7 ms·

Bikes tend to degrade slowly over time if you don't do regular maintenance. Most people don't notice the slow decline until it's quite bad when suddenly it feel

Bikes tend to degrade slowly over time if you don't do regular maintenance. Most people don't notice the slow decline until it's quite bad when suddenly it feels like an unreliable POS. Giving people who are just a little frustrated with their bike might go a long way to helping keep people from getting to that point at least once.

cultus 7y ago
This doesn't get enough attention in cycling promotion. One of the absolute biggest reasons that people aren't on their bikes is maintenance. Wheels go out of true, shifting gets wonky, and it starts to look like an unreliable form of transport. Sturdier commuter bikes help a lot with this, but every commuter seems to think they need a bike with super-light wheels and a thin, weak 12-speed chain.
- ogre_codes 7y ago
  One of the reasons I think people like the bike share programs. The bikes are burly and slow, but they get the maintenance they need where they usually don't end up truly horrible.
  - dmoy 7y ago
    I guess this depends on the bike share program. I've definitely ridden my share of bike share bikes that were in very bad shape (and I have a fairly high tolerance for junkers). The bike share program in question shut down and isn't available in my area anymore, so maybe that was just because they were cutting back.
    - dmurray 7y ago
      The docked bikes in my city have way better build quality and maintenance standards than the undocked ones. They're both heavy but the undocked ones have chains falling off, broken shifters, etc. I expect it makes sense that these get less investment as they are easier to steal.
  - loeg 7y ago
    In my experience they mostly don't get maintenance; they're just built extremely cheaply and treated as disposable. Various parts that are easy to break (derailleurs) are elided by using Internally-Geared Hubs (IGH). The wheels are non-pneumatic and just a solid piece of rubber, so they never go flat.
    - lostlogin 7y ago
      > Internally-Geared Hubs (IGH) Just so good. I wish they had more gears. My older one has 8, and I see more on newer ones but not a lot.
    - akgerber 7y ago
      Dockless bikeshare bikes are often built as you describe. Docked bikeshare (as mostly operated by Lyft in the US, formerly Motivate/Alta) generally uses bikes built similarly to high-quality Dutch city bikes and maintains them.
      - loeg 7y ago
        Docked bikeshare is pretty useless in my experience, so despite the lower quality bikes I prefer the dockless model.
- adwww 7y ago
  > One of the absolute biggest reasons that people aren't on their bikes is maintenance I wish that was the case. The reason people are not on their bikes is because the roads are scary and we don't have nearly enough dedicated bike infrastructure. (By "we" I mean the entire world with just a handful of European exceptions.)
  - zdragnar 7y ago
    Europe also has a very temperate climate compared to much of the world. My area many years goes from -40 to over 100F (or 38 if you prefer c). Public and private enclosed transportation must accommodate 100% of the population, because for half the year commuting by bike is fundamentally unsafe" whether by frostbite or heat stroke.
- loeg 7y ago
  12-speed chains are exclusive to the high end MTB space; no commuter bike is going to have that. Even high end road is still mostly on 11-speed. They're also not any weaker than wider chains: https://bikerumor.com/2013/02/19/bikerumor-shimano-chainwear-challenge-the-results/ https://bikerumor.com/2013/02/19/bikerumor-shimano-chainwear...
- akgerber 7y ago
  One challenge for the sturdy commuter bike in the US is that cities are built around the car and commute distances are large, rewarding faster bikes. But reliability for commuters is certainly a big part of the recent boom in single-speed road bikes, which have thicker chains, dishless wheels, and no shifter to fail.
- karatestomp 7y ago
  This is the only reason I don't ride anymore. I don't get why my complex car full of caustic liquids and burning them to drive a bunch of parts super fast can go tens of thousands of miles with nothing but oil changes and nothing breaks or doesn't work almost-like-new unless I run over a nail, but bikes? Ugh. Every time I go to get on it, something's broken. Flat tires constantly. Changing them sucks and takes forever (rear one, mostly). All the gear combos that ought to work never quite actually seem to. Something'll come loose during the ride, creating a safety hazard. And so on. Give me a bike that doesn't break all the time or at least makes it super-easy and super-fast to fix any parts that do, and doesn't cost like $1,000 (why the actual hell should a decent one cost 1/20th as much as a lower-end car?! Think about what goes into both! How does that make any sense? 1/100 seems more reasonable, and for one that does not suck just like the $20,000 car probably does not suck remotely the same way a low-end bike does or it'd get lemon law'd away) and I'll go back to bike riding.
  - michaelt 7y ago
    > Give me a bike that doesn't break all the time What you need is a 'commuter bike' with an aluminium frame, Shimano Nexus 8-speed hub gear and Schwalbe Marathon Plus tyres. Should cost less than $500. You'll need to pump up the tyres every 3 months, and have a bike shop service it every 2000 miles or so. But I've been riding this configuration twice a day for 5 years and had maybe 3 punctures in that time and no problems more severe than that.
    - Too 7y ago
