We held our first ever ladies maintenance evening on Thursday at Mitchell Cycles, who excelled themselves, putting on a fantastic event. It was extremely informative and great fun, so we hope to hold more in future. Here’s a little about what we got up to.
12 ladies attended the event, all eager to learn more about their bikes and how to deal with trailside mechanicals, to get themselves going again. We had a fantastic welcome from our hosts, who had laid on all manner of cakes and drinks for us in the shop’s new enlarged workshop. I’ll end up saying this several times, but massive thanks to Dave, Martin, Andy and Janice from Mitchell Cycles for hosting the event and doing such an amazing job!
We began with introductions for our 2 instructors – Dave and Martin.
Dave is Mitchell’s head mechanic and manager of Team Mitchell Cycles, the shop’s downhill race team.
Martin is another of the shop mechanics and a racer on the team.
We began with the basics to carry with you on a ride – what you need to fix your bike enough to get you home most of the time.
- A multi tool
- A pump
- Tyre levers
- Puncture repair kit
- A spare inner tube
- A chain connecting link (magic link)
Then we began our first repair – fixing a puncture. Dave took us through all the steps to fix a puncture, from removing the tyre, locating the hole in the tube, to patching it (or when it was unrepairable replacing it) and refitting the tyre. Then we all had a go!
After repairing punctures, Dave moved on to talk about tubeless setups. After going through the pros and cons, he then demonstrated a tubeless conversion for us. The ladies had some great questions on this and the whole atmosphere made it very easy to ask all the questions we wanted to. Although after watching the demonstration, a few of us decided to book our wheels in to let Dave do it for us!
Next up was the anatomy of a bike, naming the parts and their functions. This was really useful and at just the right level, so we knew what he was referring to later, without being blinded with technical terms.
We then moved onto to fixing a chain. Dave cut a chain as though it had broken and then took us through removing the damaged link with a multi tool. Then he showed how thread the chain correctly back through the frame and derailleurs and how to use a magic link to join it back up.
After that Janice surprised us a full buffet for half time snacks! (Thank you Janice!)
We resumed with a bike setup demonstration, setting the correct sag on the suspension by altering the air pressure and the compression settings to get the right amount of “bounce”.
Dave then demonstrated this on Lindsay’s bike, also showing the other pre-ride checks, such as loose cables, handlebar setup and brakes. We went through how to check if the pads needed replacing and dealing with squeaky brakes.
Finally we discussed saddles and all the adjustments (forward and back, up and down) and the differences they make. To finish we had a Q&A session and a chance to look at the display of clothing, gloves, helmets, multi tools and other great stuff! And to top it all, we were each given a great goodie bag by Mitchell’s 😊
Again we want to thank Mitchell Cycles for having us and putting on such an informative and fun evening. All the ladies learned a great deal and have given great feedback on the event and Mitchell Cycles.