all
they say, and you don't, youdon't know if it's a fuller.
Yeah, they just don't educateyou because you know they're

(45:36):
either they don't know orthey're just don't want to send
it out somewhere.
And then your damper blows up,so, like the dampers will take
on extra fluid and as theybecome engorged inside the fork,
they don't, they can't expandanything.

(45:58):
There's rubber damper, uh,rubber damper, um, uh, bladders
right, and so as they get moreand more fluid, they can expand
and then they can.
When you say blow up, you meanliterally well, not like fiery,
no, they just actually pop, yeah, like a balloon, yeah, and when
they pop they dump all theirdamper fluid.
Your lockout stops working,your damper stops working.
You can even get what's calledhydro locking, where, if enough
of that fluid gets in the lowerof the fork, you can sometimes
stop the fork from having fulltravel.
And it's just bad, you know, um, and that is really avoidable

(46:20):
when you get a full service,because the damper gets serviced
and it gets a right amount andthere's space for it to expand
over that 100 hours of use.

Oh interesting.

So that's one of the big things
that bike shops can do andsometimes if they're not paying
attention or they just don'tknow, they don't educate the
customer that that still needsto be done.
And so they kind of say weserviced it, it was $100, right.
And the customer is like, oh,it was a great deal, it was $100
.
And $100 isn't a lot, and or itisn't cheap.

(46:58):
So you feel like it was a fullservice, but then two weeks
later, you know, or a monthlater, your damper's not working
.

Damper .

Nope and uh, and then you're, you're
, you're coming to me usuallybecause now you're freshly
serviced, fork is no longerworking and you kind of start
skipping from the bike shop andgo to a service center, right?

And you guys do droppers as well.
Yep, what's the going rate fora dropper?

That also depends on the dropper.
So some of them are cartridgebased, which means that there's
a sealed cartridge inside that'snot meant to be taken apart.

Right.

And when that fails you have to put
a new cartridge in, and thecartridges can be anywhere from
$25 up to $125.
Right, depending on the brand.
And then on those cartridgebase we tend to charge around
$45 for the labor and that'spulling it all apart, replacing
the cartridge.
And then there's a key systemand basically the sliding system

(47:53):
, the stanchion system, that wego service.

Yeah, and then some of them you have
to recharge, like with nitrogenor whatever.

Yeah , some of them you totally
rebuild.
Reverb is an example of that.
Fox transfers some of the bikeyokes, things like that, and
those need quite a bit ofservice and they'll need a ton
of parts and we'll go in andrebuild those.
Um, they're not.
Not all of them are meant to beshop serviceable.
Some of them are service centerserviceable, right?

(48:19):
So when I say service center,it's somebody that's really
orientated towards actuallyworking on that product.
They have all the correct tools, the correct the correct
know-how, the correct trainingand versus a bike shop which is
sometimes getting somethingthey've never seen before.
And there's good guys who know,or girls who know what they're
doing and they kind of worktheir way through it, yeah, but

(48:39):
they may not have the correcttools and, yeah, they're
figuring it out, yeah, they'refiguring out.
So they tend not to do a lot ofthis stuff because it's pretty
expensive, nuanced yeah, I mean,I would have met.

do all shops have like a nitrogen
recharge tool?
That's an expensive tool, rightI mean?

it's expensive.
There is no actual tool.
You have to build it from theground up, and that is the
tricky part is like getting theright parts to to create this
thing.
Um, I'm not sure.
I mean, I built mine with Fox,so they helped you, they helped
me figure it out.
Whereas, um, you know, somethere may be, you know, from the

(49:15):
motorcycle industry there maybe actual ones set up there.
But of these adapters to usethe, the nitrogen system, on

(49:37):
different types of shocks, andnot just one brand, but like one
brand will have five or sixdifferent types, and then
they'll come up with a new oneevery year, and then you have to
buy the new tooling for that.

Right.

Dane "Suspension Guru" Hi (49:44):
Right and so, and then the the shaft
clamps, which are a big thing,that's really important because
these are ceiling surfaces.
The the shaft clamps, which area big thing, that's really
important because these areceiling surfaces.
So you have to have thesespecial clamps, lots of special
tools that are like pin tools,that are like exact, you know,
like a three prong or a fourprong, like I can't even tell
you how many tools in theservice center are.
No bike employee would evenknow what they were if I, if I,

(50:06):
stuck them out there right nowuh, they're so different oh,
that's interesting.

