On London Cyclist we offer our online bike maintenance course and the Bike Doctor app, but if you are looking for bike maintenance books, then I can certainly recommend a few of them! Note that I’ve not found a good book with repair instructions for ...
bike maintenance
A step by step system for maintaining your bike
The essentials to bike maintenance – Allen keys and a bottle of wine! Slow changing gears, brakes that don’t bring a bike to a quick stop and strange creaks coming from near your pedals. Everyone recognises the symptoms of a bike in need of ...
What is stopping people from maintaining their bikes themselves?
Doing your own routine bike maintenance has many benefits. You can instantly fix your bike, without relying on the timetable of the local bike shop. You can save significant amounts of money on bike shop repairs. It can also be reassuring to know ...
Best bike maintenance stand
Maintaining your bike becomes a whole lot more fun after you’ve purchased a bike maintenance stand. Otherwise, bikes have an annoying habit of constantly tipping over to one side, just as you are about to make an adjustment. Fortunately, the price ...
Replacing Single Speed Freewheel or BMX Freewheel
If you ride around on a single speed bike or a BMX, then once every one to two years you need to replace the freewheel cog. It became apparent that my freewheel needed replacing on my bike after I kept hearing a clonking sound, each time I’d be ...
How to restore your old bike
Not all Londoners have access to a brand new, top of the range bicycle. Many, have a 10 year old hand me down mountain bike from their sister. One such person is my friend Laura. She recently asked me: What do you think of the bike? As someone who ...
Five of the Most Common Bike Maintenance Tools You’ll Need
If you want to be able to look after your bike yourself, you’ll need a basic set of tools to start off with. Allen Keys Also called hex keys, Allen keys are an essential for bike maintenance. Everything from adjusting your brakes, to tightening ...
The tennis ball trick for single speed bikes
This is one of those little bike maintenance tricks that I just had to share! For a while I struggled with punctures on my single speed bike. The problem was, it was difficult to pull the wheel back to get the chain adequately tensioned and at the ...
How I learnt to love punctures
I’ve never been a big fan of getting a puncture. I prefer to blissfully ignore the fact that it is an inevitable part of cycling. However, on a recent rainy ride, after 6 months free of punctures, they caught up with me with a vengeance. With my ...
Free bicycle maintenance classes in London
If you want to learn the basics to bicycle maintenance then a number of free courses and workshops exist in London. They can help you reduce the cost of your bicycle maintenance by completing basic tasks such as replacing brake pads. Below is a ...
Replacing your bicycle tyres for a smoother ride
In the overhauling an old bike series we come up to our latest upgrade. The bicycle tyres – a fairly economic upgrade at £25 per tyre. When do I change my bicycle tyres? If your tyre looks a little like my old tyre in the picture above then it’s ...
Overhauling your old bike part 1
As I mentioned last week it’s pretty easy for someone to bring a neglected bike back to life. Making it squeak free, trouble free and fast. Best of all you’ll actually be proud to ride your bike again knowing you’ve done the repairs yourself. In ...
A quick and easy solution to some of those bike repairs
Ok, so they won't do themselves but there are so many nifty gadgets to assist. In Andreas' post of yesterday "Breathing New Life Into An Old Bike", there was a picture of his bike on a workshop stand. I've been toying with ...
Breathing new life into an old bike
If you’ve got a neglected bike it’s possible to spruce it up and turn it from an unloved mess to a tip-top dream machine. Whether it’s been abandoned for months or just over the Christmas break. In this overhauling an old bike series I’ll be ...
Bike repair on your Android
Just over two months ago we released a very useful iPhone application for cyclists. 5000 downloads later we’ve brought that same app to cyclists with Android mobile phones. The app is called Bike Doctor and it shows you how to complete 24 common ...
Bike maintenance: DIY? Or get someone else to do it for you?
One of the most pleasurable moments as a cyclist is when you manage to solve a bike problem for yourself. This normally is followed by plenty of congratulating yourself and also telling all your friends you’ve fixed the problem so they can ...
Repair your bike using your iPhone
“I’ve never really wanted to mess with my bike but thing’s have started playing up and I don’t know where to start”. My friend Daniel is one of many new cyclists who’ve fallen in love with cycling. Just over 14 months ago he purchased a Marin bike ...
Bike repair on your iPhone
As of about 3 hours ago you can now download a new app for your iPhone that helps you maintain your bike. The App is called Bike Doctor and is available from: http://bikedoctorapp.com/ UPDATE: The App has reached number 1 in the Sports category! ...
Bike repair straight to your door – meet London’s mobile bike repairmen (and women!)
What? You still go to a bike shop for repairs? How very 90’s of you. When I put up a post about how much you should pay for bike repair in a bike shop a number of the responses surprised me. Quite a few people are removing the bike shop part of the ...
How much should you pay for a bike repair in a London bike shop?
Whenever something goes wrong on a bike the typical course of action is as follows. Step 1 – curse the cycling gods! Step 2 – Try to ignore the problem for as long as possible. Step 3 – give in and visit the nearest bike shop. You then find someone ...