      Make sure to get disc brakes also! Preferably hydraulic but not necessary if you are on a budget. Those old caliper brakes need constant replacement, constant adjustment, replacing them requires even more calibration, and tiniest little wobble in your wheel or dent in your rim will make the brake very erratic and wear quickly. I get bad shivers down my spine every time i see such brakes, knowing how much time and frustration I've wasted on maintaining them in the past. Quality of bike components have gone up past decades so don't be hung up on old experiences. Build quality matters a lot so make sure to get a reputable brand also, not something from the corner of the hardware store, doesn't have to be their top of the line model though, something like 400-800€ should give you a good one.
- analog31 7y ago
  They don't. The days when competitive / sportive cycling drove the designs of bikes sold to casual riders have faded into the past. The most widely sold bikes in the US are "hybrids," mountain bikes, and cruisers. Within the mountain bike category, the most popular ones are relatively simplistic and are mainly used on pavement or light trails. Those are all relatively sturdy bikes with reasonably wide tires. Bikes that are specifically sold for "commuting" sell poorly, even among commuters, for reasons that I don't fully understand. I live in a relatively bike friendly town, on a street that's designated as a bike thoroughfare, and I commute by bike myself, and I'm curious about bikes. So I make a mental note of what people are riding. The most common type of commuter bike is "whatever was in the garage," often left over from college or some past market fad. The people I talk to about cycling tend to do remarkably little maintenance. Most decent consumer bikes are sold with puncture resistant tires these days, which are a great improvement. Now, from my observation (my own bikes, helping friends, volunteering for bike charity), bikes that go out of whack frequently, were usually built out of whack. Low end bikes that are shipped from the manufacturer to the retailer with little or no expert intervention often have poorly adjusted spokes and bearings, sometimes missing lubrication, sometimes parts installed backwards, and so forth. This is unacceptable, but it happens. An initial tune-up that includes bringing the spokes up to proper tension, and adjusting / lubricating the bearings, will turn many the crappy bike into an OK bike. I don't believe a zero-maintenance bike exists yet, though a couple of mine are close. One is single speed with a coaster brake. I live in a relatively flat town. I also bought a new bike a few years ago for about 500 bucks, that has been maintenance free except for a puncture or two, and normal periodic adjustment of the brakes due to pad wear. It's a hybrid with 9 speeds, wide tires, and cable operated disc brakes. I love it. But for this reason, I still recommend that a cyclist -- casual or enthusiast -- needs to develop basic maintenance skills. Simply being on the lookout for problems is often enough to catch problems before they progress beyond something just needing to be tightened.
- ogre_codes 7y ago
  If your bike chain breaks and you aren't hammering your bike on mountain bike trails, you've seriously neglected that bike for a long long time. Doesn't matter if it's 12 speed, 11 speed, whatever, bike chains are durable and last for years. Generally they are more likely to freeze up from rust and neglect than break. Clean the chain every few weeks and change it ~yearly (or every 2000 miles or so) and unless you are doing some burly stuff with your bike, it's not going to give you trouble. Likewise wheels, even lightweight wheels aren't likely to fail on a commuter bike unless it's left in the weather. The bigger danger to bikes is crappy builds and cheap-ass parts. A well made lightweight wheel is going to last 10 times longer than a cheap wheel. If you bought your bike at Walmart, if your chain breaks it's because it's more likely it's because the bike was badly out of tune when you bought it.
  - cultus 7y ago
    Wheel rims are aluminum, and spokes are stainless. They don't rust. Low spoke-count wheels are weaker and will go out of true faster, especially on potholed roads and with panniers.
vadansky 7y ago
Now you have me worried about what maintance I should be doing. Going to a bike shop once a year at the start of summer seems to have been enough for me. After a quick google search I got crazy suggestions that I should be changing my cables every 6 months.
- Phlogistique 7y ago
  If you are going to a bike shop once a year for maintenance, then you are doing the maintenance you should be doing. But many people have old bikes with rusty brakes, non-working gearing, and just go on using them until they fall apart. Also, different bikes require different levels of maintenance. And your riding style and frequency of use affects the speed of wear.
- sybercecurity 7y ago
  Really depends on how much riding you do and the components on the bike. Back when I was younger and more fit and riding 100+ miles a week I did a lot of maintenance. Some of it was necessary like adjusting brake pads, cables that developed slack, etc. Some of it probably wasn't but gave me an excuse to tinker. Now I'm riding less, I find I don't need to do as much except keep the chain clean and tires inflated. I still check cables, chain slack, and stuff but they tend to need less work now.
- wtallis 7y ago
  If you commute by bicycle every day rain or shine, then changing the cables twice a year might not be as crazy as it sounds. I doubt that's enough time for them to rust to the point of being in danger of breaking, but it probably is enough time for them to collect enough grit to interfere with smooth shifting and braking. Though a lot of that will depend on how exposed the cables are on your particular bike.
- loeg 7y ago
  Once a year is plenty unless you're having unexpected failures or a poor experience. If you're riding enough to go through parts faster than that, you'd know it.
- thirdsun 7y ago
loeg 7y ago
And this is also true of cars, except the maintenance and parts on cars are much more expensive. Probably most Americans don't think much about this much as they drive and service their cars regularly.
CalRobert 7y ago
I have a problem with spokes getting loose myself. Would love tuffwheels but for adult bikes.