Yeah, okay, we were talking about
droppers.
Um, I want to kind of.
You helped me with a dropperproblem today.
That was unique, yeah, and so Ithought it'd be cool, cause you
taught me something I didn'tknow.

Well , last episode we talked about,
uh, the things not to do withthem, or with, um, with droppers
, with droppers, yeah, and so doyou remember what those were?

yeah, so, uh, first and foremost, you
need to keep your dropper postextended when it's being stored
or transported.
Yeah, it's good, because itincreases the pressure when it's
down.
Yep, yeah, and I've told maybea half a dozen people since that
episode.
People haven't heard it yet.
Well, by the time this comesout, they will have heard that
episode.
But and everyone was like whatare you kidding me?

(50:50):
I thought you were supposed tokeep them down.
You have them all down at yourhouse.
I'm like, yeah, I'm an idiot.
It's just good practice, justgood practice.

I was thinking about this today
on our ride, because I thinkabout the weirdest stuff when
I'm riding.
But O-rings tend to work betterwhen they're under compression.
O-rings tend to work betterwhen they're under compression
and when they're under suctionthey don't tend to work well.

Okay.

And so believe it or not, putting
it under pressure the O-ringsare functioning better than if
they were being pulled up.
So that was the second thingthat you're not supposed to do
is when it's down.

Yeah, you don't pick up the seat or
you don't pull on the seat upwhen it's down, because that'll
create suction yep, which is badfor the yep, which can pull air
into the oil system yeah, um,but we were talking about um,
this in the shop the other daywhen we were talking about
bleeding breaks and one of thethings like an avid system.

Dane "Suspension Guru" Hi (51:47):
Sorry , I keep saying avid because I'm
old, but shram, yeah, whenyou're bleeding, shram breaks is
they have two syringes, one oneach yeah and and they.
It's a push-pull method and onething we teach is don't pull
much.
You know, you pull just alittle bit to help, uh, with the
one syringe as you'recompressing the other one,
because you can actually you canthink you're getting air out of

(52:10):
the system.
You're actually pulling airinto the system and you're
pulling air around the O-ringand it's coming up into the
syringe and you feel like asuperhero because you're getting
all this air but it's reallybeing pulled in right at the
syringe.

Josh "Magellan" And (52:20):
Interesting , so push.
So whichever one you want to bepushing, yeah you push.

And then you, if you pull on the
other one, you're just helpingit along.

You're not creating a lot of vacuum.
Okay, that's very cool.
I didn't know that.
So, hey, look, that was a bonustopic.
I didn't know that Right.
What happened today was, umhave had a dropper that had a
cable internal routed cable thatwas hung up and I couldn't get
the cable high enough in theseat post to like reattach the
dropper.
I'd take the dropper out orwhatever, and uh, ultimately I

(52:49):
think we're going to end up justgoing with a with a wireless to
sell well for your circumstance.
Yeah, because I've got twodifferent people that are riding
the same bike, and so we'rehave constantly having to adjust
the seat height, and that'scausing problems with the drop.

With the cable actuated dropper
system another caveat to that isthis is on an e-bike which, uh,
the the housing goes across thebattery yeah, and causes a ton
of friction, whereas, like youknow, on my rocky or something
where there's nothing in the way, it's pretty easy to move it
back.

Yeah, I've never actually had this
problem on a different bike, itwas just on this one, but I
couldn't get the cable up farenough to be able to reach.
I even got these long, like youknow.

Uh , I don't even what are those
called Hemoscopes or somethinglike that?
It's like it's really long.
It's like long big ass tweezersbasically.

Yeah, um, I'm glad you didn't know the
name either.

Yeah , Like I don't even know what to
call these things.
My wife's family's all nurses,so they'd know it.
They'd know exactly what it.

