Posts Tagged ‘bike repair’

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!!!!!!!!!!!!

A friend of mine who used to ride BMX in his younger years enlightened me about this trick. I ride a mountain bike about town most of the time. In the course of normal use, the ends of the handle bars eventually work their way through the end of the grips. Now this doesn’t bother me much — I’m more about function than style — but if you are style conscious this may lead you to run out and buy a new pair of grips every few months. No need. I recently bought a new pair of Oury grips as my last pair was about 10 years old and had turned into something like those rubber animals that stick to the wall they used to put in your cereal box. Needless to say they were nasty. Anyway, prior to installing your new grips jam a nickel in the end of the grip. Once the grip is installed this nickel will spread the load from any impact to the end of your grip and lessen the likelihood of your bar ends ruining an otherwise lovely grip.

Also, quick tip on installing your grips. Use a compressor to shoot air under the grip when sliding it on. This makes it soooooo much easier.