Maintenance courses London,

[Wally]

preferably S/W or Central. Anyone know of any? Thanks.

 

[Flyingfox]

Welcome Wally, there are plenty of maintenance courses in and around London, some councils even subsidise them. If you live or work in the City of London they give big subsidies. Check out www.cycletraining.co.uk or your local council's website for details.

 

[Wally]

Thanks for that.

 

[just4fun]

cheers FF thanks a really useful link

 

[PrettyboyTim]

It's worth having a look at The London School of Cycling. They offer a basic maintenance course, although I mailed them to ask if they had anything more intermediate (as I'm already fine fixing punctures, cleaning and lubicating a chain, adjusting brakes etc). I received a mail back from a nice fellah called Patrick who runs one-to-one maintenance courses at the BikeFix workshop in WC1, after the shop has closed. We did a two-hour session on evening covering things like the replacement of bearings and the basics of truing a wheel. It was very useful and at the time cost me £25/hr.

 

[joolsybools]

Check out some of the LCC workshops http://www.lcc.org.uk/index.asp?PageID=55

 

[Greenbank]

Buy a book on bike maintenance (search for recommendations).
Buy a cheap bike (£5 on eBay, anything will do).
Buy a cheap toolkit like the Lidl ones (£20).
Take cheap bike to bits.
Look at the bits you've disassembled. Refer to maintenance book for explanations and diagrams.
Put it all back together after cleaning, lubing, fixing.
Sell bike on eBay (for a minimum of £5).

Repeat with another bike of a different style and/or different components.

Occasionally buy a specialist tool and slowly build up a collection.

Slowly build up knowledge of how stuff works and how to disassemble/reassemble stuff.