A love letter to bicycle maintenance and repair
tegowerk.eu
tegowerk.eu
Bikes are for everybody. You can ride a beat up bike for years with just basic knowledge, like changing an inner tube and oiling a chain. General and advanced bike maintenance was a mystery until YouTube came along. Now I get to pass this knowledge directly to my kids.
That is true. But what changed most sceptics, that i met, mind were bikes that actually worked. I understand the fear when people see the price tag and think they could buy a second hand car for that, but once they sit on a good bike they just enjoy it. And if they then learn how to do basic maintenance themselves so that it just stays good and doesn't creak all the time, they fall in love with them. I love bikes.
And being able to do it myself feels really good, I couldn’t agree more!
IMO not enough people have the know how to fix their own cars. And I am surprised that this is not changing given 1. how ridiculous the price of auto mechanic labor has gotten and 2. the wide availability of DIY info on YouTube. Even just basic, basic stuff. I have friends who take their ~5yo cars to a mechanic (or worse: the dealer’s service dept) for routine maintenance like lubrication and filter changes, and they fork over $1500 for this! We are talking about $150 in parts and consumables here. The mechanic inflates this to $500 and then charged $1000 for his labor.
On DIY: absolutely on anything not safety related. I‘d never touch the brakes. Changing oil is perfectly doable for a reasonably skilled diy person. If you like that kind of thing and have the access to the necessary infrastructure (especially for oil disposal), go for it.
But I like to take the car to a mechanic for another reason: in Germany you’re required to get regular technical inspections (TÜV), if the mechanic does it chances are better that it goes through without problems.
I'm pro-bike, but this issue also applies to having a bike repaired at a decent workshop.
Our daughter's hand-me-down bike (previously "owned" by both her elder brothers in turn) had new brakes and brake cables fitted recently, and the repair bill was the best part of €150.
The equivalent job of replacing all of the brake lines and brakes on a car would be a multi-hour job with several hundred in parts alone. By comparison, having a competent mechanic completely overhaul and inspect the most critical safety system on a bike for €150 seems like a pretty good deal.
Absolutely, and I was happy to pay for the brakes to be sorted!
€150 is a fairly substantial repair cost relative to the new cost; remember that this is a child's bike suitable for an 8-10 year-old.
Having all the brakes replaced on a car might well cost thousands, but cars cost tens of thousands new.
In that case, if you bought a top of the line racing bicycle for the child, it would be a much lower proportional cost for the brakes! (joking of course)
On the other hand my commute is now 50km one way, which is just not possible by bike.
In rural Sweden - where I now live - they're free when you find them in the ditch, notify the police about your find with identifying data like frame number etc and wait for 3 months. Assuming that the bike does not have a label identifying the owner - in which case you should contact him/her - they'll send you a letter confirming you're now the owner. Those bikes often need some work - how does a 30-speed MTB end up chainless in a ditch in the middle of nowhere? - but that is all part of the 'game'. It is hard to get closer to re-use, reduce, re-cycle than cycling on re-used bikes.
I use it every day but I'm not going to get a better one, because I don't want to be constantly worried that someone will steal it. I want to use it as transportation, leave it wherever, and know that it will still be there because it's not worth stealing.
Plus, being hard to ride means I get extra exercise for my fixed-length rides.
A couple of years ago, I've found a gem of a bike. It looked maybe 15-20 years old and was clearly heavily used - frame was full of scratches and such. The color scheme was pretty ugly and was just a tad too small for an adult. But I noticed that all the components were actually decent - mostly Shimano XT, obviously very old models. After servicing it, it rode very well and I didn't have to worry about thiefs since it was pretty cheap and even more cheap looking. I still locked it, but the peace of mind was nice.
My back's not got much in it these days, so I've mostly been supervising my wife who stubbornly wants to learn it all. It's funny watching her go through the same hot head, cuss, throw your tools experience I did years ago. I tried to explain my zen theory, but she sure wasn't having it, so I'm leaning towards experience.
