Maintenance diary?

People discussing ways to log miles (which doesn't much interest me) makes
me wonder if any of you log your bike maintenance. I was thinking this could
be very helpful. I'd want to track how often I replace the chain, various
cogs, tires, and so on, and what brands and models I bought. It'd be nice to
track how often I have the bike professionally tuned. It might be more
tedious, considering how often I do it, but tracking my own cleaning and
maintenance might be helpful, too.

Do any of you do this?

--
Warm Regards,

Claire Petersky
Please replace earthlink for mouse-potato and .net for .com

Home of the meditative cyclist:
http://home.earthlink.net/~cpetersky/Welcome.htm

Books just wanna be FREE! See what I mean at:
http://bookcrossing.com/friend/Cpetersky
My bookshelf: http://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/Cpetersky

"To forgive is to set the prisoner free and then discover the prisoner
was you."

My CycliStats software tracks bike maintenance (in addition to logging rides
and your personal health stats).

When you log things like tires, chains, etc. you can easily see how much
time and distance has been accumulated on them. You can also enter an
estimated life for maintenance items, and it will warn you when you are
getting near to the end of the expected life. This page shows a screen shot
illustrating the maintenance featu
http://www.shastasoftware.com/CycliS...aintenance.htm

You can try it for free for 45 days by downloading the fully functional
trial version from the website.

--
~_-*
....G/ \G
http://www.CycliStats.com
CycliStats - Software for Cyclists

"Claire Petersky" wrote in message
news:Et5Mb.20439$5V2.34095@attbi_s53...
People discussing ways to log miles (which doesn't much interest me) makes
me wonder if any of you log your bike maintenance. I was thinking this
could
be very helpful. I'd want to track how often I replace the chain, various
cogs, tires, and so on, and what brands and models I bought. It'd be nice
to
track how often I have the bike professionally tuned. It might be more
tedious, considering how often I do it, but tracking my own cleaning and
maintenance might be helpful, too.

Do any of you do this?

--
Warm Regards,

Claire Petersky
Please replace earthlink for mouse-potato and .net for .com

Home of the meditative cyclist:
http://home.earthlink.net/~cpetersky/Welcome.htm

Books just wanna be FREE! See what I mean at:
http://bookcrossing.com/friend/Cpetersky
My bookshelf: http://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/Cpetersky

"To forgive is to set the prisoner free and then discover the prisoner
was you."

People discussing ways to log miles (which doesn't much interest me)
makes me wonder if any of you log your bike maintenance. I was thinking
this could be very helpful.

It may not be that helpful to keep a log but doing it (maintenance)
regularly is recommended.

I do it by the six month interval, timed to the seasons.

Once in Spring and once in Fall.

I'd want to track how often I replace the chain, various cogs, tires,
and so on, and what brands and models I bought.

I do a full repack and adjustment of everything and replace the chain
on the commuter every 6 months. The other bikes don't get that attention
because they aren't daily rides.

Obviously it all wears more in the winter, so I'll do a little more
daily then. Naturally I'll do a quick equipment check before every ride
but I don't make a major issue of it.

I just check to make sure the bike is safe and rideable, a visual check
and pulling the brakes, check rack and fenders is fine.

If anything is amiss it's pretty obvious.

It'd be nice to track how often I have the bike professionally tuned. It
might be more tedious, considering how often I do it, but tracking my own
cleaning and maintenance might be helpful, too.

Do any of you do this?

Yes, but to do it in detail is excessive task load.


--

_______________________ALL AMIGA IN MY MIND_______________________
------------------"Buddy Holly, the Texas Elvis"------------------
in.edu__________

I've used an Excel spreadsheet to log maintenance but am about to change --
will explain in a minute.

My Excel sheet has a range for each of several bikes. First column is
cyclometer reading, second is total mileage, third is the date and fourth (a
wide column) is a narrative of the work done which includes things like part
numbers, type of lubricant, etc. After several years of using this, I've found
that it has (a) made it easy for me to record maintenance and (b) provided a
complete record, but (c) the info is not always easy to use or access.

Most often I want to know things like, how many miles on this bottom bracket or
chain? When was the last time I removed and greased the seatpost? All such
info exists but currently I have to plow thru my chronologically-ordered Excel
sheet to retrieve it.

Starting in '04 I'm trying something new: for each bike, a simpler log
organized by key maintenance items/areas. For example, a category called
"drivetrain" would record work done on bottom bracket, crank, pedals, chain,
cassette, etc. There I might record that a new PC-58 chain was installed at
13,678 miles (that being the bike's total mileage) on Nov. 1, 2003, and that
the previous chain lasted 3216 miles, or whatever. The previous entry for
chain replacement would be overwritten or erased.

This sounds more complicated than it is. In truth, recording my bike
maintenance takes less time than washing my hands.




Mike Yankee

(Address is munged to thwart spammers.
To reply, delete everything after "com".)

In article , says...
People discussing ways to log miles (which doesn't much interest me)
makes me wonder if any of you log your bike maintenance. I was thinking
this could be very helpful.


