Assessing Bike Fettling Competence Remotely

[arabella]

0  Completely new to it
1  Know the difference between a screwdriver and an Allen key
2  Know which way to turn a screw to tighten it
3  Happy fixing punctures
4  Can adjust brakes / tune gears
5  Happy changing cables / cassettes / chain rings / bottom brackets / brake pads and adjusting bearings
6  Happy changing bearings
7  Can true wheels
8  Can build wheels

4 gets a lot easier if you have a stand, whereas most/all of 5 can be done with the bike lent against the side of the shed
it's easier to build up a wheel than to true it, especially if you have no trueing device other than the forks of the bike
cartridge bearings are a bit different to the loose/grease packed ones
So I agree with all those whove already said 'but, tools ...'
Somewhere between 3 & 4 there is general maintenance, knowing what/when.  I can't claim to do anything other than just in (out of) time.

[hatler]

Great input everyone. Thank you. Kim's point about bearings is very sound. I've been doing bearings so long I'd forgotten the subtlety of the feel, and that that's not something you can read in a book or get from a YouTube vid.

What prompted this was my offer to fettle bikes for NHS staff wanting to avoid public transport. I was contacted yesterday by an about-to-be-redeployed dentist who has a bike that needs fettling, but rather than put me out wanted to do it herself, and asked to be pointed at suitable online resources. Before I pointed her at anything like that I thought it best to first determine her bike-fu such that I could select a vid pitched at the right level.

Anyhow, I got as far as asking, and she got as far as answering (somewhere between 2 and 3) but by that point I managed to persuade her to let me do it for her.

For the moment, the three bikes I've had have all been moderate quality hybrids in sound order, just needing a little TLC and a tweak or two. All stuff that is distinctly in my 'could almost do it with my eyes closed' territory.

Other valid points above about tools, but typically if you answer 5 or 6 you either have, have had, or have access to suitable toolery.

The increasing choice in componentry will make such a simplistic grading scale difficult to maintain, as noted above. DI2, hydraulics ?  Common features on many bikes now but I have zero exposure to bike electronics and next to nothing on bike hydraulics. (Obv I could learn, but there's no need for me to do that right now.)

[perpetual dan]

I'd put bearing adjustment after wheel building.  They're a lot less forgiving if you fuck up, while being much less obvious whether you've not done it properly.  Wheel trueness and spoke tension can be measured objectively with tools, so mostly requires patience and good instructions.  Bearing adjustment requires a 'feel', which takes experience.

This. Also there's the "my wheel's rubbing the brakes a touch" truing and turning "it's well wonky and a spoke has broken" into good as new true. I'd put the first somewhere between 4 and 5.

[Kim]

The other thing about fettling bearings from a newbie perspective is the high pingfuckit hazard rating.  I suppose this mostly applies when you're undoing bolts at random with a view to rotating or adjusting your handlebars, and the next thing you know your headset has emptied itself all over the carpet/car boot/gravel driveway.

A slightly more experienced mechanic will likely be afraid of such things to the point of avoiding touching anything with a bearing for fear of the above.  (See also: freehubs, hub gears, suspension and other rich sources of important pingfuckits.)

A mechanic who's either been taught to avoid all this through formal education (which is frankly unsporting), or who has learned the hard way, will be armed with the knowledge, the right tools, a sufficiency of grease and magnetic pingfuckit-traps, and more than likely an assortment of spare parts before going anywhere near the things.


(Personally, I'm somewhere in the middle of the 'learning the hard way' stage.  I've got headsets sussed, and after a bit of crawling around on the floor can reassemble and adjust a wheel bearing.  I think.  They still go round and don't seem to wobble, anyway.)


Suspension forks and hydraulics likely depend on what sort of cycling background you have.  I expect they're bread and butter to modern fettling-inclined mountain bikers, especially given the amount of maintenance required to prevent a suspension fork from turning into a very expensive dead weight.