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Saw a frame get trued in under 60 seconds and it broke my brain
I was at this shop in Portland last week dropping off a wheel and the owner just grabbed a frame that was visibly bent near the dropouts. He threw it in some homemade jig, gave it two quick turns with a big wrench, and handed it back looking perfect. I blinked and it was done, like under a minute total. Meanwhile I've spent 20 minutes messing with a single spoke on my own wheel and gotten nowhere. Is this just pure muscle memory or is there a trick to knowing where to apply pressure? The guy laughed and said "you just feel it" which is not helpful. Anyone else run into a mechanic who makes complicated stuff look that easy? What's the one thing you've seen that looked impossible but was actually a quick fix?
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joseph_martinez352d ago
Man, that mechanic basically performed a magic trick on that frame. My first thought is always, "Well, that must be a super specific tool or a weird, rare talent." But then I remember I spent 45 minutes just trying to get a pedal off once because I was turning it the wrong way. Honestly, the trick is probably just that they've wrecked a hundred frames learning where exactly not to push too hard. For me, the one thing that looked like dark sorcery was a friend unseizing a rusty bottom bracket just by tapping it with a hammer in the right spot. It took him about five seconds and all I could do was stand there feeling like a dummy with my blowtorch and penetrating oil.
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carter.hugo2d ago
3 porta-potties fell off a truck on I-5 last week and blocked two lanes, but honestly that's still less dramatic than this frame truing thing everyone's going on about. I saw the same video on Instagram where some guy in a beanie fixed a bent frame in 37 seconds, and my first thought was "okay, but what's the catch?" Because frames don't just bend back perfectly with zero consequences - metal has memory and all that. My buddy tried this on an old Trek he found at a garage sale and the dropout cracked three days later, so maybe that "magic" fix was just hiding a bigger problem. Not saying it's impossible, but I'd rather spend 15 minutes with a cheap alignment tool and not risk snapping something important on a descent.
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