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A love letter to bicycle maintenance and repair

tegowerk.eu

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Re: A love letter to bicycle maintenance and repair

#161

Post by kashyapc »

bombela wrote: post #157
david-gpu wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the person you replied to thinks of cycling as a sport, not as a form of transportation. That is the sorry state of affairs in North America and Australia. Edit: I see now that you are in TX, so this isn't news to you.

You guessed wrong! I biked for sport in France and the bay area. But also for commuting in San Francisco (so dangerous), and Palo Alto for many years. My reaction was to the 50 km/h, as if the person was cycling at that speed. edit: maybe they meant that below 50 years old you don't need gears. By the way, France has switched to a 30 km/h limits in towns. Pretty nice for cyclists feeling of safety.

Oh, I now see I was not clear. I was indeed talking about age when I said "below 50". Not speed. My bad.

Re: A love letter to bicycle maintenance and repair

#162

Post by tim333 »

globular-toast wrote: post #104

The modern bicycle is the pinnacle of personal transport technology. It's yet to be surpassed. Unfortunately unbridled consumption of fossil fuels has made cars economical enough that you can't cycle anywhere any more. I heard people are getting into gravel biking now because the road is too unpleasant. I maintain a small but shrinking amount of hope that we might be able to get rid of cars. Sometimes I think it's ge…

In London things have got quite a lot better of cycling over the last decade or so - more cycle routes and more car restrictions. So it can trend the other way. Also ebikes help.

Re: A love letter to bicycle maintenance and repair

#163

Post by minikomi »

victorstanciu wrote: post #24
mo_42 wrote: post #12

I had a similar experience during the pandemic. I got hold of an old frame for a road bike that I somehow liked. Even the paint was pretty bad so I went all the way of stripping the old paint, cold-setting the rear dropouts (thanks to Sheldon Brown's website) so that it will take the modern wheels, painting the frame, and assembling everything with new parts. It took me two years because I had to learn a lot how diff…

> Now, I have a very unique and beautiful bike (people on the street tell me). Well you can't just entice us like that without posting a photo! Here's one I painted that I am really proud of how it came out: https://tegowerk.eu/posts/nakamura-shadow-city-bike/

Stunner!

Re: A love letter to bicycle maintenance and repair

#164

Post by david-gpu »

bombela wrote: post #157
david-gpu wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the person you replied to thinks of cycling as a sport, not as a form of transportation. That is the sorry state of affairs in North America and Australia. Edit: I see now that you are in TX, so this isn't news to you.

You guessed wrong! I biked for sport in France and the bay area. But also for commuting in San Francisco (so dangerous), and Palo Alto for many years. My reaction was to the 50 km/h, as if the person was cycling at that speed. edit: maybe they meant that below 50 years old you don't need gears. By the way, France has switched to a 30 km/h limits in towns. Pretty nice for cyclists feeling of safety.

My bad! Yes, I interpreted it as "below 50 years old you don't need gears".

Re: A love letter to bicycle maintenance and repair

#165

Post by kragen »

ryandrake wrote: post #143
UnserMannInK wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing exotic, a Peugeot Traveller van. The spare parts were 700€, rest was labor. Took a whole day to take apart the transmission/front axle and put it all together again.

I think to be fair, if you’re going to include labor costs in the “total cost” of a car, you should include the price of a skilled bicycle mechanic in the cost of a bicycle, just to compare apples to apples. IMO not enough people have the know how to fix their own cars. And I am surprised that this is not changing given 1. how ridiculous the price of auto mechanic labor has gotten and 2. the wide availability of DIY…

you don't need a skilled bicycle mechanic to ride a bike the way you need a skilled car mechanic to drive a car. i've rebuilt a volkswagen engine, but i still wouldn't dare to try to do all car repairs myself on anything more complex than a model t. bike repair is something anyone can do—badly, yes, but not so badly it's not a viable option

Re: A love letter to bicycle maintenance and repair

#166

Post by pandaman »

Ringz wrote: post #95
agumonkey wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a part-time cyclist (I stopped using cars 5 years ago) but after seeing a few bad ones on youtube videos I can understand the rage sometimes. They just cut anywhere without any regards for traffic. That said a lot of people are crazy on roads, motorbikes, cars too (probably more often and more dangerously).

