gerv 

If you are putting thousands and thousands of miles on a bike every year, you are going to have lots of repairs.

I have two bikes I use in summer and currently both bikes have DOA rear wheels. My Fuji had some kind of calamity that bent some spokes (it fell over at the Farmer's Market and probably hit something...) My Bianchi has a 6 year old wheel that had suddenly starting popping spokes. I lost two on Friday and the wheel started to taco.

Luckily, I was able to borrow a wheel off my wife's bike which I'm repairing the Fuji's wheel. And I'll be building a new one for the other bike soon.

How do you keep up with repairs?

Robert Foster

I try to stay on top of servicing and repairs. But I also cruise garage sales for spare and back up parts. I keep an extra set of wheels and pedals for most of my bikes. I also try and keep a good working relationship with my favorite LBS. I start saving for new parts before I need them and I might even replace some a bit early just because I have the spare parts. Tires are a harder story.

LesterOfPuppets

I'm pretty much like Robert. Lots of bikes and wheelsets and boxes of parts.

busted knuckles

all my bikes have 26" wheels. I have a spare set of wheels. I also stock up on parts when on sale.

Platy

Good strategy. If you want to keep a piece of machinery going forever, you need to have two identical copies. When one breaks you just switch to the other or swap parts. Eventually spare parts will become hard to get, but they may go through a phase where they are really cheap to buy. A spare parts stockpile is easier to justify because you know you'll eventually use them all. It's also more justifiable to collect specialized repair manuals and tools.

wahoonc

Keep a bunch of bikes?

In reality I have spare wheels, parts and try to keep a couple bikes always ready to go. At one point I only had two bikes and if something broke it had to be repaired ASAP so I could get to work. I don't recall ever having both bikes go down at the same time. However one of those bikes was a bullet proof Raleigh Sports that is still chugging along 30 years later on mostly OEM parts.

Aaron

tsl

It's just another exercise for those planning skills we develop as car-free cyclists. Memory and record-keeping helps too.

When I started out, every time I needed a part, I bought two--one for the repair and one for the spare parts box. As I built up an inventory and learned how often I went through things, these days I order a year's worth of spare parts all at once. This is cables, housing, rim brake pads (both "wet" and "dry"), disc brake pads, chains, chain lube (both "wet" and "dry"), bar tape, tires, tubes, batteries for the lights and cyclometers, and so on.

I've felt vaguely uneasy for the past few weeks since the Annual Festival of Bike Maintenance, because buying new glasses meant putting off replenishing the bike parts box. I'm feeling much better now since tires, chains, cables, brake pads and 10 meters each of brake and cable housing arrived on Friday.

Each of my bikes has two cassettes, a 12-23 and a 12-27 or 28, so I don't necessarily need to have identical spares in stock. I can ride a hills cassette on the flats for a while. On my main bike I go through a 12-23 every two years and on the other bikes every three or four years. I seem to get two or three cassettes out of a chainring. As the time approaches, I'll order cassettes and chainrings in on sale.

I have two sets of spare wheels, one for the disc brake bike and one for the three rim brake bikes. Although I've never used them.

For me, multiple bikes is the suspenders part of of belt and suspenders. I say this because no maintenance need goes unnoticed, and no repair is put off.

Routine needs--chain cleaning and lube, picking glass out of the tires, etc.--are taken care of a couple of times a week depending on how many bikes the miles got spread across and the conditions that week. During winter when I ride only the disc brake and snow tire bike predominantly, this happens two or three times a week. In the three-seasons, it may happen only every week or ten days.

I've had the tires flat overnight, and I've taken care of it before leaving. I snapped an RD cable in the shifter once on the way home, and had it fixed before dinner. I've snapped chains before (always when trying to get just another week or two out of them), and put in a new master link on the road, then replaced the chain entirely when I got home. In other words, the belt part is keeping spares in stock and attending to needs immediately.

Where multiple bikes is nice, is during the annual Spring Festival of Bike Maintenance. This year, I took three rear wheels to the LBS for truing (got a discount for quantity and bringing them in clean and ready for the truing stand), and still had a bike to ride.

andychrist

I have the same problem, over 4K every year and something is always going wrong. Fortunately though I have learned some things through experience. For instance, I started out with just one bike, a circa 1976 Fuji SRR-- not exactly a fine piece of machinery to begin with. Over the course of the decades I totaled a few forks, wore out both derailleurs and many saddles, pairs of pedals, and a couple of wheel sets or so. But it wasn't until I started using the thing as a full fledged cargo bike that the real fun began: breaking all the spokes in my rear wheel; got a new set with double walled Sun rims, spoke nipples rapidly began pulling the out of the eyelets. Got me yet another set of wheels, then built another, again with Sun rims but this time the heavier duty rims, not the CR-18s but I think maybe 22s or something, forget exactly which but they have held up. But by that time I had also invested in a new, 2005 Fuji del Rey, a tank if there ever was one, so no longer put as many miles on the SSR. Only break one spoke every year on the newer Fuji, which is pretty good for me.

