Took me 3 hours to fix a simple brake cable pinch flat

I was adjusting my rear brake cable last Tuesday and somehow pinched the housing between the frame and the cable stop. Thought I just needed to lube the cable, so I wasted 90 minutes pulling and adjusting before noticing the damage. Once I swapped the housing, the whole thing took maybe 20 minutes. Has anyone else spent way too long troubleshooting something dumb like this before spotting the obvious?

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the_ruby2mo ago

Swapped my pedals last month and spent a solid two hours trying to figure out why my right pedal kept clicking. Cleaned the threads three times, re-greased them, even tried swapping pedals side to side. Finally noticed the crank arm itself had a hairline crack I couldn't see until I took it off the bike. Felt like such an idiot. That kind of thing happens more than I like to admit.

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evanr791mo ago

Man that is brutal @the_ruby. I've done the exact same thing with a messed up bottom bracket before. You just stare at it forever thinking it's something simple and it turns out to be a part you'd never think to check. Hairline cracks are the worst because they hide so well until you actually take the crank arm off the bike. I always keep a little inspection light in my toolbox now just for that kind of thing. It's amazing how much time you can waste chasing a ghost like that.

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