Most of our bikes were incredibly cheap (sometimes < 20 EUR) because you couldn't ride them anymore, and restoring them was quite relaxing. For example, I restored one with a mint-condition frame, using mostly original parts. Originally, it cost 70 EUR. It now looks exactly like this (minus the pannier and with the original gearshift): https://old.reddit.com/r/bikecommuting/comments/uxt0tb/new_b... My wife uses it daily. In my opinion, these bikes have a beauty and elegance which modern bikes simply do not have.
I have made some valuable contacts over the years. For example, I know an eccentric local guy who literally has a 3 meter mountain of old bikes behind his workshop and has every original spare part of pre-2000 bikes imaginable in his cellar. I also know someone on the internet who manufactures pulleys (the little plastic gears) for old Simplex derailleurs at home (they are hard to replace, as modern pulleys don't fit).
My basic rule of thumb of buying an old bike: if the frame is OK, you can restore it for under 200 EUR. Most of the time, it's trivial things like a broken chain, broken brakes, missing spokes, etc.
Once the bike is restored, maintenance is usually painless. The typical wearing parts (chain, bowden cables, tires, brakes) can be replaced with modern standard parts which you can get everywhere.
When I experience / see people diss cyclists, I'm sad for them. It implies they cannot empathise with others (me). My physical and mental health are better thanks to cycling.
Windshield perspective (or myopia) and car brain are both real phenomena:
- https://grist.org/cities/2011-01-25-if-driving-is-so-great-w...
At least that’s my experience in Chicago.
There are so many cyclists in berlin that just go in front of all the cars at a red light, even it's just one car in front of them. I know that this car can accelerate way faster than me and drives way faster, why would I want to block it and make the driver mad?
Yes, if the road is congested I might pass the cars too, because I realize I am faster, but everything else just doesn't make sense to me.
I was biking in the cycle lane the other day, going straight. A car came up next to me, and suddenly turned right to get off the road. I got the tingles just before and suspected it, so I managed to break and avoid being right hooked.
I shared the video online, and most comments I've gotten is how I should've been more careful (I was, hence no accident..), how I should have avoided the car's blind spot (the driver pulled up and put me there, and should've known I was there..) and lots and lots of comments about how I just should be a team player and let the car pass.
Everyone used the "we should all look out for each other" to victim blame me..
And that is literally true. Yes, cars should be more careful, but it's a fact that it's easy to overlook a cyclist. As my motorcycle instructor said during our first theory lesson: "So you are all here because you have suicidal tendencies, right?". And he was right. And it's even more true with cyclists. No one says that this is a good thing tho.
I'm fairly sure the average cyclist has a longer healthy lifespan than both the average motorcyclist and carist.
PS: In my experience, if there is a bike box, then there is also often a separate bike lane. I was mainly speaking about roads where there is no real bike lane. If there is one, then most things just work out fine.
But to add some nuance to the argument: bike boxes are an improvement over filtering up on the side of the road. Doing what (I assume) GP did and taking the lane behind waiting cars is about as safe, because any other cars coming up from behind ought to see you as they roll up to you, being that you are in front of them and not to the side. (And they're already paying forward attention thanks to the car ahead of you.)
I suppose maybe it's a city/countryside thing? Cars are great at long straights, but they take forever to safely clear an intersection compared to a bicycle -- and they block most of the road while they do.
It’s “normal” to be held up by traffic. It’s novel being delayed by a cyclist. Plus you’re doing something important and their leisure is getting my way!
When a cyclist does something unexpected, it’s extremely dangerous; pay no mind that they’re the one in 95% of the danger. When a fellow driver speeds, rolls through a stop sign, or fails to yield it’s lost in a sea of normalized deviance. No matter that car accidents are a leading cause of death.
And all their interactions with stupid drivers? Quickly forgotten a moment later.