cultus 7y ago

This doesn't get enough attention in cycling promotion. One of the absolute biggest reasons that people aren't on their bikes is maintenance. Wheels go out of true, shifting gets wonky, and it starts to look like an unreliable form of transport. Sturdier commuter bikes help a lot with this, but every commuter seems to think they need a bike with super-light wheels and a thin, weak 12-speed chain.

ogre_codes 7y ago
One of the reasons I think people like the bike share programs. The bikes are burly and slow, but they get the maintenance they need where they usually don't end up truly horrible.
- dmoy 7y ago
  I guess this depends on the bike share program. I've definitely ridden my share of bike share bikes that were in very bad shape (and I have a fairly high tolerance for junkers). The bike share program in question shut down and isn't available in my area anymore, so maybe that was just because they were cutting back.
  - dmurray 7y ago
    The docked bikes in my city have way better build quality and maintenance standards than the undocked ones. They're both heavy but the undocked ones have chains falling off, broken shifters, etc. I expect it makes sense that these get less investment as they are easier to steal.
- loeg 7y ago
  In my experience they mostly don't get maintenance; they're just built extremely cheaply and treated as disposable. Various parts that are easy to break (derailleurs) are elided by using Internally-Geared Hubs (IGH). The wheels are non-pneumatic and just a solid piece of rubber, so they never go flat.
  - lostlogin 7y ago
    > Internally-Geared Hubs (IGH) Just so good. I wish they had more gears. My older one has 8, and I see more on newer ones but not a lot.
  - akgerber 7y ago
    Dockless bikeshare bikes are often built as you describe. Docked bikeshare (as mostly operated by Lyft in the US, formerly Motivate/Alta) generally uses bikes built similarly to high-quality Dutch city bikes and maintains them.
    - loeg 7y ago
      Docked bikeshare is pretty useless in my experience, so despite the lower quality bikes I prefer the dockless model.
adwww 7y ago
> One of the absolute biggest reasons that people aren't on their bikes is maintenance I wish that was the case. The reason people are not on their bikes is because the roads are scary and we don't have nearly enough dedicated bike infrastructure. (By "we" I mean the entire world with just a handful of European exceptions.)
- zdragnar 7y ago
  Europe also has a very temperate climate compared to much of the world. My area many years goes from -40 to over 100F (or 38 if you prefer c). Public and private enclosed transportation must accommodate 100% of the population, because for half the year commuting by bike is fundamentally unsafe" whether by frostbite or heat stroke.
loeg 7y ago
12-speed chains are exclusive to the high end MTB space; no commuter bike is going to have that. Even high end road is still mostly on 11-speed. They're also not any weaker than wider chains: https://bikerumor.com/2013/02/19/bikerumor-shimano-chainwear-challenge-the-results/ https://bikerumor.com/2013/02/19/bikerumor-shimano-chainwear...
akgerber 7y ago
One challenge for the sturdy commuter bike in the US is that cities are built around the car and commute distances are large, rewarding faster bikes. But reliability for commuters is certainly a big part of the recent boom in single-speed road bikes, which have thicker chains, dishless wheels, and no shifter to fail.
karatestomp 7y ago
This is the only reason I don't ride anymore. I don't get why my complex car full of caustic liquids and burning them to drive a bunch of parts super fast can go tens of thousands of miles with nothing but oil changes and nothing breaks or doesn't work almost-like-new unless I run over a nail, but bikes? Ugh. Every time I go to get on it, something's broken. Flat tires constantly. Changing them sucks and takes forever (rear one, mostly). All the gear combos that ought to work never quite actually seem to. Something'll come loose during the ride, creating a safety hazard. And so on. Give me a bike that doesn't break all the time or at least makes it super-easy and super-fast to fix any parts that do, and doesn't cost like $1,000 (why the actual hell should a decent one cost 1/20th as much as a lower-end car?! Think about what goes into both! How does that make any sense? 1/100 seems more reasonable, and for one that does not suck just like the $20,000 car probably does not suck remotely the same way a low-end bike does or it'd get lemon law'd away) and I'll go back to bike riding.
- michaelt 7y ago