(53:57):
Well, you tell the solution.
Well, so the key is that yourhousing is in the frame in your
seat two, where your postusually would be, and you don't
have an easy way to get it tocome back up so that you can
attach the right length or toeven get the cable started in it
, depending on which way you'regoing, and it doesn't want to
move from one side.
You know you can't just shoveit into the front of the bike.

I did and it just binds.
It just binds in there, yeah.

And then it's got the battery in
there.
That's kind of giving it a lotof friction, so it's just not
moving freely.
And so I told you to pull thecable out of the housing and
then take a spare cable and putit through the front of the bike
housing, which would normallybe through the lever.
But skip the lever and thenbasically it'll pop out.
You'll see the extra long cablepop out your seat tube and then

(54:49):
you can kind of grab that andkind of feed.
Uh, because the the other endof the cable head is bumping up
against the housing end cap yep,and that's.

This is up by the cockpit now so like
yeah and so the, the head ofthe of the cable yeah, it goes
in from the top effectively.
Yeah and then you have a stopthere, and then you can pull on
the cable with one hand yep andthen you can kind of housing the
other other one, and then Ikind of just broke it loose, and
then I was able to push itthrough, yeah.

You basically can rock it back and
forth to get it, to get somefree freeness to come through
and that gives you leveragebecause otherwise you can't just
push it through.
And so that extra cable I I'veruined a couple doing that, but
they're like three bucks, soit's not a big deal and they
they help for doing that.
And then once you get thatfreed up which you did, because
the other uh alternative onthese e-bikes is that battery is

(55:37):
in there and a lot of times thebattery can be in up against
these cables and you have tostart, you have to pull the
motor out sometimes to get thebattery out and I was on my way
to pull the motor out, like Ihad the bolts out and I'm like,
okay, I'm gonna have to pull themotor and the battery and all
the shit out to get it.
I was so pissed I'm like not alittle job, not a little job at
all.
So this little trick wedeveloped because of, I would

(55:58):
say, e-bikes are the number onereason that we developed this.
Because of that, we've alsoused it on a quite a few of like
internal routing bikes that arereal weird, um.
So it's just a little trick tokind of give you some leverage
and be able to pull it through,rather than try and push, cause
as soon as you push it, it justkinks and goes sideways and then
it won't go through.

So okay, well, hey, that's awesome.
Okay, so we're talking aboute-bikes a little bit.
I've got a few things one-bikes I want to talk about.
The first.
I was riding up at Hawes onFriday.
It's a rodeo weekend in Tucson,so that means that the kids
have Thursday and Friday offschool, so we have a four day
weekend.
It's in February.

It's like a holiday in Arizona
because we're Western to have aholiday around the rodeo.
And this comes from tradition,right?
Yeah, absolutely so, back inthe day, when kids would need
the day off because a lot ofthem would have to go compete at
the rodeo, right, and so itbecame a tradition to have rodeo
weekend which there still is abig rodeo here in Tucson.

I'm not a rodeo guy, so it's just a
ride my bike day, but we likethe days off, so it was actually
.
Thursday we went up to Hawes,uh, and we spent the day up in
Phoenix or whatever, um, andwrote in Mesa and uh, maddie, my
youngest son, and scanner, myoldest son, they were both on
pedal assist bikes, lacey and I,my wife, were on just acoustic
bikes and I was following.

(57:16):
Uh, it is a lot of climbing upthere.
You climb a lot.
It's actually a great.
It's paid, paid to play.

It's paid to play.

It's great for an e-bike cause you
can, you know, just get get tothe top and then you haul us
down.
But um, so I was kind of farbehind the group.
Lacy's stronger rather than me,so she was up with the boys and
I just smelled this likeburning.
Smell like an engine burning orlike a motor, like electric
motor is it a tumor?

are you having a tumor?
I was having maybe a stroke.
It's a tumor?
Yeah, I wasn't having a stroke,although I felt like I was
having a stroke.

but uh , I look up and there's skander
my on this pedal assist bike andhe's pedaling at about half an
RPM per hour or something.

He's got a cadence of 10.

He's got it on turbo and he's got a
cadence of five or something andhe's just burning up the motor
effectively is what he's doing.
So when you told me this andI've heard this before make sure
our listeners know.
So when you told me this andI've heard this before, make
sure our listeners know.
Like I think, just about all ofthese e-bike systems are
designed to be run with a highcadence.
They work better if you'repedaling faster.

