As a teacher at London Bike Kitchen, and doing my own bike maintenance work, one of the first things I talk to people about is how much money maintenance can save you. It’s tempting to tell people that cycling is ‘free once you buy the bike,’ but this quickly becomes untrue if you let maintenance problems build up, and let your more expensive components become unduly damaged and worn ahead of time. This is a short blog about the best ways to ruin your bike through lack of maintenance, which hopefully you’d use more in a what not to do sense. But it’s more fun to talk about it this way!
Category Archives: Bike fettling
Learnings and feelings after 6 months of cycle educating in London
The other day at London Bike Kitchen, where I teach as a freelance tutor, I ran a ‘introduction to maintenance’ class for two people who were several decades older than me. Correspondingly, they probably had in the order of 40 years more of experience regarding riding bikes than I did, since I only really began cycling properly (in the sense of leisure and transportation) in around 2017. Writing this, I’ve been teaching classes like this, or working as a community mechanic, for about 6 months now, and thought a blog post about what I’ve learned and how I’m feeling about it may be interesting to you.
A permament fix for stuck/broken Suntour Q-Loc suspension fork thru-axles
If you’ve ever owned a Suntour suspension fork, like that on my Voodoo Bizango (which has a Suntour Raidon), you might have already been a bit thrown by the proprietary Suntour thru-axle system, Q-Loc. Unfortunately, Q-Loc is prone to breaking, and then you have a wheel stuck in the fork. This once bit me in the bum quite badly because I’d let my front tubelessly-set-up wheel run out of sealant, and it deflated on a ride and wouldn’t stay up after I reinflated it with my mini pump. I couldn’t get the wheel off to put an inner tube in, so had to resort to public transport.
Getting home I did a lot of online research, many people found they were having the same issue, but the solution as per the bike shops’ advice was to just buy a new Q-Loc axle. Being unhappy to just spend more money on a clearly poor quality component, I found a permanent fix to this problem using a third-party provider, Hexlox. This is a short article on how to find the right replacement for your Suntour fork.
3 reasons why you hate tubeless and how to fix it
Introduction I’ve been getting to grips with tubeless riding for approximately a year now. I have come to like it but the learning process hasn’t been without frustrations and pains in setting up and operating a tubeless system for randonneuring/audaxing and gravel riding. After about a year of coming across problems with the approach, andContinue reading “3 reasons why you hate tubeless and how to fix it”
Why learning to sew can save your bike trip
Cycling, particularly cycle touring and bikepacking, requires learning how to use a diverse skill set, from navigation and bike maintenance to communications skills and financial planning. One skill I’ve found to have paid particularly big dividends that may not seem like an obvious top pick has been using a humble sewing kit. It’s pretty crazy to think that humans have been sewing stuff for millions of years, and the technique is really very little changed from when our ancestors were making their rudimentary mammoth cardigans. I’ve written this short article not as a technical ‘how to’, rather an insight into how sewing has helped me out and why I think it’s worth learning to do.
Calum On Wheels 