About 4-5 weeks ago, I was up in Keystone riding my mountain bike when I thought something might be wrong with the bike. It kept on squeaking when I would hit a bump. The sound seemed to be coming from my front shock, but it was hard to tell as I was riding. After I got back to the village, I took it over to the rental bike shop hoping they could take a quick look. They told me it was a problem with the rear shock, that it might have a broken seal, and it would be a good idea to take it to my local bike shop back in Denver for them to take a look. So, I did. I brought it over to Bike Source for a look. They told me it was a broken seal and the company doesn’t make parts for the shock any more. They gave me a web site to go to where I might be able to find the parts, but it would still wind up costing me about $100 to have it fixed. Well, parts weren’t easy to come by. To boot, getting a new shock was going to cost somewhere between $300 and $400, which is something I wasn’t looking forward to.

As a last resort, I decided to take the bike over to the shop where I bought it, The Single Track Factory, which is up by Wash Park. These guys are known for their customer service and fixing bikes. And Tim, one of the guys that I used to work with, kept telling me to take it to the Factory. The only reason I don’t go there often is because it’s about 15 miles away and there are numerous bike shops between my place and the shop. Well, after what happened yesterday, I’m going to make a point to go out of my way to get my bike tuned/fixed at the Factory. I walked into the shop yesterday afternoon with my bike, pressed down on the seat so Adam could hear the squeaking sound, and he took it out back to their shop. Within seconds, I didn’t even have a chance to see what happened, Adam tells me it’s fixed! I was stunned and refused to believe it. He told me the rebound “screw” was too tight, preventing it from getting a smooth rebound to the extended position. I still didn’t believe him. I asked that they test the PSI by adding air to the shock, pressing down a few times on the seat, and checked the PSI again. Low and behold, there was still air in the shock. In the end, I felt pretty stupid that it was such a little thing causing the problem.

This whole thing leads me to question the ability of local bike shops. How is it that two separate places couldn’t figure out that a simple screw was causing the problem. As I noted, I’m going to make a point to head over to the Factory from now on. Now, I have to figure out what to do with the $300+ I didn’t have to spend. I mean, doesn’t this qualify as found money that I should now use on a gadget?