Customer handed me a bike with a weed trimmer trigger for shifting

Last Tuesday some dude rolls into my shop with a mountain bike that had a weed eater trigger zip-tied onto the handlebars. He said his old shifter broke and he 'improvised' using parts from his garage. The cable ran straight to the rear derailleur with no housing and he just pulled it like a lawnmower to shift gears. I had to bite my lip so hard to keep from laughing while I explained why his fix was a fire hazard. Charged him $45 for a proper shifter and he tipped me $20 for not making fun of him. Anyone else ever get weird home-engineered shifting setups come through?

2 comments

2 Comments

spencer6641mo ago

Nah, that's not a fire hazard, it's just creative problem solving on a budget.

blair_davis1mo ago

Oh, come on now. That extension cord with the exposed copper running under the rug is absolutely a fire hazard, not a budget hack. I used to think the same way until a buddy of mine had a small electrical fire start in his living room from a similar "creative" setup. He was lucky it was just smoke damage and a melted outlet, not a full blown house fire. The thing is, cheap solutions like daisy chaining power strips or using the wrong gauge wire can cause serious overheating over time. It's one thing to be thrifty, but it's another to skip basic safety codes that exist for a reason.