The Brotherhood Check In – When you ride a bike you sort of forget that it is in actual fact a machine and as such has moving parts and components that wear. You might ask why does this matter and what are they going on about? Well let us tell you.
When you ride these parts are under constant strain. You are changing gear constantly and breaking. all this puts stress on to your bike. the wearing down of parts such as chains and cogs happens so slowly that you might not even notice. However, it is important! VERY IMPORTANT to make sure that when these things wear out that they get fixed. That’s why before every major bike ride we do we get the bikes checked out. But it is also important to make sure that you have someone look at the bike that knows what they are doing because the last thing you need is for gears to start flipping or breaks to be catching when you are on a ride.
This year we were very lucky to have a friend of Simon’s (Who is a bike mechanic) to come over to look at all three bikes. And boy did we learn a thing or two!
FACT – Setup really is everything!!!
As we said before in a lot of cases the changes in your bikes wear are so subtle that you don’t notice. But they soon add up. With David going over the bikes we soon found plenty of things that needed to be looked at. But simple things can make all the difference. Here are some tips that we learnt;
- Check your tyre pressures! If you intend to do any ride make sure you have the right tyre pressures for the terrain that you will be on. we found that on all three bikes our tyres were too soft. this lead to there being more resistance on the road to slow you down.
- Breaks – everyone thinks that they know how to set up breaks. but the truth is that if you get it even slightly wrong then they simply won’t be as effective as they should be.
- Cables – Break and gear cables age. They can deteriorate and become stiff in the sleeving. better to check to see if they are running freely.
- Keep it clean! this isn’t just about the bike although it does help but also about the chain set and gears. if you over oil the chain you will do more damage than good. Grit will stick to the oil and will then wear against the moving parts this will cause them to wear out faster. Not good.
As you can see there were a lot of things that needed to be looked at and David Bell did a fantastic job of putting things right. Our advice would be however good you think you might be with your bike sometimes it’s better to pay and have a pro look at it for you. Peace of mind indeed.
David very kindly offered his services for free to us as a sort of sponsorship offer. to which we are very grateful. Please support us and his good work. you can find his contact details on his website – Currently being built or contact any of The Brotherhood if you would like contact details. The Web address is below;
www.dabprocycles.co.uk