The ones who take up far more of the road than necessary, granted because they can, and slow you down prior to traffic lights meaning you hit a red.
But when you hit a red, they swerve onto the pavement, across the junction with the pedestrians and then onwards beyond the red light while I’m still sat at the red. All while not dismounting from their bike.
In the UK, where I live they should stop at the light and not pretend to be a pedestrian. But they’re also entitled to the road, but when they ride in a manner that means I would have to veer well into the oncoming lane to get around them it’s just not worth it. A wee bit if there’s no traffic is fine, but not too much.
Isn't it also better for you that the cyclists get a head start, thus you're not stuck behind them in your scenario?
However, modern traffic lights tend to be designed exclusively for motorised traffic and here in the UK it's annoying because we don't have a "turn left on red" rule, so cyclists can end up waiting at a red light even though a left turn would be perfectly safe. I got caught out the other day at a set of lights that didn't detect me on my carbon bike, so I sat patiently waiting (the other roads were busy) until I figured out that my turn had been missed and had to carefully find a gap to make my turn.
The other thing is that stopping and starting on a bike takes significant energy and effort, so a straight road with many lights can turn an easy commute into a chore which is why it's common to see cyclists going through red lights. Interestingly, that kind of red-light jumping is allowed under some jurisdictions e.g. Paris.
That said a lot of people are crazy on roads, motorbikes, cars too (probably more often and more dangerously).
But since I got my driver licence, I understand the anger, bikers/cyclist can come at any angle / corner and you'll feel responsible if you hit them (it made me feel weird realising this as a cyclist), they don't have to respect as much rules.
That's why my heuristic is to stay smooth and try to make the road as a cool shared space (gesture to communicate you took driver nearby into account) when you have to use it.
I still need to buy a dashcam though.. cause there's always a risk of crazy angry car driver.
So, every idiot cyclist you see is an idiot not in a car and thus a reason to celebrate them.
I haven’t had to mess around with gear indexing once since I bought a bike with electronic shifting (SRAM Rival) a couple years ago, and it always shifts perfectly. I do have to keep the batteries charged, but one charge a week is more than enough with daily riding - so never had any issues there.
With wax lube (I use Squirt) I spend a lot less time cleaning my chain. What used to be a pretty annoying weekly process of degreasing and lubing my chain now takes a minute or two: use a dry brush to scrape off any excess wax buildup and then apply more wax. Much quicker and much cleaner than the old dry lube I used to use. And the chain is cleaner and quieter too.
Other than that, I basically hose off the bike and wipe it with a towel after every ride, and align/clean the disc brakes occasionally. My ratio of ride time to maintenance time has never been higher.
It's just very zen. Both because it tends to relatively less tasking on your executive functions, is physical and provides tangible results that you can see and "feel" relatively quickly. It may also be because programming is frankly a craftmanship for the most parts. There are a few projects where I'm doing Computer Science, but for the most part I'm a digital plumber.
But for me it always just feels like a chore - something I need to get done before tomorrow morning or else I have to listen to some dreadful sound for the entire ride.
So you do it when you have the time to do it. Which of course involves making time for it. I tend to involve my children in most of these things. Like my five year old helped me spartle the walls in her new room. Similarly if I'm working on my cargo bike I'll get theirs out and let them work on their bikes beside me if they ask to join. A lot of the time... like with the spartling I'll have to "fix" it later, but what letting them join does, aside from being a join activity, is that it gives me time to actually do these things on a busy schedule.
However, when I was topping-up the treatment with Squirt, I thought why not just use the Squirt and not bother with the whole waxing business. The problem I have is not being good at looking after my bike straight after a ride and here in the UK, that means the chain tends to get rusty so I end up getting through more chains than I should.
I think all city bikes should be belt and internal hub.
EDIT: autocorrect
But I’ve noticed that if what I want to be doing is be out riding my bike, I sure do hate it when something needs to be fixed!
