The Connection

A week after the big snowstorm, a blue and silver Trek Excalibur sits on a bike rack waiting for its one-year warranty tune up and replacement of the chain links for more speed. Garrett Kostbar, service manager of Spokes etc. on Quaker Lane, will check all the bolts to be sure nothing has loosened up, adjust the head set to prevent slop or play in the bearing assembly, check the brake adjustment, make sure the wheels are true since the braided stainless steel cable can stretch out and break.

"What we need to do depends on how much someone rides a bike,” he said. “If they use it to commute they can put on 800 miles in three months and should have check ups every 3-4 months." He adds every bike should have a yearly preventative maintenance check up. Kostbar removes the eight chain link bolts. “This should take 10 minutes. Hmmmm, this replacement is a little more difficult than expected. The crank arms are slightly larger.

“Things definitely slow down in the winter. Right now there are three bikes in the shop and a one-day turnaround on repairs. In the summer months we have 10-15 scheduled repairs a day plus walk-ins so there is a 1-1/2 - 2 week turnaround then."

He says with new technology bikes are more complicated and harder to repair. The evolution of material makes carbon fiber more and more popular; it's lighter and stiffer. "But it makes a lot more noise and it drives people crazy," Kostbar said. “We have to do noise diagnostics to track what it is. It is usually two press fit components rubbing together. They resonate noise." So he has to pull apart the bike, clean the interfaces. "There is usually grit so we clean it and put on a layer of grease as a buffer. Noise is an epidemic."

He remembers one carbon frame bike with a press frame bottom. It made a creaking racket. He says he did every diagnostic, took the whole bike apart and couldn't find it. Finally after nine hours of work over several days he discovered the rubber grommet was out on the quick release for the tire causing the wheel to rock. "It was the simplest thing; you would never guess." But because of the serious noise issues, he thinks the trend is to go back to the threaded. And he adds the simple Cruisers trend is getting bigger because “we're at a point where people cycle for fun and want the bike as simple as possible.”

Kostbar says he started working at a bike store in Nebraska in 2004 sweeping the floor and changing tires. "My motivation was that they also carried skateboards, my passion at the time, and I got a discount." But, "I like hands-on mechanics and fell in love with cycling." He hasn’t touched his skateboard for two years. Kostbar moved to Virginia where he started working at Spokes three years ago and became service manager one year later. In addition to bike repair, he hires staff and supervises his four full-time and five part-time staff and makes sure things are running smoothly. "Dealing with the warranty side is the most time consuming—for instance, when someone has a crack in the frame and I have to take a picture, make sure it fits within the warranty, send it in for repair and then reassemble it later."

The most common repair is a derailer adjustment or a flat tire. He says there is a lot of glass on the roads here while back in Nebraska it was those hard bristly seed pods. “We can get 20-30 flat tires on a Saturday.” And the most difficult bike to fix is not a high-end mountain bike as one might suspect. "The hardest job is a Wal-Mart-type cheaper bike because they aren't necessarily designed to work well. Instead of engineering a bike, they bring in other people's parts and put it together."

Kostbar says he has a specialized Enduro with full suspension and a specialized stump jumper with a hard tail. "The rear end is rigid so it's more responsive and faster. For me the mountain bikes are still the thing. I love them, my passion for sure. Out in the woods, away from civilization. It gets the adrenalin going.”