To make a long story even longer, couple years ago began building up a Mach 2 with a frame from recycledrecumbents.com. ADC was especially accommodating to all my ridiculous requests, and spread the rear fork to accept a forty spoke, quadruple laced tandem wheel (with Mavic rims). The thing is bomb-proof, it will be years before it needs any servicing. Still I burn through tires left and right, but at least riding in the country on Schwalbes and Contis I never get any flats (just blow-outs, once the treads wears through all the way. Yet another reason why it is convenient to keep a spare bike around!)

Derailleur cables are an item it really pays to keeps on hand. Unfortunately for me, I can never find a source for more than one tandem length in SS at a time, so always end up having to order a new one on the spot. Guess I should start searching eBay again now!

I-Like-To-Bike

Not necessarily. I still commute daily on a city bike bought 11 years ago for about $200 in Germany at a K-Mart type store. I replace the $5 chain every year at a convenient time and occasionally spray silicone lube on it. One overhaul of the Sachs 7 speed hub is about the only major repair needed in approximately 40,000 miles of all weather, year round use. I can't think of any other repair or part replacement that took the bike out of service.

dynodonn 

I keep two main bikes on hand, and alternate my riding between the two on a regular basis, which helps spread the wear over two bikes. Over the years, I've learned on what types of spare parts that I need to keep on hand without going overboard.

If one bike is down for repairs, whether planned or unexpected, the other bike is similar enough in riding style, set up, and carrying capacity, that I barely notice the difference in that I'm riding another bike.

Sixty Fiver

My all season commuter has an SA 3 speed hub and a dual drive which was a new tweak for spring... runs on 26 inch wheels that I built and is about as low maintainence as a bike gets save for running as a fixed gear which is what it used to be.

I also have 11 spares and my own bike shop so any little things are not hard to do.

newenglandbike

I don't mind doing maintenance, but I don't find I have to do it that much, and often don't have time. my bikes just keep on ticking. I use a touring bike for day to day commuting and touring. However I rarely clean my main bike, and it shows. The paint on the drive-side chainstay never sees sunlight

I do put my bikes together very carefully from the ground up, with ample lubrication and proper torque where necessary. The main thing I have to do is replace brake pads in the salty New England winters. At the worst of this year's winter, I was chewing through pads every two weeks.

The drive-train is a mixture of Sugino and Shimano DX which are pretty tough in my experience. For chains I try to get ones with riveted-pins such as are found on KMC 8x and whipperman chains- the pins are less likely to wander in the link and weaken the chain. Also I think it's a good idea to use 36 spoke minimum wheels, and try to obtain well-made, heavy duty stuff when you do need spares.

edit: Fenders are a HUGE help, with a decent mudflap on the front.

wahoonc

This has been my past experience with my old Raleigh Sports Standard. Replaced the chain every couple of years, tires every year or so when they wore thin, brake pads when they needed it. Added oil to the hub once a week or so. That bike has well over 35,000 miles on it and is currently in semi retirement.

Aaron

Roody

That's weird. A car with 35,000 miles would be considered almost new and would probalby still be covered by the menufacturer's warranty. Most people expect their car to run at least 125,000 miles and many get twice that.

How come bikes don't last as long as cars? It really seems like they should. Is it because they're not very well made, or is there just something inherently shoddy about bikes?

gerv 

The rear wheel on my winter bike has a CR18 that I picked up as part of a hybrid "replacement" wheel. The spokes started popping after six months of service, so I bought some straight gauge DT spokes and re-spoked it. Been riding on it ever since... that was 5 years ago.


Wow... that was a great deal. Not even a single wheel failure? My Bianchi has Alex Ace rims and straight gauge spokes laced to a Tiagra hub. I got a little over 15,000 miles on them. I could respoke the non-drive side and probably get some more miles out of it, but since I use it for camping trips... I keep thinking about taco'ed wheels 100 miles from home.

So I ordered a rim (Sunrims CR18 actually...) and new Tiagra hub. I'll also pick up some new DT spokes for it. I was thinking about this last winter, knowing how old the wheels were... but kept postponing the purchase.

I-Like-To-Bike

The original aluminum wheels and rims are still good and straight. No problems at all. Good IGH design and coaster brakes allows a daily cyclist to count on reliable trouble free service for years and years, if not decades.

I, like Wahoonc, also had similar service from 1972 to 1997 from a Raleigh Sports with a 3 speed hub and a Raleigh Sprite with a 5-speed hub.

