[Transfer]

lthumbsdown: lthumbsdown: lthumbsdown: lthumbsdown: lthumbsdown:
I decided to take my new fork to the local shop and have them cut my steertube, set the star nut, and slam the crown race. Figure, hey I'll throw them some business and gladly pay up to $25 for all that. I mean what, that's 10-15 minutes of shop time? I could do it myself but I always do a hack job of it. They want to charge $35 so I say forget the star nut... Still $15-$30, they'll let me know when I pick it up 24hrs later.

Maybe they could make some money and charge decent prices for labor and product if they didn't have 15 teenagers "working" at the same time. what a joke.

/rant

 

[dhphoto]

Well, I can't say for sure, since I dont have our pricelist in front of me. But the shop I work at, it'd probably run you about $20...just a guess. Although I usually estimate about $5 higher than what I think it will really take, just in case it takes a few minutes longer, so nobody is getting a higher bill than they initially expected. That might have been their rationale. Who knows, cant say since I dont know them or their reputation. And there's only 3 of us at the shop I work for. But yeah, $35 seems rather steep to me.

 

[KD1569]

I can tell you this about bike shops. There are generally two kinds, the "local indie" shops (Germantown, Fix Fredeick, Mt. Airy) and the "big corperates" (Perf, HTO) Indie shops have cool people working there, and alot of niche parts/bikes. However in order to pay all those cool people, keep the heat on in the winter/ac in the summer, and have that Santa Cruz Nomad with the 66 on it sit in the window, it takes $$$$.

Now as for the corperate shop, don't hate the "teenage kid" working behind the counter. He/She probibly has no control over what they can charge for labor. Usually it's a set price comming down form the home office in Walla Walla Washington.

As for what you wanted, $35 may seem a little steep, but you wanted a starnut pressed, fork cut, and a crown race set. That's just over $10 a task. The mechaninc may not have the 15 mins of shop time to do all of this because he has to repair the 15-20 Huffys that came in before you. Why is a Huffy more important than your fork?? Scoll up.

Not trying to be a d!ck, but just trying to let everybody see things from someone who's worked in both types of shops, for many years.


KD1569
Cyclist

-one more thing...Sierra Nevada or Red Hook will get your service ticket moved to the top of the pile.

 

[Transfer]

Yeah I understand a lot of that and even have no problem waiting a day or two for them to get to it. But I see it as about $5 for the race pressing (I don't know how you could argue more than that- It takes 2 minutes), $10 to cut the tube to my measure, and $10 for the starnut setting as long as the nut is included.

I've had different shops do each of these tasks separately for free(my own starnut). So I guess I'm just disgruntled at $35 which is the complete install price and I'm doing almost half of the work. This is why no one wants to use an LBS when they don't have to. Too bad I don't live in Germantown I guess.

 

[KD1569]

Just a quick tip:

Never have the wrench cut your steer tube to an exact, UNTILL you can ride the bike and set your stem height. This is esp true with single crown long travel forks that may change your head angle/ ride height slightly. Do a couple rides with some spacers on top of the stem, figure your ideal stem height, then go back and have the excess trimmed off. The same thing applies to dual crowns where you can adjust your crowns/ride height.
I usually have some spacers above my stem, and leave my steer tubes a little long, so I can sell the fork if I want to later down the
road.

Granted this is my own experience/opinion, and probibly will have SOMEBODY out there blast me for it...but if you think about it, it makes sense......


KD1569
Cyclist
Bored on a rainy Sunday

 

[Transfer]

Thanks for the concern but this is my third fork on the frame and I've installed at least a dozen forks before. It's being cut to match the last one with stem and spacers so it's all good.