Biker Mechanic Courses

Mark909

After reading the Argument with LBS thread and leaning that bike mechanics charge £50 an hour I was wondering if anyone knows any good couses for leaning the necessary skills required to repair mountain bikes.

Although id probably never work in a bike shop I think this would be a good thing to learn should any expensive repair jobs be necessary.

I can change a tyre at the moment and thats about it!

nicklouse

looked in the tech links sticky?

Mark909

Ah cool thanks I dont normally get past the general forum!

Edinburgh bicycles cooperatives looks like a good price. Any experience of their courses?

Anonymous

The tech links here, or you can get the Bike Radar Maintenance Guide (in the magazine section in the newsagents) which covers pretty much everything with lots of pretty pictures

Combine that with the info on the Park Tools web site, and guidance from the workshop forum here, and pretty much everything can be picked up. Only thing I'm still wary about is wheel building and don't think I'd touch facing frames.

The question though is whether you'll be prepared to buy all the tools and what jobs you wouldn't do yourself. Some tools are fairly expensive so depends how often you'd be doing the maintenance, though a lot of stuff can be improvised with cheaper stuff. You can get fairly cheap tool kits that cover most of the regular jobs, though you might want to invest in torque wrenches (you may need two to cover the whole torque range for all jobs, and that can be expensive), but some people just do without and torque to what they feel is right.

So far I've got away without requiring the services of a LBS. Planning a bike build and if I get pre-built wheels and given most components are pretty much assembled and just bolt on, it shouldn't be too hard. Biggest problems I've had has been with removing seized components. Crank, pedals and headset cups being the worst.

I'd start off just buying what you need initially though and build up the tools as you go, but as I say the basic tool kits are worth looking into as they may be cheaper than buying them individually (you get stuff like crank & BB tools, allen keys, chain whip, cassette lock tool, spoke wrench, and various other odds and ends).

paul.skibum

I wouldnt bother with a proper full on bike mech qually - very expensive for what you learn.

best bet is a bike maintenance book like Zinn or even the Steve Worland one and then spend a day working on your bike doing some basic tasks. I am pretty reasonable with a set of allen keys and was offered a job at my LBS (too little pay) and that is all self taught.

Dont be too worried about screwing up just think it through and apply a bit of logic and follow the instructions and its all good - for shimano stuff the instructions that come with them are pretty much all you need.