Philip described an ethically questionable crankswap that backfired.. I have one of those stories also. I worked at the shop with Shawn (RIP). Shawn spent every discretionary dollar he had on high end road bikes. He'd buy bikes, build bikes, sell bikes, and keep it going. He always had a deal going, and at times I was pretty sure he was using the shop in ways to finance his dealings in ways that were on the fringes of ethical. I doubt he actually stole stuff, but he took advantage of stuff and was always on an angle.
His bikes for a long while all looked exactly the same. They always were high end steel, always with full Dura Ace. One after the other. This was around 1995-1996. Shawn sold his Davidson to a friend (David), and David brought it in for a tune up. Shawn did some work on it, including taking off the right crank arm. I noticed him taking it off, and he disappeared for a few minutes, and then came back and reinstalled the crankarm. I said "Dude, what did you do that for?" He replied "oh, just checking something". About a week later, Shawn had his current bike in the stand, an Independent Fabrication with full Dura Ace. He took the chain off to clean it or replace it or something, and immediately the cranks visibly 'dropped' to 6 o'clock. It was a weird look. As Shawn went and did his thing with the chain, I rotated his crankset a little, and again the right side pedal fell down (slowly) to 6 o'clock. I smirked, and looked at the backside of his crankarms; sure enough, his drive side arm was 177.5mm and his non-drive-side was 175mm. I connected the dots. Me: "Shawn, you sleaze. You swapped right side crank arms with David's bike last week, because his looked nicer. Didn't you?" Shawn: "what? no! I didn't do that" Me: "then why are your crank arms two different lengths?" Shawn: "Umm.... what? Uh..." Shawn called David up and told him there was a recall on some part that Shawn wanted to check out on Davids bike. He swapped the crankarms back, and David never got wise to it. Bill Lindsay El Cerrito, CA On Thursday, March 7, 2019 at 10:10:37 AM UTC-8, Philip Williamson wrote: > > I once swiped my wife's Ritchey Logic cranks from her three speed, and > replaced it with a nice Shimano crank, same single chainring. > She said, "Smething feels weird when I pedal. I don't like it as much." > I swapped the crank arms back, and she was happy. "That feels right. What > did you do?" > "Mumble." > > Turns out the Logic crank was 175 and the replacement crank was 170. Maybe > a different Q? I didn't measure that. > So... I'd probably ask. > > Philip > Santa Rosa, CA > > On Wednesday, March 6, 2019 at 10:51:50 AM UTC-8, Justin, Oakland wrote: >> >> She loves her bike and notices nothing that’s not a contact point: >> Saddles, Pedals, Bar+Grips+Shifter+Levers. >> >> > >> I probably could ask. But idle hands and all that. I could probably do. >> But I think it’s best to let assembled bikes lie... >> >> Sigh. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
