United Bicycle Institute

So I'm taking Professional Shop Operation and Mechanics at the United Bicycle Institute in Portland Oregon and its been awesome so far. Out of my other classmates I have the most experience in bike mechanics which I'm a little disappointed about because I was hoping the class would be filled with more experienced mechanics who I could learn tricks and tips from. Its cool seeing how all my classmates ended up at UBI, there a people there who are staring their own shops, people who are going to do cross country rides and want to learn how to keep their bikes in tip top shape, frame builders, etc.

That being said the teachers are amazing, we are going over a lot of procedures I'm already familiar with however I'm learning a lot about industry standards and little tricks and tips on how to work better and faster as a mechanic.

Its only day four of class today but I'm going to continue to update this entry til class is over. So heres what I've done so far...

Day 1:
Learning to use measuring tool such as calipers and torque wrenches. We also prepared hub to build wheels with the next day.

Day 2: Wheel building. We had to build a set of wheels with an margin of error less than 1mm.



Day 3: Tires, tubes, pedals, BBs, and cranks. I learned a lot about different standards of BBs throughout the history of bikes, as well as the design trends that to the modern BB and cranks to where they are today. In talking about tires and tubes I learned about how tires are built, so now I can better select tires for my bikes/ help other select tires for their bikes.

Day 4: The Drive train. We took apart and serviced a lot of different hubs... Oh and I learned about cartridge bearings and how to replace a freehub body.



Pictured above is a Chris King hub, which is one of the more expensive hubs on the market right now because of their quality, colored anodizing, and its trademark "angry bee" sound it makes when coasting. Anyway I took one apart.

Day 5: Derailleurs... Yeah... Pretty simple. We learned to attach and set up Shimano and SRAM derailleurs... Oh! Cool new tool! In addition to derailleur hanger straiteners there are drop out straiteners! Pretty cool stuff but they really only work on steel frames cause carbon is too brittle, aluminum likes to bend too much and Ti has memory.

Day 6: Breaks! Nothing too special, tomorrow we bleed hydraulic disc breaks... Oh but one cool thing that I may take on as a project at Hampshire is making mounts to display different types of breaks like they did today at UBI. Another possible project would be to make some partial assemblies for the bike maintenance class at Hampshire, but I dont know where they would get stored.

Day 7: Head sets, nothing special.

Day 8: I took apart a fork! Today was really the first day I learned any new material and was super refreshing. So yeah I took apart a fork and learned about how carbon fiber bikes are assembled! Also today I didnt have a bench partner (Check out our sweet benches by the way)



and I thrived alone. One of my classmates/housemates suggested that I ask the teachers for a letter of recommendation but I'm not sure how to go about doing that so I'll figure that bit out later.

Day 9: Bicycle overhaul. We took apart the road bikes and reassembled them. I finished first and then helped others with theirs. I took the extra time to match up logos and on the cassette lined up all the 10S on the spacers. Also on all my end caps I put XXX. Yeah... It was a good day. Here are some pictures...




Day 10: Shop stuff and the test. I think I did well on the test, only time will tell. As for the shop stuff, I dont want to own my own bike shop.