Yes I spoke with him last year when I first brought the bike home in November. I told him I wasn't happy about spending $2k and having all these issues. He offered to make it right, which I appreciated. Once I figured out the choke was stuck and causing the surging and I fixed that, I wasn't going to take the bike back (over an hour ride) to have him tighten/replace some bolts. At the time that's all I found that was wrong.
The bike has sat all winter and now that I've had the chance to get it back out on the road this spring I found the other stuff. Obviously it's a bit late to go back 6 months later and try to claim this when the matter was settled last year. But now it's cost me more money out of my pocket to fix his tech's mistakes, and that I simply cannot overlook. Not to mention the overall carelessness it takes to leave important fasteners loose so that bits begin to fall off the bike.
At this point I don't care if he offered to fix everything for free because I will not allow those people to touch my bike again, how can I trust them to do the job right? For all I know they could have been the ones to cause the problem with the starter. They admitted to me that it had not given them any problems starting until after they had it apart.
I realize that it's a 14 year old bike and there will be maintenance issues that come up, but like I said before, it's awful coincidental that everything worked fine when it went down there. Normally I would not suspect anyone or try to point fingers if I know the work is being performed by competent people but obviously that is not the case here. I can only pray that whoever did the fork rebuild and the valve adjustment was not the same person who did the reassembly.
All I can say is if you take your bike to Duc Pond for service, be prepared to pay a lot of money for shoddy work. And I suggest going over your bike with a fine tooth comb when you get it back.
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