Yeah , I think that design is
actually so one.
What you're doing is the motors.
So most of these e-bikes, themotors have been put into a
gearbox.
So, like Bosch, shimano Bros,like a lot of these, the motor
is not a high torque motor andit's a high speed motor and it's
put through a gearbox to changethat over to torque and that's

(58:41):
why they look like they do.
The reason this is somethingthat I'm more aware of than some
people is because RockyMountains are different.
They use a high torque motorit's still pretty fast, and then
they have a one step down gear,which is a chain driven gear,
and then that goes directly toyour chain.
So there's no gearbox on aRocky Mountain.

Josh "Magellan" And (59:01):
Interesting .

On the Dynamay or whatever,
Dynamay 3s or 4s yeah.
So as long as I think they'vebeen doing it, they designed
that bike way before most bikesand so they didn't have.
They couldn't just go to brosor um bosh and say give us a
motor.
They didn't exist, like rockywas out there before most, so
they had to kind of do it out ofthe box.
Um, anyway, that step downspeed um affects the motor and

(59:25):
so if you have a higher cadence,your speed is matching closer
to the motor and the motorperforms better and gives you
more power.

And you're putting less strain on
the motor.
Yeah, and so hopefully toincrease the longevity of the
motor, yep.
So, high cadence is better.

Yeah , and high can be, because
there's a new generation ofmotors right now which are
giving you a lot of Watts at alower torque, and so, like the
Bosch SXx motor, which is new,yeah, and you'll see that on a
lot of bikes that are meant tobe really light but still have a
lot of power, we call it atweener, uh, so it's in between

(01:00:01):
high power and the sls, rightand um, it has like a 55, I
think, newton meter power, whichis lower than a lot of bikes,
yeah, especially the full powers, for sure, um, but it has a 600
watt peak output and that ispretty much on par with the full
power, like shimano's.

(01:00:22):
But it works best if you'repedaling it fast.
The key is you need to be at 90, so, like your rocky likes to
be at around 70, yeah, umcadence, and these SX prefer
around 90 to get the most out ofthem.
So you got to be spinning yourlegs, you know.
And now the crazy thing aboutthis is pro roadies.
A lot of pros know this alreadyand they've been riding this

(01:00:42):
way forever.
And you see, pros, they'll do ahigh cadence because it's less
impact, you're not using as muchbig muscle, yep, and you can
get more out of your muscles,you can go longer.
And so I first got my e-bike andwas it taught me to be less of
a masher?
Because I was that.
I was that guy that was likeI'm gonna push the biggest gear,

(01:01:04):
I'm gonna go, I'm gonna get upto the top of the hill in the
biggest gear than anybody else.
I'm gonna get up there in my 11tooth, you know.
You know, because I want tojust mash it and I just stand
out that thing and like, justtry and get up there, and and
because that I don't know,nobody taught me, I just figured
shit out and and uh, so whatthe e-bike taught me is higher

(01:01:25):
cadence and it was funny becausewhen I went back to my acoustic
bikes my climbing was so muchbetter, I could climb so much
longer and have so much moreenergy when I got to the top of
the hill, and I wasn't going anyslower, I was actually going
faster.

Josh "Magellan" Anderson (01:01:43):
We have a couple of really cool
episodes, Dane, before you cameon with a guy we call Wolfman
Yep.
He's an exercise physiologistor was an exercise physiologist.
I think he's working as arealtor now but he taught us all
kinds of things about your bodyand like how it interfaces with
the bikes, and one of thetricks that he talked to us
about was how increasing yourcadence for the reasons that you

(01:02:05):
explained, like where is outyour big muscles slower is
actually a better way to ride.
So if you can pedal faster,you're going to, you're going to
be able to ride longer and feelthe same at the end of the ride
.

Dane "Suspension Guru" (01:02:16):
Exactly , yeah, and that's what I
experienced, just by accident,because I was riding my e-bike
one.
Uh, I was riding in a lot torecover from my broken leg Right
, and so it kind of makes you,uh, do this higher cadence, you
can feel it.
If you do a slow cadence likeScander was doing, it doesn't
give you much and so, like, ifyou gear down and get your feet

(01:02:38):
spinning, all of a sudden you'llpick up speed.
And he just didn't know that.

