Listings, the Before and After: Cleaning & Servicing

Bike servicing made easy, looks simple doesn’t it… So why does it more often than not look like this…

Do you have a cloth and a can of oil? Got an old tooth brush, better a brass one though!

Cleaning goes a long way to making a bike rideable and pleasantly doing so, but a dirty bike falls short and grinds it’s way around lacking in stopping power and pulling efficiency too, you’ll put more power in to move a dirty bike. Over zelouly using a Hose or Jetwash will only aid corrosions access to those impossible to see areas inside your bearings driving in dirt whilst it washes out your grease.

Before… (or as listed)

We quite often list bikes on ebay and our website before we’ve even done more than a cursey clean, sometimes not even that and this is one of those examples.

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Here’s a list of typical faux pas of your Halfords Apollo specials, this also applies to most bikes built from a box at home, this is only going of whats in front of me with this bike so it’s not comprehensive but actually quite minimal.

• No Grease used, so a rusty seatpost / stem and pedals that would’ve either rusted in place but most likely fallen out as loose…
• Loose B/B & Headset bearings, these are not fully adjusted often from the factory and also require bedding in (ergo your 6 week service)…
• Stiff Brakes due to low manufacturing tolerances and corrosion due to no grease!
• Little to no oil on the chain, it’s got nothing left of the factory oil.

This one sold locally so we treated it to the service it doesn’t deserve, and just started with a wire brush, slowly addressing the debris, dirt and corrosion goes a long way we came across most problems you’ll regularly see above, the adjustments in all honesty were not as bad as they could be.

After Servicing

Find out about our service prices here

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Servicing starts with a good clean and that’s half the battle with bikes, they’ve got so many angles dirt can get in and stop everything running smoothly, now it’s looking good it runs better too.
Knocking noises dealt with in simple adjustments, and stiff brakes aided with modifications to the finish, the bike’s sounding solid again like it should do.