I personally love working on bikes. I'd replace my behind the keyboard all day tech job in a split second, if I could afford to do so.
Clean after every ride? That's way overkill. I only clean my bike when I need to re-wax my chain.
I tend to sweat a lot, and sweat is corrosive. If it’s not a sweaty ride, and the roads are dry, I’ll skip the cleaning sometimes.
If it works for you, keep on keeping on.
When the project was finished took apart my old off-the-shelf mountain bike, now all that remains of it is a frame with the paint stripped off. I plan to convert it to internal cable routing, paint it (I've been watching Etoe on YouTube) and then turn it into an e-bike.
As a side effect of buying all the tools you need to build and repair bikes, I've also repaired my almost two decades sold exercise bike, which had trashed ball bearings. It also made me realize that most people would have thrown it away and bought a brand new one.
Like many things, bike maintenance eventually becomes a chore. Most of my (many) bikes over the last 30 years have been built from the ground up, including the wheels. And I don’t (or won’t) trust any shop mechanic to touch them. But now, the thought of doing any sort of maintenance fills me with dread - I want to ride my bikes, not spend hours fiddling with brake hydraulics and suspension seals!
Not a problem! Why not...
> I don’t (or won’t) trust any shop mechanic to touch them
Oh. That explains it.
Have you considered reverting to simpler bicycles that require less frequent and simpler maintenance. Rigid frame, cable-actuated brakes, possibly a gearbox?
At the moment the US is asleep, and I’m getting more of a European vibe from the comments.
I also have an older road racing bike that is completely equipped with a Shimano 105 groupset. With it, maintenance and getting it running is child's play. The simplicity of a frame shifter makes everything much easier.
Bikes are the best invention since sliced bread.
I will also say that e-bikes are much more fun than I would have thought. And not very serviceable.
Take a look at the local rate of machinists and mechanical engineers and then decide whether you truly want to have your bike part "repaired".
Might also be a good idea looking for other bike shops in your area. Mine is always trying to recycle and repair components.
It took me two years because I had to learn a lot how different components fit together and all sorts of specific spacings.
Now, I have a very unique and beautiful bike (people on the street tell me). But above all, I know every detail of that bicycle and how to fix it.
The reason why IT people love this stuff (also woodworking, gardening, etc.) so much is that there's routine. Most of the bikes are very similar. If you've rebuilt one, you have the competency to build another one.
In software, every project is a new challenge. It's more like building a new technical object all the time. I think software development could benefit from rewriting stuff every now and then. Many of my former projects would benefit a lot if I had a couple of week to take apart all the functions and assemble them in a better way that consideres everything I've learned so far.
Well you can't just entice us like that without posting a photo! Here's one I painted that I am really proud of how it came out: https://tegowerk.eu/posts/nakamura-shadow-city-bike/
It gave me an admiration for the cleverness but also the simplicity of the design. Truing the wheels felt like an art, and I got so interested in the concept that I ended up writing my thesis around lacing patterns for the spokes on the wheels. It actually got posted to HN at the time https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10410813
I do all maintenance on my bikes now. Always a good excuse to buy some new gadget, right? This other week I applied new bar tape and bled my brakes. I originally wanted some repair shop to do it, but that would mean bike there, get to work somehow, then get back there and then be able to bike home. Seemed more hassle than just fixing it myself, given I'm dependent on my bike.
I maintain a small but shrinking amount of hope that we might be able to get rid of cars. Sometimes I think it's getting better, but then I remember how much had already been ceded to them in just my lifetime. Maybe when I'm old it will be possible to cycle around safely and young people will know true freedom.
Repairing bicycles is part of that freedom really. You don't a lot of space or super expensive tools. There's no toxic liquids to deal with. I rebuilt a bike from the frame up around 2006 without any help from YouTube. I realised later I did a lot of it wrong as I was essentially guessing, but I still rode it for many hundreds of miles.
