Bike maintenance course

[sean8997]

Hi all, just thought I'd share my experience of doing a basic bike maintenance course over the weekend. I did it with the guys at bikeright (www.bikeright.co.uk), cost £122 for the 2 days. The reason for doing the course was due to snapping my chain last bank holiday and not having the correct tool or know how to fix it.

Yesterday consisted of getting to know the bike i.e. knowing the correct terminolagy for all the componants and knowing what they do etc, this was followed by puncture repair which give me chance to fix a slow puncture that I had with my rear tube, learnt a neat new trick of removing and replacing my tyres without the need for levers!!! next was setting brakes correctly and followed by cleaning and lubing the bike.
Today started with brake cable renewal, they give you new cable inner and outers which is always a bonus, this took us up to lunch and then it was onto chain removal/splitting and chain wear cheaking. The last activity was gear adjustments and cable changes, again inners and outers supplied.

The course was absoloutly fab, really relaxed atmosphere in a nice workshop with everything you need to do the job. I'm now looking to do the advanced course so when it comes to upgrading parts and more indepth maintenance/repairs I can save myself a few quid by doing the jobs myself.


Hope I've not bored you too much!!!

Sean

 

[superbadger]

Im a cheap sod!!!! But very interesting topic. My dad taught me loads about bikes when i was a kid but alas the days of the BMX and Chopper are long behind me!!!. And bikes get more and more complicated as the years roll by. It seems alot of cash but then again if my dad had charged by the hour for the amount of times i didn't 'get it' well.... . Hands on is better than going to a you-tube video of a Yank(90% of the time) doing shots of his bike and garage and not helping with the problem!!!!!

 

[smokeysmoo]

bikes get more and more complicated as the years roll by.

Do they? In what way. I'd agree the recent introduction of electronic shifting has moved the game on, (but that is far from being mainstream yet), and the rear dérailleur on my 2011 CAAD10 works in pretty much the exact same way as the first cable shift dérailleurs introduced by Simplex in 1938, (thanks Wikipedia ).

Back to the OP. I agree it must be nice to do a course like this if you are coming into cycling with no mechanical experience, but I have to say it does seem a lot of brass for some new cables.

Glad you enjoyed it, and as long as it has given you confidence to deal with all future mechanical mishaps then I'm sure it was money well spent, can't say fairer than that