Blog entries from August, 2011

For the first seven months of this year I averaged riding my bicycle to work once a fortnight. In the five working days of August so far, I have ridden four of them. But at a price, though not necessarily a new price.

For a long time I have known that it was time to replace the chain, cluster and at least two chainrings. For longer than that I have been needing to replace the rear disc brake. The rear tyre is also wearing down so that should be replaced, and it is probably also time for new brake pads (at least on the rear with the new disc).

This all adds up, but don’t really have an idea of what the total would be and it is part of a balancing act between replacing parts on the current bike, or to simply buy a new bike. I have obviously been deferring that decision.

Now, while riding home on Friday night, probably becuase I hadn’t been maintaining the chain enough, I had some slight chain suck that slightly bent the front derailleur. It still worked, but ended up with unexpected changes when at the extremes on the rear. Not good.

Today I made some time to have a look and while I had the chain off the bike for cleaning I strategically applied a pair of pliers to bend the derailleur back into approximate shape. It should do.

But this adds another item to the above list, an item that you don’t normally replace due to normal wear and tear. I now need to think about the repair vs new bike question.