Bike Maintenance

Remember when every bike had a shoe lace tied loosely around the front and rear axle? That was maintenance. The lace rubbed on the axle to keep it shiny and free of oil and dust. This was bike technology that was handed down from boy to boy. Every once in a while, we would run across a kid who didn't know the shoe lace trick and he had dirt-caked axles. Not cool, like us.

Bike maintenance really was something a kid could do, often leading to more complex maintenance later in life. The tools were pretty basic - just two wrenches. One was the flat, multi-holed one which had a hole that fit every possible nut on the bike and the second was c-shaped spanner with a short hook on the end that was used to tighten the steering tube and the pedal crank tube. These tubes had large nuts which had two notches at 180 degrees from each other into which the hook of the wrench fit. If a kid was really into bikes, he also had a small wrench for tightening spokes (the process which also straightened the rim, if slightly bent) and a pair of tire spoons for taking the tire off the rim to patch a tube. 

When I was a kid, all cars had inner tubes in their tires so a lot of homes had tube patching kits anyway. You know, the cardboard tube with a screw-off lid that was like a mini cheese grater used for roughing up the rubber so the glue would stick. The tube also held a tube of glue and patches of varying sizes. I can still remember the aroma of that glue and I don't remember anybody trying to get high. For a period of time there were vulcanizing patches out there that came with a special clamp which held the patch (in a tiny pan) over the hole in the tube. Then you used a match to light the inflammables on the patch which then melted the patch to the tube. When cool, the tiny pan could be lifted off. 

There was an Esso Station on the corner of Mundy and Austin where we went to use the air hose. Faster than pumping by hand and our hand pumps always seemed to be broken. I can't remember the name of the Esso owner anymore but I do remember getting chased out of there when we blew up a tire with a loud bang. He was a fairly large man who always wore a mechanics beany and his missus came out to watch the guy chase us off the property. I suppose we gave a little lip but it wasn't in our interest to be very mouthy as everybody knew where everybody lived and we were around the station a lot.

Occasionally I took the axles and pedal crank apart and cleaned the bearings. In those days the bearings were little ball bearings about 3/16" or about 2 mm in diameter. If you weren't careful, they would go bouncing all over the floor and then you had to crawl around and find them all. It wouldn't work if one was missing. When everything was

back together, then the oil was dropped in through a little spring loaded door on the axle tube.

If you could handle an axle r & r on a bike, then you could do anything mechanical later in life. It's all just more of the same. Wasn't it bike mechanics that first flew?