indianatrails

So as an everyday bike commuter, I'm just used to the idea now that "bikes need work." Even on top brands, something could always use a good wrenching: brakes, BB, wheels, cables, whatever. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE to fix, lube & tweak. But why is this so much different than the world of motor vehicles, where you can go months or years of everyday use without so much as an oil change?

At first blush it seems like we are stuck in the motoring equivalent of the early 20th century, when cars also needed constant tweaking & wrenching. So I'd like to see a bike that could be ridden 25 high-performance miles every single day for a whole year with one minor tune-up.

So are cyclists just more tolerant of mechanical issues? More mechanically inclined? Less apt to care? I mean most motorists aren't carrying a bag of tools and spare parts under their car seats.

Nightshade

Why Tweak your bike?? For the same reason we all don't live in the same house, eat
the same food, date/marry the same people , or drink the same booze. "WE" are all
just a bit different in who we are, what our needs are , and what we like.

"Variety"........the spice of life!!

And unlike a car "we" are the engine that powers the bike so "we" notice things that
affect our powering the bike more.

JeffS

It's a tradeoff that most of us have consciously made.

Buy a bike with drum brakes, steel rims, internal gears, fully enclosed chain, heavy duty tires and you're set.

If you're wanting your lightweight race bike to go that long, then stop.

treebound 

You still need to mess with cars, it's just that most people don't. I know people who have new cars, run synthetic oil in them and still get their oil changed every 3,000 miles. Checking the air filter, other filters, fuel filter, tire pressure on all four tires plus the spare tire, rotating the tires, lubing the door and hood and trunk lid hinges, lubing the door locks, cleaning and replacing the windshield wipers, checking and cleaning and replacing the door window seal strips, lubing/cleaning the door perimeter weather strips and also the weather strips around the engine hood and rear deck or trunk lid, and the list goes on and on, and this is with cars with sealed wheel bearings and sealed driveshaft or CV joints that only need maintenance once they are worn out.

I'd much rather work on a bicycle than a car these days, much less stuff to take care of.

edit to add: Wait, a better analogy, how about house cleaning? There are people who are constantly fussing about their house every single day, seemingly every single minute they are home. Then there are people who do nothing as long as the roof don't leak and they have at least a path from the door to the fridge to the bathroom. Bicycles are like housecleaning, some mess with them constantly, and some don't until the bike stops working.

GV27

Some of it, at least, has to do with the quest for light weight and efficiency. While car makers seem to be going out of their way to make their vehicles as heavy as possible, bikes are exactly the opposite.

My brakes don't really ever need work. Maybe an occasional twist on the adjuster. The ancient square-taper BB on my commuter never needs work, but my external bearing, integrated BB XT crank on my MTB seems to get creaky if it doesn't get lubed every so often. I use good strong wheels on all my bikes so they don't need anything very often but my lightweight tires often need attention. With my friction shifters on my road and commuter bikes I never need to adjust the derailleurs (or I CONSTANTLY adjust them, depending on how you look at it) but my index systems on my other bikes need adjustment a lot. Of course all the bikes need their chains lubed and cleaned a lot.

Now a Dutch bike might weigh 40 lbs but it very rarely needs any work. It has internal gears so that's not an issue. Rod brakes never need adjusting and rarely maintenance. They have full chain cases so the chain is always clean and stays lubed for a very long time. They use nice heavy tires and super thick tubes so flats are very rare and they don't leak much air so rarely need inflated.

It's not a technology issue, it's a perceived need/want thing. One thing that is frustrating me right now is derailleurs on kids bikes. My son is 7 and I can't expect him to properly care and feed a derailleur but I want him to be self sufficient. There are no kids bikes available that have internal gear hubs - these were common when I was a kid. I'm building up a wheel for him from a NOS Sturmey-Archer hub. Then there was the ****er-head at REI yesterday that was convinced that his 4 years old needed a 7-speed tag-along bike. Yeah right.......

deez

that is a good analogy.

