A Day Fixing Other People’s Bikes

I’m on Sustrans’ Active In Ashington project’s list of people who can be persuaded to volunteer for stuff. So today there was some sort of eco festival thing in North Seaton, and Sustrans were running a bring-your-bike-to-be-fixed clinic.

I got volunteered.

Actually, it was a lovely day, and quite good fun, though I’m always shocked at these things at the state of people’s bikes. Typical lists of problems . . .

  • No functioning brakes, other than a rear mech that would foul the spokes if you tried to select anything below the third lowest gear
  • Rear wheel that I swear was closer to square than round
  • Front mech that could move across it’s whole range without once touching the chain . I’ve no idea how it ended up like this - it seemed that both the plates had been bent apart at some time. Maybe the owner thought this was how you stop the chain rubbing on the mech?
  • Lose bottom bracket, wheel hub cones, headset and handlebars. All on one bike. Oh, it had no brakes either.
  • Brake blocks worn down to the metal. Still functional, though they make a terrible nose on that aluminium rim!
  • Punctures. Lots of punctures.

You get the picture - on most bikes, we couldn’t get them back to 100%; all we could do was get them to be slightly less lethal, with their owners promising to bring them in to Sustrans’ workshop to get the rest of the work done.

How much do you think it cost the owners to get all this work carried out though?

Totally free - including all parts, labour, cheery smiles and muttered curses. Now that’s what I call a good deal!

Workout:

  • Type: Cycle
  • Date: 09/11/2010
  • Time: 13:53:04
  • Total Time: 1:48:00.00
  • Calories: 1577
  • Distance: 29.5 miles
  • Average Speed: 16.39 mph

Filed under: Bike Culture, Cycle

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3 Responses to “ A Day Fixing Other People’s Bikes ”

  1. Andy in Germany on September 11, 2010 at 7:04 pm

    I believe you, I really do- we get a lot of bikes like that. Unfortunately as we’re a business we have to say ‘no’ to some people because it’s not worth the bike being fixed. We don’t like doing this though.

  2. mike on September 13, 2010 at 10:55 pm

    My Uni has organised free “Dr Bike” sessions with similar experiences to yours. The thing is, with new bikes available for less than £100 (admittedly not very good bikes) very few people are prepared to pay for an annual service, even if they use their bike every day. I think that training people to be able to maintain their own bikes would be equally as valuable as spending a lot of time trying to fix the unfixable.

  3. KarlOnSea on September 14, 2010 at 8:22 pm

    Yeah - I know what you mean. I reckon that the value of the parts we put onto some bikes was more than that of the bike itself . . .

    But actually, what you’re talking about is a wider society thing - the throwaway rather than repair mentality. Bah!