In preparation for the long-awaited rebuild of my poor long-suffering and chronically neglected Lapierre Zesty I’ve been watching a few ‘how to’ videos on the wonderful world of YouTube. And what I’ve concluded is that they can quickly lull you into a false sense of security about the task you’re about to attempt.

Take the Zesty’s creaky bottom bracket. Now I’ve replaced lots of bottom brackets over the years, from the old cup and cone square taper variety right through to the ubiquitous  Shimano derived external cup type and its many imitators. The Zesty however was fitted with a new beasty for yours truly, the bb92 press fit. Never heard of it, certainly never fitted one.

So of to the old inter web I go and soon I’m watching a clean-cut young chap clamping a spotless looking bike into a flashy looking work stand changing a bb92 that looks like its only been installed for about 5 minutes. The whole operation looks ridiculously easy. Once our hero has whipped off the cranks he simply pops a gleaming removal tool into the bb shell and after a ‘couple of light taps’ with a hammer (as he describes it) out pop the two halves of the bottom bracket. Re-fitting as they say was the reverse of the removal, aided by a nice custom press tool he just happened to have to hand for the job. This whole masterclass in bicycle maintenance takes place in a well-lit forensically clean workshop with every tool from the Park Tools catalogue neatly racked out on the wall behind our hero who never drops or fumbles anything and whose hands remain as clean and spotless as his gleaming white teeth from start to finish.

My own experience involved a fair amount of nasty language, several unintended interfaces between the hammer and my thumb, and basically having to beat the living crap out of blasted thing before it freed itself from the frame, which it did with exceedingly bad grace and in several separate very broken pieces. In a similar fashion pressing the new bottom bracket halves back in soon degenerated into reaching for larger hammers and applying far more force than was really good for it.

Rebuilding the rear shock and the forks was the same tale of initial optimism and over confidence which rapidly slid downhill into fumbling disaster, copious amounts of horribly expensive Fox Shock Oil on my garage floor instead of inside the forks and a nagging sense that I may have done more harm than good to both ends of my poor machine.

I’m now actually nervous about riding the bike again incase some of my misdirected efforts come back to haunt me. I’ve got a horrible vision of the misaligned seals deep within the bowels of my suspension making a bid for freedom when I’m miles from the safety of the trail center car park leaving me with an ignominious walk back. Or the complete rear swingarm parting company with the rest of the frame the first time I hit a drop off because I’ve forgotten to tighten the bolts up………. confidence is a fragile thing and mines gone temporarily awol when it comes to fixing bikes.

For those that enjoy a more visual representation detailing some of my mechanical shortcomings  search YouTube for ‘The Declining Cyclist’ for a mercifully short video of me hitting by bike with ever bigger hammers. Tune in next time to see if I ever pluck up the courage to ride the Zesty again!