ItsJustMe

I don't do much to my bike. I lube the chain once a week, and I'm using a spray teflon/wax lube for that, it takes about 30 seconds. I put new brake pads and tires on when they're needed, which is about once a year. I replace the chain about twice a year (about 2000 miles); I check it with the park tool when I lube (assuming I hadn't already changed it in the last few months).

Honestly, I spend more time on by bike than driving my car, and I spend more time working on my car (I count filling up the tank, changing filters, the intake manifold work I had to do last month, etc).

I'd guess I spend maybe 2 hours a year working on my bike.

bikinpolitico

I agree with JeffS. The problem is most bikes sold in the US have racing inspired components that need more upkeep. This does not serve the general public that just wants to get from point A to B. Look at Dutch Style bikes like Velorbis, Azor, Batavis, etc. These bikes have drum brakes and internal shifting which require no maintenance. We just have to get over thinking that entry level and commuter bikes are a racing machine.

CliftonGK1

I clean the chain when it's dirty, lube it every couple of weeks (or after a cleaning).
The brakes get adjusted when I put on new pads (maybe 2 or 3 times a year).
I use my bar-end shifters in friction mode, so I don't have to fiddle with index adjustments constantly.
My wheels have needed truing 1 time at 300 miles. That's it.

The tweaking I do to my bike is strictly playing with my setup for the sake of playing with it, same as a car guy might try different spoilers or headlight bulbs. The biggest measurable outcome effort I put into my bike this year was building a new front wheel around a dynohub.

wahoonc

I have a 1972 Raleigh Sports purchased in 1982 that has over 15,000 documented miles on it, and probably at least that many more undocumented. Outside of the replacement of wear out parts like tires, brake blocks, the occasional cable and a few chains it was ridden day in and day out with minimal maintenance. It definitely could use a new set of wheels about now, but why ruin a good thing

As JeffS pointed out get the right bike and minimize the maintenance. IIRC my MG took a helluva lot more fiddling and fussing to keep going than my Honda Civic ever did.

Aaron

markjenn

I'll join the crowd. Bicycles are relatively maintenance intensive compared to a car and the basic reason is that we are asking a 18 lb machine to carry our 180 lb bodies so every lb of the machine is burdened with the stresses of 10 lb of load. Compare that to a 3500 lb car carrying us in which each lb of machine is burdened with 0.05 lbs. The bicycle is 200x more stressed.

If we were willing to ride 50 lb bicycles (enclosed gears or enclosed chains, suspension front/rear, 50mm wide tires on big rims, etc.), bicycle maintenance could be reduced to a fraction of what we do now.

- Mark

harleyfrog

I think it has to do with a couple of reasons.

First, unlike cars, bikes aren't exactly "one size fits all"; more like "one size sorta, kinda fits most". Which is evident by the frequency of people swapping out stems, handlebars, saddles, etc., and making adjustments to saddle height, saddle tilt, etc.

Second, maintaining a bicycle is easier for the average person than a car. Granted, you add oil, coolant, washer fluid, etc., when needed and you could change the oil, but most people don't. With a bicycle, everything is simpler to maintain and fix without having to go through the whole process of becoming a bicycle mechanic. Often times, it comes out of necessity (i.e., a flat on the way home); other times it's a matter of pride of ownership (i.e., this is my "baby" and I take pride in what I ride); and for still others, it's a matter of better understanding how the bike works and doing the work yourself.

Industrial

Most of us ride fairly sporty bikes. Sporty things always require more attention than their utilitarian counterparts. Even your basic hybrid bike is an attempt at sporty compared to the dutch and english bikes of old.

From what I can gather, something like the swobo dixon would come closest to being maintenance free while being a fairly modern bike. I don't know too much about the sram i-motion hub though. It looks slow though.

indianatrails

OK, so it sounds like we cyclists may have more mechanical sympathy. Seems true enough. Wonder if you can measure that. Also, we in the USA may be biased toward more high-performance, but less stable designs.

But in the motoring world, long-term, hands-off reliability is not opposed to high performance until you get into motor racing. I suppose there are bicycle OEM's that are in that niche -- everyday high performance AND reliability -- maybe somewhere in between the fred zone and the roadie zone.