I log any work that I carry out on my bike (apart from routine
maintenance) using my Palm PDA. I can look back and see how long a
chain lasted, when I last changed a cassette, replaced tyres or how long
a wheel went before needing truing. Makes interesting reading (for me)
when you look back over the years.


--
Mark (MSA)
This post is packaged by intellectual weight, not volume. Some settling
of contents may have occurred during transmission

Claire Petersky wrote:

People discussing ways to log miles (which doesn't much interest me) makes
me wonder if any of you log your bike maintenance. I was thinking this could
be very helpful. I'd want to track how often I replace the chain, various
cogs, tires, and so on, and what brands and models I bought. It'd be nice to
track how often I have the bike professionally tuned. It might be more
tedious, considering how often I do it, but tracking my own cleaning and
maintenance might be helpful, too.

Do any of you do this?

--
Warm Regards,

Claire Petersky
Please replace earthlink for mouse-potato and .net for .com

Home of the meditative cyclist:
http://home.earthlink.net/~cpetersky/Welcome.htm

Books just wanna be FREE! See what I mean at:
http://bookcrossing.com/friend/Cpetersky
My bookshelf: http://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/Cpetersky

"To forgive is to set the prisoner free and then discover the prisoner
was you."

The application I developed, SMARTrain, has a bike maintenance feature.
go to http://www.aracnet.com/~joec/sw.html for the link.

This is a linux/Unix application.
--
#----------------------------------------------------------#
# Penguinix Consulting #
#----------------------------------------------------------#
# Software development, QA and testing. #
# Linux support and training. #
# "Don't fear the penguin!" #
#----------------------------------------------------------#
# Registered Linux user: #309247 http://counter.li.org #
#----------------------------------------------------------#

"Claire Petersky" wrote in message
news:Et5Mb.20439$5V2.34095@attbi_s53...
People discussing ways to log miles (which doesn't much interest me) makes
me wonder if any of you log your bike maintenance. I was thinking this
could
be very helpful. I'd want to track how often I replace the chain, various
cogs, tires, and so on, and what brands and models I bought. It'd be nice
to
track how often I have the bike professionally tuned. It might be more
tedious, considering how often I do it, but tracking my own cleaning and
maintenance might be helpful, too.

Do any of you do this?

Yes, I just keep a running list of date and what I did, organized only by
bike.
It's not highly organized, just a text document.
I refer to this for simple questions like, "How long has it been since I
repacked those bearings.?"
My main learning is to document the fact that cheap tires aren't really
cheaper, as well as being a nuisance due to more flats. Of course, I could
have learned that lesson in other places as well.

I recommend adding brief editorial comments, like "NEVER buy another XXXX!".
These enable you to recover past emotions (in the same was a a good photo
does), and can save you from temptation.

In article Et5Mb.20439$5V2.34095@attbi_s53,
"Claire Petersky" writes:

Do any of you do this?

Every time I ride over a bridge, the temptation to just
huck my computer over the rail is that much stronger.

Riding is, and has long been so much a "feel" thing;
why spoil it with numbers, dates & regimens?

Even shoeboxes full of receipts just take up space,
and eventually get tossed without being looked at
anyways. Often, they get smeared and unreadable and
stuck together when the hot water tank lets go.

AFAIC, accounting is for offices and cubicles;
riding is for the streets and pleine aire.

One of these days, I'm really gonna fling that computer.
Maybe make it skip a few times.

I guess I'd have to take the battery out first, and
properly dispose of it somehow.

I dunno if you've got this Stateside, but Kellog's
up here is doing this thing where they stick a free
pedometer in each box of Special K. So, there's
possibly even more contaminating heavy metals tossed
into the works. Now, even /walking/ is fraught with
batteries.

No wonder cougars are mad at us.


cheers,
Tom

--
-- Powered by FreeBSD
Above address is just a spam midden.
I'm really at: tkeats [curlicue] vcn [point] bc [point] ca

In article Et5Mb.20439$5V2.34095@attbi_s53, "Claire Petersky" wrote:
People discussing ways to log miles (which doesn't much interest me) makes
me wonder if any of you log your bike maintenance. I was thinking this could
be very helpful. I'd want to track how often I replace the chain, various
cogs, tires, and so on, and what brands and models I bought. It'd be nice to
track how often I have the bike professionally tuned. It might be more
tedious, considering how often I do it, but tracking my own cleaning and
maintenance might be helpful, too.

Velociepde do have a maintenance diary function. It can also be set up to
remind you when your bike or parts need to be maintained based on usage.

http://spiderman.novit.no/dahls/Velo/index.html

Jørn Dahl-Stamnes, EDB Teamco AS
e-mail: (remove nospam first)
web: http://spiderman.novit.no/dahls/

In article ,
says...
Riding is, and has long been so much a "feel" thing;
why spoil it with numbers, dates & regimens?


Depends on why you cycle and what you want from it. I can well imagine
why a computer spoils a leisurely ride, being at one with nature and
all...but for someone like me who competes, I really couldn't be without
one.

Horses for Courses.


--
Mark (MSA)
This post is packaged by intellectual weight, not volume. Some settling
of contents may have occurred during transmission