The blog comes very close to quoting ‘zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance’ -I wonder if the author read that…
I did! But I did so long before I started with bike repair, so at that time I couldn't really connect with it. Thank you for reminding me that I should give it a second read!
I remember first seeing this and thinking in some way it is more than funny, a more equal world.
Especially older, carbureted motorcycles with minimal electronics. You can often work everything out and get them going like new again with just some elbow grease and replacing perishables like fluids, seals, gaskets, etc.
Not to mention it's fun riding a bike that previously didn't even kick over before it came into your hands.
> and the greater the chance they’ll conclude they’re working in a bullshit job.
OK but you guys all know how many software have been involved in the creation and shipping of that bicycle and all its material? It's software all the way. The 3D modelling, the logistics, all the payment processing making buying/shipping the materials, etc.
I won't comment on taxes (on revenues for all the companies involved and on their employees too and on the sale etc.) and all the software that implicates and all the bureaucracy that it allows to thrive because, to me, that is the real bullshit that should be decimated (not reduced to zero but decimated).
But anyway many things we enjoy and take for granted exists thanks to and because of software.
Put it this way: even if they're similar in that they both have two wheels, I'm not trading an early 20th century for my Specialized (californian company btw even though I'm in the EU) full carbon S-Works (S-Works is the top end from Specialized) bicycle.
Thank you very much, software devs, for having made the creation of that wonderful bicycle possible.
I even have good bicycle shops near me that did maintenance far quicker/cheaper/better than I would do. It just all seemed like such a hassle.
I finally ended up buying a belt-drive hub-geared hydraulic-brakes medium/fat-tyre bicycle and my maintenance woes appear to be massively reduced.
I love the concept of bicycles that are deliberately built to be low maintenance.
Makes me think of the old, well-known saying, that you should focus on the journey rather than destination. In my mind, it does not compute. I often wonder if I'm broken somehow.
In a (flat) city for commuting short distances, you simply don't need gears if you're below 50. It's a nice to have.
It also helps that I live in the "Low Lands" (Flanders, Belgium), so no hills around here, and it's a bicycle-first city.
Even got my dad a single speed e-bike. If you live somewhere mildly flat, that's a fantastic choice for durability with an ebike.
So many bikes end up unridden because the gears went wonky.
And here I am with all the gears; on a nice road bike; and I struggle to maintain 30 km/h on flat.
Edit: I see now that you are in TX, so this isn't news to you.
My reaction was to the 50 km/h, as if the person was cycling at that speed. edit: maybe they meant that below 50 years old you don't need gears.
By the way, France has switched to a 30 km/h limits in towns. Pretty nice for cyclists feeling of safety.
So I just suck it up and try to fit the work in when I can, which is almost never.
There is no bike repair in walking distance from me, so taking a bike in for repair means having to find other means of getting home and back there. To me, that's the biggest hurdle. Also, they give Littles guarantees to when they will actually work on the bike, and I don't want to be without it for an indefinite time.
If I instead could book a slot, come there, deliver it, walk around some other shops for an hour or two, then pick it up and bike home, I would've probably given them more business.
I enjoy most of my bike repairs, but some of them I can do without. For instance switching to studded winter tires, my tire+rim combo is a hassle to get on.
Then I don’t, and stop riding.
It’s crazy that my car beats every bike I’ve owned handily in both maintenance-hours-per-hour-of-use and (obviously, by a loooong shot) maintenance-hours-per-mile. And it has complex electronics and has to contain little explosions and has parts than spin thousands of times per minute! And a damn air conditioner, which is a whole thing all in its own! Plus only cost as much as a surprisingly small number of allegedly-minimally-decent bikes despite requiring way more mass in materials and far more complex manufacturing. Hell, the precious metals in it alone… the bikes have none or practically none of that.
