CTUK Mechanics Courses

I just spent the day doing one of Cycle Training UK's maintenance courses. It was the basic course, costings can be found on their website but at most you will pay £65 for the day.

In the past two years I have been learning how to do most things to my bike, building wheels, removing cranks/bbs, punctures etc but I felt it was time to consolidate and formalise what I have done so far. The internet has been very useful as have some amazingly generous people - Hillbilly, Hippy and Zed spring to mind. Must be infuriating having me calling up with random questions because my bottom bracket has fallen out and I cant articulate that the BB cups have been destroyed due to a lack of bike maintenance, ability to diagnose a problem before it becomes irretrievable and me not having the basic bike vocabulary.

Today covered the basics - the M check, starting at the bottom of the front wheel and checking tyres, wheels, brakes, headset and bars then down the down tube to the chainset, checking cranks, pedals and chain before moving up to the seat tube, seatpost, saddle and then back down the seatstay to the rear wheel - an approximate M shape.

Tools, lubrication and cleaning were the first topics, using appropriate lubricants for the purpose, the potential damage of using a teflon spray on a chain, pros and cons of dry and wet chain lubes etc. Throughout the day the instructors gave advice on cheap places to obtain items, the relative costs and etc.

We then examined basics such as puncture repair, with lots of good tips on the preparation for the repair, finding flints in tyres, best place for tyre levers when removing a tyre etc. The class ranged from novices to incompetents (yours truly) and the instructors were immensely patient and helpful. There were also good instructions of how to refit a tyre, getting the beading deep into the well if it was being reluctant, not overly using thumbs for leverage (one of the instructors had dislocated a thumb that way).

The teaching is well structured, problems are demonstrated on a bike but you are then to use your own bike to do the same work.

Correct brake alignment, how to set the pull correctly were suddenly demistified. Arranging toe in for brake blocks had driven me mad in the past, someone had suggested using a bit of cardboard, but i only have two hands, one to hold the caliper and cardboard, one to pull the lever and so now how the hell am i meant to tighten the bolt on the brake itself. The awesome hi tec solution was to put a rubber band on the rear side of the brake block, so simple but has made this so much easier, for me the day was worth it for that simple tip.

Installation of brake and gear cables was covered. Again we were made to strip our own bikes down and examine the state of them. One person who had previously got the bike serviced a year ago discovered that the installation of the cables done by her lbs was incredibly poor. Outers had been cut so badly that the wire from the outer had pushed through the ferule and the cut through the brake cable. It was really good to see the benefits of doing the little jobs correctly and how they save time and money later on.

Finally we covered gear adjustment, setting the limiters and adjusting indexing. I feel a lot more confident that I can do this well now. Again lots of useful hints and tips, the instructors walk around helping pupils problem solve and are able to cope with a full array of groupsets of different ages.

They have a small supply of spares, so about half the class left with bikes that had new cables (some just inners, others inners and outers), new brake blocks, fully lubricated, properly operating brakes and gears.

The day is a total steal, you could buy a total beater and effectively service the main components, replace the common perishables and learn how to do it all again. The next time you need to do work on the bike rather than pay someone you can afford to buy the appropriate tools and do it yourself...

I am booked in for the intermediate course in about a week. The syllabus and details for all are on their website.

http://cycletraining.co.uk/training/individual_training.php#maintenance

The course delivered what I wanted out of it, consolidating my knowledge and adding more detail and explanation to some of the things I was doing already. I would suggest anyone who has a day free consider doing one of the courses, this old dog learned a few new tricks.