Learning bike mechanic basics at London Bike Kitchen

As I tell every bike shop I visit and friends who know I work in the cycle industry, I’m a bike fitter, not a mechanic. That being said, I thought it was time to brush up on some basic bike maintenance skills as my own bike had sadly been a little neglected.

I headed down to the London Bike Kitchen, an excellent service and repair shop in Haggerston, N1. It’s also the home of an extremely useful saddle library and education centre. I’ve taken a group evening class with them previously, which I really enjoyed and was keen to return.

Usually their classes have only two people but due to someone dropping out, I ended up with a private two hour session on basic bike maintenance. Bonus! The first part was looking at the reasons behind most punctures, how to hunt down a slow puncture, repair and replace the tyre. While I’ve replaced the occasional tyre over the years, it was good to be shown a technique which wouldn’t leave my knuckles shredded. After practicing a few times, I was confident I could do this safely by the side of the road. I did discover that now I’ve upgraded to larger rimmed carbon wheels, I need at least 3 levers to get the tyre on and off. Glad I found this out in a classroom and not on a cold wet ride.

Finally we got on to checking the frame, chain and cassette. I assured the instructor I knew about this but admitted I hadn’t done it in a while. Embarrassingly, my chain had stretched to the point where I didn’t just need a new chain, but my cassette needed replacing too. Doh! I’ll definitely be sure to check it more regularly in the future. Could have saved myself a new component.

If you’re interested in learning more about fixing your own bike, the London Bike Kitchen have a number of courses in person, through their online course library and a weekly fix along on zoom. I highly recommend them https://www.lbk.org.uk/learning