Yeah, he didn't know that.

Dane "Suspension Guru" Higg (01:02:47):
But then that higher cadence then
kind of sticks with you, becauseif you're spending two-hour
rides on your bike doing that,you're training your body to do
that, and so the side effect wasI actually ride my regular bike
uphill much better than I usedto.

Yeah, After Wolfman came on, I worked
on increasing my cadence.
One of the things I did was Igot shorter cranks because I was
having pedal strike problems.
But that helped increase mycadence Cause I wasn't moving
the, the, the circle wasn't asbig.
Yeah, um, that helped.
But um, also, I used to ride asingle speed and I don't do that
anymore because it crushes myknees, but like that leads you

(01:03:17):
to be a masher, I think single.

Dane "Suspension Guru" H (01:03:19):
Single speeders are kind of the
outlier because they they haveto try and get the perfect gear
for every trail.
That's impossible.
In fact I think one of theappealing things about single
speed is, aside from thesimplicity and the quiet and the
just feeling accomplishmentthat you can do that that ride
with one gear, um is that youget to kind of figure out, you

(01:03:40):
get a little more in tune withwhat, what you actually have to
to do to make it right on thattrail.
So single speeders will go to atrail like the single speed
worlds that we have here or uhthe single speed arizona that
they have here.
Yep, um, they'll.
They'll want to see the coursebecause they'll try and figure
out what gearing and they're cut.

And they're cut not constantly, but
they oftentimes will change outthe gear ratio on their bike.

Dane "Suspension Guru (01:04:02):
Sometimes they'll have them stacked on
the bike, so a couple of mysingle speeds.
When I got them used, theywould have two chain rings on
the front and two cogs on theback, and so you could switch
the chain over oh, interestingand that way right, yep, yeah,
mid-ride, so you could do biggerrides and things like that at
that point, is it really asingle speed, though it?
is because you have to stopbreak the chain, or?
Or you didn't have to break thechain, you just had to dislodge

(01:04:24):
the wheel, move the chain overand then read you would have to
have some kind of some kind ofpulley or some kind of chain
retention system right If theygot slotted.
So single speeds will havedifferent ways of tensioning the
chain, so sometimes they'llhave a bottom bracket.
That's eccentric and thenthat's a pain in the butt if you
want to change stuff all thetime, but ultimately you've got

(01:04:44):
to get the wheel off to change aflat and so you can take the
wheel off.
Gotcha, and if it's slidingdropouts, then you just, you
just retention it yeah, or thereare a couple times where you
can change that gear ratio andthe chain won't chain length,
that the chain won't changelength.
So you're putting a bigger cogon the back and a smaller one on

(01:05:05):
front I gotcha, and the chainis the same length.
And then some bikes have actualsliding drops, like you said,
where, where, if there is adifference, it's so little that
it's taken up.

Well, hey, we've gone a little longer
than we were planning, so that'snever bad.
Yeah, let us know.
We're doing a little bit ofthese kind of more tech heavy
bike shop kind of bike specificstuff with Dana and I.
If you guys are like this, letus know if you like this type of
content.
So far these episodes haveperformed well, so we thought we
would do a few more of them.
Let us know.

(01:05:39):
You can send us a note, you canhit that, send a text to us
right in the show notes rightbelow, or you can hit us on
Instagram or Facebook.
And Mountain Cog, that's us andappreciate y'all you got any
you got any final thoughts,buddy?

Dane "Suspension Guru" H (01:05:48):
That's it, and if you have some sweet
dad jokes, send them our way.
We're not scraping the barrel,but we're getting there.

Don't worry, we'll never run out of
dad jokes.
We'll never run out of dadjokes.

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104 - Bike Shop Secrets: Disc Brake Squeal, Internal Routing Issues, Suspension Service (incl. Fork Stanchion Lube), & Pedal Cadence.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}104 - Bike Shop Secrets: Disc Brake Squeal, Internal Routing Issues, Suspension Service (incl. Fork Stanchion Lube), & Pedal Cadence.