Tuesday, January 6, 2015

bike maintenance tentative curriculum

I'm planning to teach a bike-maintenance course this spring at the New Brunswick Bike Exchange. It will be loosely based on the Park Tool School, which I took about a decade ago (it was long enough that I'm not worried about inadvertent copyright infringements).

I had thought about a four-week session, and it grew out into five weeks, and that still may not be enough (you'll notice there's not much in week 5; I expect material will leak into subsequent weeks). My basic curriculum is below:

Week 1
  • Riding
  • Cleaning
  • Books
    • Park Tool
    • Zinn Books
  • Basic tools
    • General Tools
      • Quality
      • Torque wrenches & torque
    • Bicycle-specific tools
      • Park Tool
    • Bike stands
      • Work stand
      • “Y”-stand
      • Car rack
      • Hang bike
  • Pedals
    • Types
    • Pedal Wrench
    • Backwards thread
  • Homework: (withheld)

Week 2:

  • Replace tire & tube
    • remove wheel
    • remove tire
    • remove tube
    • rim tape
    • patch tube
    • replace tube with partial inflation
    • replace tire
    • replace wheel
    • chain routing
  • Remove/replace chain
  • Homework: (withheld)

Week 3:

  • Cable & Housing
    • Brake vs. Derailleur
    • Internal Routing
    • Cutting cable & cable ends
    • Cutting housing & ferrules
  • Brakes
    • Replace pads
    • Adjust shoes
    • Toe-in
    • Squeal (cleaning, scraping pads)
    • Set cable
    • Fine Adjustment
  • Homework: (withheld)

Week 4:

  • Finish Brakes
  • Derailleurs
      • Rear
        • Chain Routing
        • Cable routing
        • Limit screws
        • “B” screw
        • Fine adjustment
      • Front
        • Cable Routing
        • Limit Screws
        • No fine adjustment
    • Homework: (withheld)

Week 5:

  • Finish Derailleurs
  • Wheels
    • Spoke-hub system
    • Cross
    • Truing
    • Remove cogset

For books, I'm recommending Zinn & the Art of Mountain-Bike Maintenance or Zinn & the Art of Road Bike Maintenance (the Park Tool book may be good, but I haven't seen it).  I'm posting this to see if there's interest, and also to see if there are suggestions about topics I should cover or leave out (although I reserve the right to completely ignore any suggestions). What do youse think?

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