Hi,
I'm a complete beginner but I'm keen to learn about bike maintenance. I wondered if anybody could recommend classes or courses preferably in the west of the city?
Thanks :)
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Questions/Support/Help
Bike Maintenance for Beginners
(8 posts)- Started 2 years ago by mccolville0221
- Latest reply from Frenchy
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Posted 2 years ago #
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Hey, I'm not sure if the bikestation has resumed its classes after everything was locked down (avoiding saying post covid) but thats where I would start.
Posted 2 years ago # -
I'm pretty sure that the bike co-op used to do maintenance classes but there doesn't seem to be any mention of it on their web site at the moment. I think Edinburgh Council used to offer courses as well, through the Adult Education Programme, but again those seem to have fallen by the wayside for the moment.
EDIT: Tell a lie: it looks like EBC does still list maintenance classes on its website: https://www.edinburghbicycle.com/catalogsearch/result?q=classes, but you have to ring up to find out when they're on (if they are).
TBH it's not difficult to pick up the basics from a decent book (I'm sure others will be able to recommend their favourites) and/or online if you are moderately competent with screwdrivers and spanners e.g. if you can contemplate the prospect of assembling IKEA furniture without breaking out in a nervous sweat. I'm a devotee of the Park Tool online maintenance tutorials and videos, which cover specific jobs in easily digestible bite-size chunks - but you may perhaps need a bit of a grounding in some of the basic tasks if you're not to find yourself out of your depth with some of the more esoteric jobs.
One of the nice things about doing your own bike maintenance is being able to justify building up a collection of (initially) shiny, good quality tools. Mmm, tools...
Posted 2 years ago # -
YouTube has tones of bike maintenance vids.
Posted 2 years ago # -
I think the main benefit of attending an actual class would be they either provide crappy old bikes to practice on or there's at least an expert on-hand to help you if you completely bork something. The thought of trying to take apart the chaincased, hub-geared, all-bolts rear assembly on my ebike to change a flat makes me break out in cold sweats and I've built plenty of IKEA stuff - IKEA stuff doesn't cost several grand :P
Posted 2 years ago # -
Thanks for your advice.
I've got a couple of bike maintenance books from the library but I don't really feel confident enough to work on my own bike yet. I feel like I need some instruction on the basics first. I'd probably do something wrong and then have to take it to a bike shop to get it sorted!
I thought about buying a really cheap second hand bike just for learning maintenance on. So if i did something wrong it wouldn't matter.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Another way to look at it is, for the price of a bike maintenance course you can probably get your local bike shop to fix almost anything that you manage to do wrong. So you could just learn on the job, so to speak, with some youtube videos.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Does the Bike Station still have Fix Your Own Bike sessions?
If so, you can borrow their tools to fix your bike, and they'll provide advice or look over your shoulder to check you're not doing anything stupid if you ask them to. Think it cost about ~£5/hr the last time I was there, but that wasn't recently.
Posted 2 years ago #
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