[ HAWAII AT WORK ]

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CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM Scott Chaney, service manager at the Bike Shop, has always enjoyed tinkering.

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Don’t fix your own bike
when you can see a pro

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I'm the service manager at the Bike Shop, which is just a fancy name for the head mechanic. Besides the day-to-day repair of bikes, I have to oversee any warrantee problems the come in and any procedural changes in terms of how we do repairs. I've been here on and off for about nine years.

Scott Chaney Title: Service manager Company: The Bike Shop Years employed: Nine Source of amazement: Do-it-yourselfers who cost themselves hundreds of dollars by trying to save lunch money

I got started in the business basically because I couldn't afford to fix my own bike. I was about 22 years old and going to the University of Hawaii, and I couldn't afford to have somebody else fix my mo-ped, so I learned to do it myself.

A friend who knew somebody at a shop eventually mentioned that they knew this guy, me, who was mechanically inclined, and I got hired. That was City Bike; they're out of business now. I started fixing mo-peds; then they started carrying bicycles, and I switched to that. I started riding bicycles when I was 15, so it was a comfortable shift.

I was always good at tinkering. I was good at taking things apart but not always at putting them back together.

If I can afford to stick with this career, I probably will. It's not high stress, but it's not a boring job, either.

The most interesting thing is seeing when people work on their own bikes, how badly they can actually damage them. Sometimes I have to call everyone over in the shop for a look to say, "How can this happen? Why would someone do this?"

For example, the left and right pedals on the bike are specifically threaded in one direction. I've seen people force through an inch of threads to put the wrong pedal on a side. I've tried to do this myself, and it's very hard. After the first couple of turns, you would practically have to stand on the tool to force it any farther. But I must see that every two or three months.

People think they can save two or three dollars by doing it themselves, and if they know what they're doing, they certainly can. But if they don't they can wind up damaging equipment worth hundreds of dollars.