Bike Maintenance Courses

Roundywheels

Just looking for info / opinion on the merits of doing bike manitentance courses. There are a no of options - basics for maintaining own bike and others to develop into fully feldged bike mechanic.
I'm have interested in doing a 2 week course but wondering would it be money wasted if I was nto to pursue bike mechanics afterwards.
Wouldnt mind having the skills though and the possible options after.

Anyone got an insight?

the_hundredth_idiot

I'd like to find out the same.

The LBS near my office (On Your Bike, Tooley Street) is doing a basic, commuter oriented course over three Thursday evenings in Feb (for £59). I'm quite tempted to do this, but I suspect it will mostly be pretty noddy stuff - fixing punctures, indexing gears and so on. One thing they mentioned which tempted me was that they will show you how to true wheels - that's a skill I don't have as I'm scared to try in case my wheels end up less circular than when I started. So I'm tempted to do the course for the wheel truing AND to see if I can pick up any tips for doing some of the basic stuff which make it easier/quicker than my current auto-didactic approach.

But if other (more in depth) courses are out there, I'd be interested. I suspect the ones which effectively train you to be a professional bike mechanic would be far too detailed, time-consuming and expensive for me. With a job needing long hours and a young family who like to see Daddy from time to time, there's a limit to how much bike maintenance I can do before dropping it at the LBS during the day instead.

Harveytile

Roundywheels,

Not too sure if you’re still interested in a course (oldish post) but if you are maybe this can help.

I looked in to bicycle mechanic courses and basically there are two options. Cytech and City & Guilds.

The Cytech course is most widely known and appears to be the industry standard. Milton Keynes and Manchester seem to be the main training areas. Prices for the Cytech2 is around £1000 - £1300 and is a two week full time course. These seems a very slick operation and the easiest way into the “fold”.

The City & Guilds approach claims to teach you all of Cytech2 and hints at a bit more. The only place I’ve found for this is in Spalding so still “up North” for this Southerner! Price is also around £1000 for 10 days full time.

I guess it’s horses for courses (pardon the pun). I have chosen the C&G as the people seem exceptionally friendly (not that anyone else was not) and that I don’t have a C&G qualification. Possibly daft but then again looking to change careers at this late stage may be too! Cyclists have never been easy to understand.

Hope you find the course that matches you.

derosa

http://www.downlandcycles.co.uk/courseDates.htm