Bike problems just before the first 600#
As you may remember, during both 400 brevets this year I hit a pothole hard. Hard enough for the water bottles to fly away from the bike and get some serious pinch flat (rear wheel in the BRM 400 - Braganza and both wheels at the same time in BRM 400 - Polas catro provincias).
After the second 400 I did a few shorter rides, and during the last one, I noticed some slack somewhere on the front part of the bike. I couldn’t tell if it was the steeering, the headset, the fork, the wheel… Also, for a few rides already I noticed an ugly “crack” sound coming from the bottom bracket every time I had to stand on the bike and push the pedals a bit harder.
Add to it all that, during the bike fit, I found out that my pedals were so worn out that they were not retaining the cleats properly in place (so even using the black cleats from look, my feet were too loose and the heal moved a lot sideways).
It was time to get the bike to my favourite LBS, MyBike.
I brought the bike to the shop last monday, so my friend Ginés could take a look at it and tell me a diagnostic.
Next morning, he told me it was time to replace the BB30 bottom bracket of my Synapse, and that he had stock of the Keo Blade Carbon pedals, so we could replace the old ones with some new pedals of the same brand/model.
He also told me that the thing with the front part of the bike wasn’t definetely the steering/headset or the fork. It seemed like some problem with the wheel (probably the bearings).
As I ordered those wheels online from Scribe, and they were still under warranty, I decided to write them an email before doing anything else about the wheels.
I sent an email to Scribe’s support team on the 23rd, 09:30, explaining the problem in detail, and in less than 2 hours, I already had a reply (excellent support service). They suggested to give it a try replacing the front wheel bearings.
I called back the LBS and asked Ginés to replace the bearings, but he didn’t have stock of the ones needed for my wheel, OUCH. No worries, he told me he was going to get them in time, so the bike could be ready for the 600 Brevet this weekend.
Days passed, and the bike wasn’t ready, and yesterday (thursday) I called the LBS at noon to check the status. At that point, I was already considering replacing that Scribe front wheel with the old DTSwiss I’ve here, somewhere…
In the end I got the bike back yesterday evening, and this morning I went for a quick test ride (1h) to check everything was ok.
And it was, everything in place and perfect, just in time for the 600 Brevet tomorrow…