I-Like-To-Bike

A typical car in the U.S with 35,000 miles is probably only 3 years and may not even been paid for yet. A bicycle with that many miles is a rarity and more than likely seen decades of use. The owner of such a rarity may have outgrown the bike, got tired of it, or became physically unable to ride it over the long period of time taken to accumulate that many miles.

wahoonc

Bikes aren't as heavily built as cars, and FWIW that bike would probably go another 35,000 miles with similar maintenance. Most bikes are built as cheaply as possible for mass marketing. In places like the Netherlands or Denmark you can buy good heavy duty bikes that will last for many years with minimal maintenance. Here in the US we have Worksman bikes that are built in NYC, Queens to be exact. I have seen quite a few of those that have been seeing years of heavy use in industrial plants, last plant I was in that used them had quite a few that had been in service for 30 years.

I have seen plenty of cars start having major issues at the 60,000 mile mark...just out of warranty. Last company truck I had needed nearly $2000 worth of front end work and only had 67,000 miles on it.

Most higher end bikes being sold in the US today are more comparable to an expensive sports car than they are a less expensive economy car. Kind of like comparing oranges to cantaloupes.

Aaron

andychrist

Of course those of us who live car free are likely to ride our bikes pretty hard. It could mean going out in all sorts of weather over any kind of terrain and carrying who knows what loads. Where I bike upstate it is so hilly that I probably shift gears a couple hundred times on each day's ride, often between highest and lowest; riding like this with full baskets while pulling a trailer puts a lot of strain both on the drive train and the rear wheel. And it certainly doesn't help matters that part of my commute is over unpaved roads. Reflectors, blinkies, even head lamps have all ejected from my bikes despite my vain attempts to mount them securely. Even had to add extra bolts to the hitch arm of my Burley Nomad to keep the whole thing from escaping from me (can't really blame the poor little bugger.)

Bikes are delicate instruments. I'm just grateful for the days I can get mine to work at all.

bragi

I'm not a naturally handy person, but, fortunately for me, bikes are simple enough to keep up on the maintenance without too much trouble. I only have one bike, a touring bike (Surly LHT), and it has yet to fail me. At home, I keep a full set of tools, a few extra tubes, a set of brake pads, and some cable. I clean the rims and drive train every 1-2 weeks. I use friction gears, so all I have to do with the derailleur is make sure the limiting screws are in order about once every six months. I top off the tires every couple of weeks. If the bike gets really dirty during a spell of awful weather, I take it to a car wash, being careful not to destroy the bearings with high-pressure spray. That's pretty much all I need to do on a regular basis. Given the fact that I ride 4000-5000 miles a year, I don't think it's too much of a burden.

That said, brakes and rims are a problem for me; given the weather and terrain that I live in, I go through at least one set of brake pads every 3 months, and rims don't last much more than 18 months. I'm not skilled enough to do my own wheel builds. I hate replacing brake pads so much I will only do it myself if absolutely necessary. I pay quite a bit of money every year to have those two things done by a trusted LBS, but it's totally worth it, because even that expense pales into insignificance compared to buying gas on a regular basis.

TheHen

My spouse put 330,000 miles on his favorite bike before it was stolen. He has over 110,000 miles combined on a couple of other frames. With proper care, many bikes can go quite a ways. However, many can't. That favorite bike was a replacement for one that didn't withstand the test of time and the one that replaced the favorite required a bit of surgery after only 10,000 miles (seat-stay replacement; ain't steel real?).

He's only in his early 50s, so he better not become physically unable to ride before putting a couple hundred thousand more miles on our bikes, otherwise I have to find a new stoker for our tandem.

I-Like-To-Bike

440,000 miles by a man in his early 50's? 330,000 on one bike? Interesting. I would bet such bicycle mileage is QUITE a rarity for anyone who hasn't devoted his life to bike competitions, or running up mileage.

Roody

That would be more than 10,000 miles a year, probably. Unusual but not unheard of. It's not hard to rack up a couple hundred miles a week if a bike is you main transportation. A 20 mile commute would do it, and that isn't considered much by Commuting subforum standards.

I average about 5,000/year. Most of this is everyday city riding. I don't do any racing or touring, and only a very few longish road rides every year. My current commute is only 2 miles, so it's a little harder to get in the 100 miles I like to do every week.

AltheCyclist

Well, think about a bike's weight. Spoked rims, light material frames, cabling in plastic, etc. If you build a bike out of heavier-grade materials, it certainly would last longer. But, then you have some serious extra weight, hardly a great trade off.

I-Like-To-Bike

10,000 miles a year, for 40 years straight without any time off for raising a family or doing something else on occasion., starting when the hubby was in his teens. Obviously not unheard of, since we heard so from one of our posters. I'd say extremely unusual. Especially on one or two bicycles.

I haven't read on the Commuting subforum of anybody doing the same bike commute for 40 years in a row, let alone commuting 40 miles/day for any extended period of time.