  > Give me a bike that doesn't break all the time What you need is a 'commuter bike' with an aluminium frame, Shimano Nexus 8-speed hub gear and Schwalbe Marathon Plus tyres. Should cost less than $500. You'll need to pump up the tyres every 3 months, and have a bike shop service it every 2000 miles or so. But I've been riding this configuration twice a day for 5 years and had maybe 3 punctures in that time and no problems more severe than that.
  - Too 7y ago
    Make sure to get disc brakes also! Preferably hydraulic but not necessary if you are on a budget. Those old caliper brakes need constant replacement, constant adjustment, replacing them requires even more calibration, and tiniest little wobble in your wheel or dent in your rim will make the brake very erratic and wear quickly. I get bad shivers down my spine every time i see such brakes, knowing how much time and frustration I've wasted on maintaining them in the past. Quality of bike components have gone up past decades so don't be hung up on old experiences. Build quality matters a lot so make sure to get a reputable brand also, not something from the corner of the hardware store, doesn't have to be their top of the line model though, something like 400-800€ should give you a good one.
analog31 7y ago
They don't. The days when competitive / sportive cycling drove the designs of bikes sold to casual riders have faded into the past. The most widely sold bikes in the US are "hybrids," mountain bikes, and cruisers. Within the mountain bike category, the most popular ones are relatively simplistic and are mainly used on pavement or light trails. Those are all relatively sturdy bikes with reasonably wide tires. Bikes that are specifically sold for "commuting" sell poorly, even among commuters, for reasons that I don't fully understand. I live in a relatively bike friendly town, on a street that's designated as a bike thoroughfare, and I commute by bike myself, and I'm curious about bikes. So I make a mental note of what people are riding. The most common type of commuter bike is "whatever was in the garage," often left over from college or some past market fad. The people I talk to about cycling tend to do remarkably little maintenance. Most decent consumer bikes are sold with puncture resistant tires these days, which are a great improvement. Now, from my observation (my own bikes, helping friends, volunteering for bike charity), bikes that go out of whack frequently, were usually built out of whack. Low end bikes that are shipped from the manufacturer to the retailer with little or no expert intervention often have poorly adjusted spokes and bearings, sometimes missing lubrication, sometimes parts installed backwards, and so forth. This is unacceptable, but it happens. An initial tune-up that includes bringing the spokes up to proper tension, and adjusting / lubricating the bearings, will turn many the crappy bike into an OK bike. I don't believe a zero-maintenance bike exists yet, though a couple of mine are close. One is single speed with a coaster brake. I live in a relatively flat town. I also bought a new bike a few years ago for about 500 bucks, that has been maintenance free except for a puncture or two, and normal periodic adjustment of the brakes due to pad wear. It's a hybrid with 9 speeds, wide tires, and cable operated disc brakes. I love it. But for this reason, I still recommend that a cyclist -- casual or enthusiast -- needs to develop basic maintenance skills. Simply being on the lookout for problems is often enough to catch problems before they progress beyond something just needing to be tightened.
ogre_codes 7y ago
If your bike chain breaks and you aren't hammering your bike on mountain bike trails, you've seriously neglected that bike for a long long time. Doesn't matter if it's 12 speed, 11 speed, whatever, bike chains are durable and last for years. Generally they are more likely to freeze up from rust and neglect than break. Clean the chain every few weeks and change it ~yearly (or every 2000 miles or so) and unless you are doing some burly stuff with your bike, it's not going to give you trouble. Likewise wheels, even lightweight wheels aren't likely to fail on a commuter bike unless it's left in the weather. The bigger danger to bikes is crappy builds and cheap-ass parts. A well made lightweight wheel is going to last 10 times longer than a cheap wheel. If you bought your bike at Walmart, if your chain breaks it's because it's more likely it's because the bike was badly out of tune when you bought it.
- cultus 7y ago
  Wheel rims are aluminum, and spokes are stainless. They don't rust. Low spoke-count wheels are weaker and will go out of true faster, especially on potholed roads and with panniers.