I love riding bikes though. Negative interest in spending any time maintaining them, and taking them to the shop all the time’s impractical (now the costs are really crazy, plus I have to transport them there and back)
[edit] fwiw when I eventually get over the sticker shock at what bikes with any nice features at all cost, I’ll probably get a low-maintenance bike like yours. Do wanna try those airless tires some companies make first, though. Shit’s always going flat, it’s the worst, hardly worth it if I’m still gonna have that problem or if the airless tires are terrible in other ways.
I don't know what it is about this, I've owned bikes for 30 years to ride in a mix of conditions (from mountain trail to city) and I've had like 5 flats, tops. One because I failed to bunny hop a curb and blew the whole thing, busting the wheel in the process, and the others because I drove over something that punctured the tube.
My last bike I've had for about 10 years til it was stolen last year, at some point I left it unattended for like 3 years, and when I picked it up again it wasn't at perfect pressure, but certainly wasn't flat at all, far from it, and definitely ridable. I know because my el cheapo pump was bust and I rode it to the nearest shop.
By the time it got stolen, only the front tube had a change a couple years before because of a puncture (rode on shattered glass) but the other was still factory and perfectly fine at holding air.
This experience has been consistent with all my bikes, and friends that ride good hardware have a similar experience. Some others though, they keep on regularly being flat but from what I gather it's a) cheaping out on the hardware and b) being mind boggingly careless about what they ride over.
So your problem doesn't really sound like one most people have. I normally get flats like every other year or so. And that's with thousands and thousands of kilometers of riding each year.
Take hydraulic disc brakes for example, when they work they are great but when they fail they don't work at all. You then have to bleed them which is fiddly, messy and requires special tools then you'll probably have to do it all over again after a few rides. Tubeless tyres are similar.
I think it's worth mentioning that cycle touring doesn't have to be complicated either. I was always scared to take a bike ride longer than a weekend because so many people in that scene appear to be major gear nerds. Then I met a hobo who had just jumped off a train with a battered up omafiets and he inspired me to strap a bunch of crap to my cheap hybrid and cycle all the way across North America.
Turns out you don't need the latest and greatest anything, you don't need to spend a zillion dollars on tools, or sit around tinkering every day. If you can change a tube and oil the chain, that's about all you need to know how to do. Even with broken spokes or a snapped cable you can hobble along for a couple days, till the next town with a bike shop. And if your bike is cheap and generic, every bike shop will have the replacement parts already in stock.
When I cycled through Colombia I did it on a Buffalo Bike which was slow, heavy and pretty much indestructible. Took ages to get anywhere, but who cares? Rather spend my time pootling along slowly than trying to fix stuff. Fixing stuff is my job, that's the last thing I want to do in my personal time.
You end up spending about 300/year. And for that money you have no need to worry about repairs. Or theft. These things seem to be immune to being stolen. Both those things are big issues because repairs are expensive if you don't do them yourself and bike theft means you need to replace them (or pay extra for insurance) when that happens and it also means that using a nice bike to get around is risky.
With Swapfiets, I never worried about theft. You just lock it and the bike thieves apparently ignore them as they are probably hard to sell on (as they are very recognizable). I've done that all over Berlin, including many of the hot spots where I'd normally be reluctant to leave anything of value unattended.
Modern bikes is something I don’t understand. Complex aggregates, systems and subsystems, spaceship furniture, etc. And the cost of a low-end car, sometimes mid. Plus all the “niceties” of the modern market, like planned obsolescence, milking the customer, necessary extras and so on. Feels like you’re meant to more touch yourself about how much of a cyclist you are than to ride. Say that these bikes are softer, easier, cadence friendly. Doesn’t matter, all off this is bs to me. Yet another area defiled by marketing, scammers and those who charge 5x on top of that for being “honest”.
I'm sorry to say I do understand all these above pricing categories short of potlatch.
Don’t be deterred from learning it for yourself!
And small airplane maintenance isn't that complex actually. Modern cars are way more complex.
Or to stay in your analogy: if your country is at war, you apparently see every manufacturing business as part of this war-industry. Even the bakery around the corner.