Marcel Wouldn’t Give Up

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This week a beautiful European bike rolled into the shop. It was something we don’t see very often—a 21-inch frame, perfect for a taller rider. Bikes like this are worth saving.

After time invested in cleaning, tuning, and adjustments, Marcel, one of our second-year mechanics, noticed something else.

“The handlebars won’t stay tight.”

He and Paolo looked it over and came to the a conclusion many mechanics would.

“Looks like the fork has to be replaced.”

A little research seemed to confirm it. Everything we found said there really wasn’t a repair.

But instead of giving up, we took it apart anyway.

Looking closely, we kicked around a few ideas and discovered the problem wasn’t really the fork. The expanding wedge on the quill stem simply wasn’t getting enough bite inside the steer tube.

That’s when Kenny—one of our Zummo dads—looked at the wedge for a minute and said,

“Let’s try putting a crosshatch pattern on it.”

Five minutes later, after carefully roughening the wedge, we reassembled everything.

The stem tightened.

The handlebars locked solidly into place.

After making sure everything was secure, we did a test ride, the bike was back to feeling the way it probably did when it rolled out of the factory in the 1980s.

The lesson?

Knowledge is important.

Experience is valuable.

But perseverance—and having a room full of people willing to think together—is often what turns an impossible repair into a solved problem.

That’s what happens at Zummo.

Sometimes we’re fixing bicycles.

More often, we’re teaching young people how to solve problems they’ll remember for the rest of their lives.