The Opposite of Tinkering

To go deep on most things, you have to tinker.

Take writing. There's a lot to tinker with. On the outside, you can buy a nicer pen or a better keyboard. On the inside, you can read all kinds of books.

Take electronics. With a phone, you can unlock it and flash it. With cameras, you can tinker with different models and focal lengths, and different ways of shooting.

Or take bicycles. You can tinker with the frame, the groupset, the wheels, even a single chainring or chainring bolt.

At Spring Festival this year I switched to a new bike. But when I did, I didn't take the power meter off the old bike, so the new bike didn't get one.

I didn't install it for two reasons. One, when I rode the old bike, the power meter didn't feel that useful. For me it was a feel-good part more than anything. Two, taking it off the old bike and putting it on the new one seemed like a hassle, and that whole process is exactly what tinkering means.

To be fair, with a power meter installed, you can see your training power, you save the cost of a cadence sensor, and you cut weight from the bike. For a serious cycling enthusiast, a power meter seems hard to avoid, especially now that competition in the market is fierce and many power meters cost only around a hundred yuan.

I never sold the old bike, so the power meter stayed on it. This afternoon, out on a ride, I did the math: leaving the power meter on a bike I don't ride was a bit of a waste. The whole set is worth about 3,000 yuan or more.

I'd been riding less because of IT band syndrome. Lately I've recovered well and I'm riding more often, so I decided to put the power meter on my new bike.

At first I planned to install it myself. After all, to some extent I'm someone who likes to tinker.

With AI, for example, I don't stop at asking questions. I've built a small product I'm quite happy with through vibe coding, and lately I've been exploring a new project.

With electronics in the past, I liked rooting and flashing phones, and tinkering with all kinds of hardware and software.

I got home, put my old bike on the stand, took out my Allen key, and with a few searches for guides along the way, spent about half an hour getting the power meter off. There weren't many snags, and overall it was fairly easy.

So here's the question. If I could take it off, surely I could put it on the new bike? I'm an engineer, after all. Not a bike engineer, but with a bit of tinkering I'd figure it out.

But when I went to take off the clipless pedals on my new bike, I found my Allen key had stripped.

I can't remember when I bought that Allen key. What I do remember is that it cost a few yuan.

A few-yuan Allen key lasting until today has more than done its job.

But without an Allen key, with the bike sitting right in front of me, was today's project going to be called off?

Once the arrow is on the string, you have to shoot.

In the end, I carried the crankset with the power meter I'd removed, got on my bike, and rode to a bike shop nearby.

I thought it would be quick and I'd be home soon, but what happened at the shop taught me something new again and again.

First, the mechanic told me the small chainring on my power meter crankset had been installed backward.

Bike chainrings usually come as a small ring and a big ring. I never ride the small ring, so I never cared whether it was right.

And it wasn't just that the small ring was on backward. The alignment marks on the small and big rings weren't lined up, either.

Those are installation standards. Even though I never use the small ring, installing it that way isn't correct, though it wouldn't cause any problem.

That was the first thing I learned today.

After the small ring, we moved on to the big one. The big ring was mostly fine, but one chainring bolt was in the wrong spot. The bolts have to go under the crank arm, hidden by it. The reason for this design is partly to keep the chain from dropping, and partly to keep shifting accurate.

A crankset has just two rings, and both had been put on wrong from the start. Unbelievable. And this crankset was something I'd tinkered with myself in the first place.

After the crankset was sorted, another headache came up.

During the torque test on the chainring bolts, two of the five bolts on my crankset snapped one after the other.

My bolts are made of 7075 aluminum. The mechanic started with 10 N·m, which is a manageable force for 7075, but one snapped. After that he used 8 N·m for everything, and during repeated tests another one went.

That didn't seem right.

Metal fatigue always exists, but 7075 bolts that haven't been used for long shouldn't snap at 8 N·m.

But what's done is done.

There was nothing to do. The shop had no green bolts to match mine, so they installed two black ones for now.

Inevitably, I'll probably swap in a matching set of titanium bolts later. I really don't like the current color. Bolts are a feel-good part. They work fine as they are, but replacing the set would lift my mood, at very poor value for the money.

After more than an hour of tinkering, the power meter was finally on.

Afterward, I took the chance to ask about a brake problem my bike has been having lately.

I hadn't ridden much in the first half of the year. The bike stayed at home with the rear wheel taken off and set aside. A while ago I put it back on and went out for a ride, and for some reason the brakes started playing the "Shimano symphony," and braking got noticeably worse.

I'd tried lots of fixes and nothing worked. Today I asked the mechanic, who took one look and told me there was oil on the brake rotors, and nothing could be done about it.

Cleaning them would cost over a hundred yuan, and a new set of rotors isn't much more than that.

So I think I'll just replace them. When I got the new bike, I picked up this 7170 groupset on Xianyu as a nearly new set. I don't know why they got oily.

The mechanic later told me you can't touch rotors with your hands. You have to hold them by the edges with two fingers when you move them.

I think that must be what happened.

See, I went to a bike shop to install a power meter and learned all this. The snapped bolts especially made me breathe a sigh of relief, because it's far better for it to happen in a bike shop than on the road. Once one lets go, the crankset instantly goes out of balance, and that would definitely cause a crash.

On the way back, I wondered: if my Allen key hadn't broken, and I'd done the installation myself by hand, what problems would I have run into, now and later?

I don't dare think about it.

The opposite of tinkering hides risks you don't know about.

I had no idea how the small ring should be mounted to be correct. I didn't know the bolts have to sit under the crank arm to keep the chain from dropping. And I really didn't know the bolts need to be tightened with a torque wrench.

Behind every step I didn't know how to do lies a different risk and cost.

And for a bicycle, behind each hidden technical detail may be my personal safety.

So the opposite of tinkering has a saying too: leave professional jobs to professionals.

I think when you tinker, you have to think it through. Since my understanding of the job isn't complete, could there be risks I can't afford to take?

It's the same with writing. You have to think through what you write about and what you mention, what can be posted and what can't, or you might bring trouble on yourself.

All right, that's everything for today's post.

And finally, here's my pretty bike.