vadansky 7y ago

Now you have me worried about what maintance I should be doing. Going to a bike shop once a year at the start of summer seems to have been enough for me. After a quick google search I got crazy suggestions that I should be changing my cables every 6 months.

Phlogistique 7y ago
If you are going to a bike shop once a year for maintenance, then you are doing the maintenance you should be doing. But many people have old bikes with rusty brakes, non-working gearing, and just go on using them until they fall apart. Also, different bikes require different levels of maintenance. And your riding style and frequency of use affects the speed of wear.
sybercecurity 7y ago
Really depends on how much riding you do and the components on the bike. Back when I was younger and more fit and riding 100+ miles a week I did a lot of maintenance. Some of it was necessary like adjusting brake pads, cables that developed slack, etc. Some of it probably wasn't but gave me an excuse to tinker. Now I'm riding less, I find I don't need to do as much except keep the chain clean and tires inflated. I still check cables, chain slack, and stuff but they tend to need less work now.
wtallis 7y ago
If you commute by bicycle every day rain or shine, then changing the cables twice a year might not be as crazy as it sounds. I doubt that's enough time for them to rust to the point of being in danger of breaking, but it probably is enough time for them to collect enough grit to interfere with smooth shifting and braking. Though a lot of that will depend on how exposed the cables are on your particular bike.
loeg 7y ago
Once a year is plenty unless you're having unexpected failures or a poor experience. If you're riding enough to go through parts faster than that, you'd know it.
thirdsun 7y ago

loeg 7y ago

And this is also true of cars, except the maintenance and parts on cars are much more expensive. Probably most Americans don't think much about this much as they drive and service their cars regularly.

CalRobert 7y ago

I have a problem with spokes getting loose myself. Would love tuffwheels but for adult bikes.