UKC

Me & a friend are interested in doing a bike maintenance course. We're both quite handy with DIY around the house & stuff, but getting into road biking, so feel we should get ourselves handy with a bit of bike DIY. We could probably both mend a puncture (but tend to carry a spare inner tube instead), but things like chains, gears, brakes, headsets, brackets etc, currently elude us. Learning a few tricks and the tools and gotchas from the pros would be useful and having a day out in somewhere like the Lakes would be sociable and fun. Cyclewise (of Whinlatter and elsewhere) offer one e.g.
https://www.cyclewise.co.uk/course/9-bike-maintenance-beginners-course
but does anyone have any recommendations for a similar day-long beginngers' level course, preferably in the north of England (roughly Lake District to Newcastle region).
TIA
Allan

In reply to yorkshire_lad2:

I know Evans do courses, if there's one near there, or try a local cycle co-op, as they'll have all the tools and expertise you need for a few quid to hire a work station and tools for a couple of hours.

In reply to yorkshire_lad2:

I don't know if it's a national initiative but there's an organisation called The Bike Station where I believe you can take your bike along to a local workshop, hire tools and get advice from bike mechanics all for a nominal fee. It's to encourage us punters to tackle bike maintenance and repair jobs ourselves. They also sell refurbished bikes they have been donated and repaired. I've not tried them out myself but I probably will quite soon.

In reply to yorkshire_lad2:

Nip down to my house next Saturday, pay me £100 and I'll show you how to change a tyre, clean the chain and adjust the brakes. The coffee is complimentary.

In reply to yorkshire_lad2:
Edinburgh Bicycle Cooperative do several different courses/classes for different sets of skills, from total beginner stuff to wheel building sessions. They're really good, got several mates who've done them in different branches. There are branches in Newcastle and Leeds, check here for what classes they offer:
https://www.edinburghbicycle.com/classes.html
and here's the link for dates / availability:
https://www.edinburghbicycle.com/info/cycle-maintenance-and-wheel-building-...

I taught myself a lot of stuff from Lennard Zinn's "Zinn & the Art of Bike Maintenance" – coupled with some youtube videos to see it being done, I found I could get my head around what's needed at each stage from his very precise descriptions, and so long as any bolts are greased and you don't over-torque anything it's possible to undo-it-and-have-another-go – few things are a one-way street, you can back up and try again... But yeah, a class means you have a chance to learn without having to get any new tools – chain whip, bottom-bracket tools, crank puller, cassette lock-ring etc.

In reply to joeruckus:


Likewise, and I'm not especially handy. Of course different people learn better in different environments, but I've not found anything too daunting, short of not wanting to shell out too much money. It seems that the tools you use least are the most expensive - head-set press (made own), BB reamer (used local shop), truing stand (used frame plus paper with lines drawn on) and spoke tension gauge thingy (local shop again).