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>> Avoid the spring rush with
this handy bike tune-up guide

WON’T JUDGE YOUR BIKE: Bicycletterie J.R

by SHANE SINNOTT

There are few things as out-and-out glorious as using a bicycle for transportation in a dense urban area like Montreal: it’s free, it’s fast, you get exercise and you do a favour for the environment. It’s such a no-brainer that you pretty much have to have a good story about a traumatic accident from your past—some serious knee skinning at the very least, or a close call with a vehicle travelling at reasonable speed—to get away with not doing it. Someday soon, this godawful winter will be on the way out, and you can start to look forward to biking to work every day instead of sitting in the overheated metro like an idiot.

Getting your bike back on the road can involve just a grin and a dollop of oil if you kept it inside all winter. It can also involve a store owner’s withering look and a suggestion to scrap it if you left it locked to a post at, like, Ste-Catherine and Fort. If you don’t feel comfortable assessing its safety yourself, bring it to a shop: a decent one should look at your bike for free to tell you if you need anything done.

To fix or replace?

Sez me, the best shop in the city for this is la Bicycletterie J.R. Cyclery, at 151 Rachel E. (www.labicycletteriejr.com), where the business is almost entirely tune-ups and repairs. I went there on a cold day a few weeks ago to speak with mechanic Jonathan Reed, who awaits the spring rush.

“Some people bring in bikes, and you wonder how they got here in the first place,” he says, speaking of the beaters left outside all winter. “You can expect to change the chain, cables. The freewheel if it’s bad.” All of that is going to cost you more than the standard $39.90, which would cover the basic adjustment and lubrication necessary to get a bike on the road at the beginning of the season.

Another thing you’re going to have to consider, according to Reed, is that, “It will always cost more to repair than to replace.” Bikes as a whole are worth less than the sum of their parts (which is why some asshole is always willing to steal your shitty bike), so if you’ve left your bike outside, and you like it, you might find yourself in the unenviable position of having to drop $80 on a bike that’s worth less.

There’s nothing wrong with that—“We don’t judge,” says Reed—just remember that if there’s anything more serious than some stiff cables, you’ll probably have to replace parts. The key to avoiding all this, if you haven’t guessed, is to keep your bike inside over the winter. If you’re short of space, la Bicycletterie J.R offers storage for $7–$10 month over the winter, with a tune-up in the spring.

Oil, wrench and Web site

Whether you left your bike outside or babied by the fireplace all winter, make this the year that you resolve to do a few basic adjustments yourself. Dayne Waterlow, a mechanic at Le Yéti (5190 St-Laurent; www.leyeti.ca), says, “If you have oil and a couple of wrenches, you can tune your bike up a few times during the year and save an expensive repair—it’s much more important to do regular tune-ups.”

A Web site like this—www.tinyurl.com/26hygd—can give you instructions for a basic tune-up, and if you want to go further, www.parktool.com has specific instructions for almost all repair procedures.

If you’re not quite up for it yet though, Le Yéti offers a few different “grades” of spring tune-ups, ranging from a basic adjustment for $15—“everyone should at least get this,” says Waterlow—to $55 for a more extensive check and a cleaning, which you’ll need if the bike was left outside.

Whatever you decide, do it early, because every other guy in the city is going to remember his bike at the same time—everyone I spoke to seemed in agreement that you’ll have to wait if you bring your bike in between April and June. So get on it: spring has almost sprung!

Do it yourself

Want to start fixing your bike yourself? You’ll save lots of time and money over the course of the year, and you don’t need much to get started.

Fixing Flats

This is the most common repair. Besides saving money, fixing a flat yourself takes 10 minutes, so you won’t have to wait or schlep your bike to a shop. All you need are a couple of screwdrivers, an adjustable wrench and a patch kit. There are a zillion sites on the Internet that will show you how, but here’s a video: www.tinyurl.com/24vhdk.

Fixing Wheel Weirdness

Most wheel wobbling can be solved by messing with the hub cones or the spoke tension, both of which require special wrenches, which are under $10. The adjustment can be time consuming, but is not difficult, and will make a world of difference.

Fixing It All

The standard text—the ol’ Torah/Bible/Koran of all this stuff—is Zinn and the Art of Road Bike Maintenance, by Lennard Zinn. There’s one for mountain bikes too, and they both contain everything you could ever want to do with bicycles, organized into beginner, intermediate, and expert steps. l

-SS

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