kingsting

Searching for parts that I know I have. Hate searching for some little trinket fastener/clamp/oddball hardware item that I know is stashed away **somewhere**. It's always the last thing you need to finish that 15 minute job and you spent the last hour and a half looking for it.

TimmyT 

I hate truing wheels. Some people find it a sort of zen, but not me. I'm OCD. I like 'em perfect, and eventually I have to give up with wheels. It takes a long time, too. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I hate it.

Just about everything else I can handle ... I especially like getting headsets together and a fork installed because it seems like a project is coming together.

TimmyT 

I disagree, and I know I am in the minority. Bacon does not make anything better. I'm not a troll on this point, but once you realize that bacon has a processed, smoky, sulfate-y flavor, you can't avoid it. It shows up everywhere, and it's annoying.

sherly

yes im like leay son

Dave Cutter

I wrench purely for the enjoyment of wrenching!

Wrenching for me... is a hobby. I often take-in bikes for restoration during the winter months when it's to snowy and cold for cycling on my old bones. Yet... I'll acquire a winter project bike in August.... and by September will have my on-line ordered materials in and the bike all shiny and riding like new.

It's a compulsion to "get r done" I guess.

vintagerando

I dislike cleaning old, dried out glue off tubulars.

seedsbelize 

I don't know what I was thinking in my earlier post. The worst is not being able to find what I need. This morning it was, first, a cantilever brake hanger, and, second, my trusty Park chain breaker. I tell myself I'm getting organized.
And, as promised, the sink custom built for finding holes in innertubes:

eschlwc

what i like the least about building a lower-mid-level bike: the time consuming adjustments that often follow that first shakedown ride, especially brake pad adjustment and correcting a tiny warp in a front rim that prevents the uber silent braking i demand.

... all made worse for a lower-level bike i have little desire to ride at great length. the nicer the bike, the more consumed i am with the whole process.

Grand Bois

I hate them. They're an abomination. There is a thread with 204 pages of them, so obviously many disagree. I refuse to look at them.

Flying Merkel

Trueing rims truly doth suck. I can take a potato chip'd rim and make it somewhat less potato chippy. Never straight.

Working on bikes that weren't designed to be repaired. The cheap awful pseudo-bikes that can never be fully functional for more than 3 days in a row.

Vintage Raleigh

Also sellers who put cheap new parts on rusty old frames then pretend they're collectors offloading some of their prized pieces

jimmuller 

The bike-related thing I've come to like the least is chasing BB issues on the tandem. Everything has to be done twice. Really. Not only is the noise coming form the last place I look, it is never coming from the first place I look.

Ronsonic 

I've done that and once had it blow up on me - almost literally. The wheel grabbed the strands of a shift cable wrapped them up and created a giant snarl before I could begin to react. So, uh, yeah. The thin cutoff wheels, the ones that go "ping" probably work a lot better for this job than the fiber reinforced.

CroMo Mike 

I don't like to be interrupted when I'm working on a project, whether working on a car, RC boat build, machine shop job, house repair, yard work, or bike maintenance. Fercrissakes, can't you see I'm in the middle of something here? Do I have a sign on my back or what?

fender1

Too funny! My wife's elderly uncle seems to "stop by" the minute I get a project underway. He is a super nice guy but wants to hang around and "catch-up" as I watch what little time I have to complete the project, slip away over coffee.

Chris W.

The real bummer for me is trying to explain to my wife why I need something (bike related and usually expensive).

Cheers,
Chris

Fidbloke

I love ‘em.
Forget all that fancy cooking malarky, I love ‘em raw. You just have to peel off the outer leaves where the slugs have been at them and bung ‘em in your mouth.
Oooooooooh! Nom! Nom! Nom!


When I try to cook them, many don’t make it as far as the pan..

The only (minor) downside is that they do make me fart like a Cart Horse, which some people regard as unacceptable behaviour…


On a more serious note: Not being able to find ‘that bit’ is VERY frustrating. Especially when you know that you saw it a while ago, when you were looking for ‘that other bit’..!

Fidbloke

Same here.
I volunteer in a local Bike Kitchen, and hate trying to adjust crappy plastic bits that bend and flex, so you can never get them to work properly. Grrrrr.!

Make it from METAL, or don't make it at all.!!!!

Darth Lefty 

Making a mistake that I can't undo... like the time I overtorqued a crank arm by a LOT and then stripped the extractor threads the next time. None of the home remedies worked, I rode it around for a month with a loose bolt. That required a dedicated bike shop to destroy the crankset.

Making a mistake that's wasteful, too. But on the plus side I've gotten a lot better with stringing cables in the last year.

Reynolds 

I still remember when I cut a new threaded steerer on an Italian fork to fit exactly the Campagnolo headset I was installing. Not a mistake properly, since it works OK, but one always should use a spacer just in case you want to use a different stack height headset sometime IMO.

Ronsonic 

Cottered cranksets. Have never been able to disassemble one in a way that remotely resembled the usual instructions. "Support the crank and arm with a block of wood and gently tap it out" my azz.

bmthom.gis

Anything dealing with the chain. I don't mind getting my hands dirty, but I do like to be able to wash off grease and grime in one sitting. Also, things that are stuck.

bmthom.gis

+10000000000

bmthom.gis

One more thing to add....since I do 99% of my wrenching at a friends house (because I don't have a bike stand and he does + all the tools one could need) - When I think I have everything ready to go, and we get a few minutes in and it turns out the part I was going to use for whatever is missing some part to it and the build won't get finished.

CliffordK

For cutting cables housing, I normally hacksaw then file. Or, I have one of these.
Circular Saw Blade Sharpener

Remove all the circular saw stuff, and one is left with a nice small grinder with a diamond blade. No tool rest, so maybe just put the diamond blade into a normal mini-grinder instead. Anyway, you can cut and polish cable housing with it quickly. Then use a paper clip or something to straighten out the housing liner if using lined housing.

The cheap generic Chinese foam tape may not last as long as the brand name wraps, but it also doesn't have sticky tape. Wrapped tightly, I can't see any evidence of it moving.
French? Swiss?

I have the right is right, and left is wrong down with the pedals, but I always get confused with which way to turn the bottom brackets. Usually not a big problem, but annoying.

As far as my pet peeve....
I HATE THE ROUGHNESS WITH CHEAP CONES.
And, I detest PITS.