Dr.PooLittle

I run fixed, so, besides filling the tires, I just clean, lube, and retension the chain weekly. Adjust the brake as needed, which is like months and months in between.
I think the real reason bikes "need more adjustment" than cars is that, at any time, there's probably a hundred things "off" on your car, but there's so much between you and the road you just don't notice. On a bike, the tiniest imperfection can drive you nuts.

Industrial

True. It is kinda weird how much time I spend tweaking my bikes now that I think of it.

Big M

As a car enthusiast, I used to always tweak and tune my car. Most others will look at a car as a mere appliance, and tweak nothing, as you described.

Bike riders may tend to be enthusiasts, and therefore more in touch with their bike's finer points. Especially if you're active on BikeForums.

My bike, I used to just get on and ride, not caring or noticing that the derailleur skips 3 gears at a time and that there's a constant clicking on the chain ring. Then again, I barely rode it much until I got into it this year.

It's all about your level of enthusiasm.

MichaelW

I got tired of tweaking my commuter bike on cold, wet sunday mornings, scraping road grime off the rear mech, rims etc. My new commuter has been chosen to minimise the amount of cleaning and maintenance but not at the cost of huge weight or sluggishness.
Alfine hub gears, disc brakes, chainglider, dynamo hubs, sub 30lbs (in rack, fenders) and a commute time no different than my sport-road bike (if anything quicker over the rough bits).

Industrial

Sounds like a cool bike. Seems like there are no bikes with a fully enclosed chain available in the US which is kinda sad.

AntEater

I honestly don't spend much time at all on my commute bike. I think the problem, like others have said, is that most bikes sold are either some type of racing bike or have low end parts. If you get durable parts there's no reason to do much in the way of maintenance. I primarily ride a road-converted MTB. The bike is seriously overbuilt for road use but things don't seem to wear out frequently or brake at all. Brake shoes should last years if you are riding on the road. I replace my chain once a year. Hubs, bottom brackets and the head tube should be able to go years without adjusting if they are properly installed and tightened. I clean and lube the chain (on the bike) about every other week. I get about 3-4k miles on a pair of tires which means I change them about every other year. I also prefer single speed bikes for this reason - less to mess with.

If only the mountain bike I race on were so maintenance free. I'm gradually following the same path with that bike too. I'm "down" to racing on a single speed bike without suspension. With the amount of mud and grid that bike goes through I'll never get away from frequently replacing brake pads.

JeffS

Funny, that's a lot more time than I put into maintaining my geared bike.

I too tend to spend more time on chain maintenance on the fixed-gear. So much for the low-maintenance fallacy.

ochizon

isnt that what "fixies" are all about? Single gear, and in many cases only a front brake, puncture resistant tires... your set for months with out some much as oiling the chain.

EDIT: oops, I should have finished reading...

Cyclaholic

I'm an engineer, I can design and build you a bicycle which will require no maintenance whatsoever for the life of the bike, guaranteed...... the only question is, how do you feel about riding a 600 pound bike?

We may be able to get that down to maybe 300 pounds, but you'll need to commit to an hour per year of maintenance.

ItsJustMe

I have a $300 bike with the cheapest components around, with a 7 speed freewheel and indexed flat bar twist shifters. I haven't touched it since I bought it except at 10000 miles I replaced the worn out RD and had to readjust it then. Also a few weeks ago after 14500 miles the shifting got stiff and I had to lube the cable. Other than that it's been shifting quick and precisely since I bought it.

I think the more gears you have in the back the more the derailler needs to be messed with.

Tourfan

People who read this board are by definition interested in their bikes and more likely to do "tweaking". I suspect that most people who have bikes treat them much like they treat their cars - ie do nothing until it breaks, then bring it to the shop!

I just pump my tyres up and fix punctures. Have recently starting washing my bike and re-lubing the chain, but only because I have a shiny new chain (after breaking the last one) and quite like how it looks. As for greasing and re-packing my BB, I wouldn't have a clue how that's done although I've been reading this board for years. As I can't really justify owning more than one bike at a time, I'm waiting for my current bike to fall apart as an excuse to get a new one - but it is stubbornly durable.