A lot, I think. Following is a list of the repairs/maintenance I performed during 30 days in July and August:
Monday 7/20: Repaired tube. 15 minutes.
Tuesday: Cleaned both brake cables and replaced cable housing on front brake – 45 minutes.
Saturday 7/25: Repaired three tubes – 40 minutes.
Sunday: Repaired tube with two punctures – 30 minutes.
Tuesday: Puncture. 5 minute road repair, 15 min. patching work
Sunday: Trip to bike store, Replaced brake calipers, mounted new light, tightened bottom bracket on the fixie – 2.5 hours $25
Tuesday: New seatpost – the old one was almost 12 years old – 45 minutes $19
Saturday: Rebuilt front wheel – rim was almost 12 years old and out-of-round. $70 rim and spokes. – 2 hours
Sunday: Switched out rear tube to a Slime tube – other tube had six patches: 15 minutes
Friday 8/14: Fixed cable and adjusted internal hub shifter cable that was completely not functional: 20 minutes (still need to zip tie the cable to the frame and I noticed the cable is frayed at the shifter – will need to replace.)
Saturday 8/15: Biffed it on the fixie. Lots of time doctoring wounds. Have a nicely bent rear wheel. Will need 45 minutes to true. (Not included in the calculation)
For July/August 30 days: 8.25 hours of repairs.
This seems like a lot of time to be spending maintained a fleet of bikes as my primary form of transportation. I don’t wonder long about whether many of our current population would be interested in spending this much time repairing their primary form of transportation. We need more dependable bikes with more durable components!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Biking as a way of interacting with your environment and as sustainable transportation.
Actually, that doesn’t sound like a lot of time, especially considering 1/4 of that was to build a wheel. That’s a pretty infrequent job.
Fair enough. But also remember that I have a lot of experience and can do many of these things quickly. Many of these repairs would be very costly and time-consuming for someone who was not experienced in bike repair and had to take their bike to a shop each time. Thanks for reading and thanks for your comment.