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Rant: A guy at the Tucson shop told me to stop greasing every bolt, and he was right
I used to be the guy who put grease on every single threaded bolt on a bike. Crank bolts, stem bolts, caliper bolts, all of it. I figured more grease meant less rust and easier removal later. Then about 8 months ago I was helping out at a shop in Tucson and an old mechanic named Ray watched me grease a set of stem bolts and just shook his head. He said 'you're gonna crack that stem one day' and explained that grease lets you over tighten because your torque wrench reads the friction wrong. I argued with him for like 10 minutes because I thought he was just being old school. Two weeks later a customer brought in a stem he had cracked right at the bolt hole, and he had used grease on it himself. I stopped greasing stem and bar bolts after that and I have not had a single comeback from a slipping or cracked part since. I still grease crank threads and pedal threads because those are different, but the stem thing was a real lesson. Anyone else had a comeback that traced back to too much grease on a torque critical bolt?
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