As part of preparing for a race, I always service and clean my bike. During this exercise, I look for potential issues that might be a problem on race day. Today, I discovered a broken $0.17 part, that could have caused a major issue on race day.

When I removed my rear wheel from the bike today, something dropped to the floor under my bike stand.  It was small and dark, so at first I thought it was a small stone that had somehow become lodged on my bike.  When I picked it however, I saw that it was metal and had threads.  I immediately knew is was a piece of the set screw, that sits in my rear wheel dropouts.

Each of my rear wheel dropouts has a small set screw, that allows me to adjust the distance between the tire on the wheel and my bike frame.  If the tire rubs on the bike frame, I just move the set screw out a little to create some clearance. 

This was the set screw that had broken. The one in my right drop out, had sheared off where it entered to dropout.  The remaining piece of the set screw was extremely difficult to remove, because it was almost perfectly flush with the frame.  I had to use a very fine pair on needle-nose pliers to very slowly unscrew it.  It took a very long time to get it to the point, where I could more easily turn it.

Now imagine if I had discovered that broken screw while changing a flat tire in my race.  There is a good chance that my race might have been over.  When replacing my wheel, it would not have been positioned square in the frame. Most likely the wheel would have wedged against my chain stay and not rotated at all. Maybe I would have been able to find something of the right size to wedge in the dropout as temporary fix, but that is a very big maybe.

This event really goes to show why it is important to maintain your bike and regularly inspect all the bolts and fasteners.  Who knew a $0.17 part could be so important…