I’m often amazed at the behaviour of people. I see people heading into the local sun tanning salon and I wonder if they are aware that using these devices has the same risk of getting skin cancer as sunbathing. And all this in an effort to look fit and healthy. Then there’s men who spend countless hours at the gym only to walk down the street wearing a short sleeve t-shirt to show off their muscles in the vain hope that people will look and admire them.
And girls who glue on false eye lashes that would put a camel to shame just to look attractive but tend to look the opposite. And women who get cosmetic surgery to stay looking younger for longer ending up looking like a Spitting Image puppet. Oh dear. And then there me, who manages to break parts of his bicycle due to, perhaps confusion, or perhaps simply being stupid, which is the more likely option.
So, today, a tale of sorry woe, or perhaps that should be a tale of dumb stupidity. On my part, I should add. It concerns my Sonder Broken Road trail bike when I wanted to swap the tyres for some nice gnarly off-road tyres, a set of Schwalbe Johnny Watts 27.5 x 2.60 and more particularly the thru-axle bolt on the rear wheel, the one that hold the wheel in place.
Now, on my Trek Farley fat bike the thru-axle bolts are accessed from the left-hand side of the bike, that’s your left hand when standing astride the bike. Both front and rear thru axles have printed directions on which direction they should be tightened and how much torque they require. With my Ribble CGR gravel bike, the front thru-axle has directions printed on the right-hand side with no directions on the rear thru axle.
There’s a saying I usually follow which goes “righty-tighty, lefty-loosy”, a useful mnemonic device to remember which way to turn a normal screw, bolt, or nut to loosen or tighten it. In other words, turn right (clockwise) to tighten, turn left (anticlockwise) to loosen. However, be aware that this only partially applies to pedals, as the left-hand pedal has a left-handed thread and should be turned to the left to tighten and the right to loosen, so lefty-tighty, righty-loosy. Confused?
The trouble started when I got somewhat confused myself when fitting the new tyres on the Sonder Broken Road. In this bike, for some unknown reason, the front thru-axle is on the opposite side to my other two bikes, accessed from the right-hand side of the bike. It also has printed directions on which way to tighten and the torque setting. All good so far. However, on the rear thru-axle there are no printed instructions and the head of the bolt appears to be on the right-hand side of the bike and in appearance either side looks like it could be the bolt head. And just to add further confusion, all the thru-axles have Allen key slots in both ends of the bolt, and in a range of different sizes. Bloody hellfire, why isn’t there a common standard?
Anyway, I was totally confuddled and ended up rounding off the Allen key socket on the rear thru-axle, which means it’s totally knackered and I’m unsure what I actually did wrong, though I suspect I was actually tightening the damn thing when I thought I was loosening it. So, what now? Well, tried everything I could find that would fit in the now almost circular Allen socket but all to no avail. Next, ordered a hex socket removal set on Amazon and tried that. The first one I tried just rounded the hole off further but the next one, a size larger, started gripping well, but I was still unable to loosen the bolt.
So, I thought more leverage required. I added a short hollow extension bar to the wrench and applied some pressure. Bang goes the bolt head and out drops the hex socket with the partial threaded end of the thru-axle attached. Bugger! So, it was down to the final and last resort, drill the bloody thing out. Yes, this worked fine but also ruined the mech hanger but at least the thru-axle popped out easily enough, with only a minimal threaded section remaining. I could now see the printed specifications (TA12B Length 180omm M12 x P1.75 x 20L) on the thru-axle to allow me to order a replacement, along with another mech hanger from Sonder. Lesson learned, I guess. Perhaps I should have visited the Bicycle Repairman in Newtongrange?
Update 04-09-25, Sonder Broken Road is now fixed.
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