You're absolutely right! However, the main difference is that cyclists pose much less danger to other road users compared to motorcycles, cars, or trucks. Of course, there are accidents where a cyclist collides with a person and causes serious injuries, but when a motorcycle, car, or truck collides with other people, the consequences are dramatically more severe. This isn't to justify cyclists doing whatever they wan…

A 5 pound cat jumping in the middle of highway can still cause a pileup despite lacking the energy to cause any damage by itself. People don't want to run over cats and will swerve/break to evade it, losing control and hitting other cars. People don't want to run over other people (on bicycles or not) even more than they don't want to run over cats.

Re: A love letter to bicycle maintenance and repair

#167

Post by kashyapc »

david-gpu wrote: post #164
bombela wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You guessed wrong! I biked for sport in France and the bay area. But also for commuting in San Francisco (so dangerous), and Palo Alto for many years. My reaction was to the 50 km/h, as if the person was cycling at that speed. edit: maybe they meant that below 50 years old you don't need gears. By the way, France has switched to a 30 km/h limits in towns. Pretty nice for cyclists feeling of safety.

My bad! Yes, I interpreted it as "below 50 years old you don't need gears".

That was my original intention indeed :)

Re: A love letter to bicycle maintenance and repair

#168

Post by matsemann »

nemo8551 wrote: post #160
matsemann wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. I have coworkers driving to work complain to me about some cyclist they met on the way to work. Like, why..? I'm not responsible for that just because I also bike. It's not like I harass every driver I meet at work just because some driver killed a child again in the city. And all their interactions with stupid drivers? Quickly forgotten a moment later.

I’m a mountain biker, I even internally complain about some road cyclists. The ones who take up far more of the road than necessary, granted because they can, and slow you down prior to traffic lights meaning you hit a red. But when you hit a red, they swerve onto the pavement, across the junction with the pedestrians and then onwards beyond the red light while I’m still sat at the red. All while not dismounting from…

Of course you should use the opposite lane when passing? Hence it shouldn't matter to you where they're placed in the lane, as you should leave ample space when passing anyways and move over.

Isn't it also better for you that the cyclists get a head start, thus you're not stuck behind them in your scenario?

Re: A love letter to bicycle maintenance and repair

#169

Post by logifail »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #153
logifail wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's 100+ €/h for a skilled worker who replaced that clutch I'm pro-bike, but this issue also applies to having a bike repaired at a decent workshop. Our daughter's hand-me-down bike (previously "owned" by both her elder brothers in turn) had new brakes and brake cables fitted recently, and the repair bill was the best part of €150.

The difference is that a talented bike mechanic can get most jobs done in less than an hour. Its hard to imagine a bicycle job that would take more than 2 hours of labor, whereas most car jobs start at an hour and can stretch into 10 plus hours for more complex ones. The equivalent job of replacing all of the brake lines and brakes on a car would be a multi-hour job with several hundred in parts alone. By comparison,…

> having a competent mechanic completely overhaul and inspect the most critical safety system on a bike for €150 seems like a pretty good deal

Absolutely, and I was happy to pay for the brakes to be sorted!

€150 is a fairly substantial repair cost relative to the new cost; remember that this is a child's bike suitable for an 8-10 year-old.

Having all the brakes replaced on a car might well cost thousands, but cars cost tens of thousands new.

Re: A love letter to bicycle maintenance and repair

#170

Post by globular-toast »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #130
globular-toast wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traffic lights only exist because of cars, though. Pedestrians and cyclists don't need them. So, again, it's all caused by cars.

I agree with your sentiment, but traffic lights pre-date cars - the first ones were around the Houses of Parliament (UK) in 1868 and there were manually controlled ones in the U.S.A. at the beginning of the 20th century before there were large numbers of cars. However, modern traffic lights tend to be designed exclusively for motorised traffic and here in the UK it's annoying because we don't have a "turn left on red…

Those early ones were for horse-drawn carriages (cars).
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