About 6000km a year, wet winters, roads get salted from December to March, and I currently pay a shop for everything including punctures. I am trying to decide whether buying tools and learning is worth it or whether I am inventing a hobby to avoid a bill. What I want is your real annual consumables list with roughly what it came to, because every article I find gives a range so wide it is useless.
The tool payback maths is more favourable than people expect, and it is mostly one job. A chain tool, a cassette lockring tool, a chain whip and a gauge is a small one-off spend, and replacing a chain yourself takes about fifteen minutes once you have done it twice. If your shop charges labour for a chain swap three times a year, the tools pay for themselves inside the first year on that single job. Tyres and tubes need no tools at all beyond levers. Where I still pay a shop is anything involving bearings and anything hydraulic, because the tools there are genuinely expensive and the jobs are rare.
The line item that dominated my winter costs was not drivetrain at all, it was punctures. Once I moved to a proper commuting tyre with a decent protection belt my flat rate went from something like one a month to about two a year, and the tyre itself lasted longer than the cheaper ones it replaced. If you are paying a shop for puncture repairs, that one change probably saves you more than everything else on this list combined.
Chain, pads, rear tyre, cable set. That is the annual list for a salt-belt commuter. Learn to do the first three yourself and pay someone for anything with a bearing in it.
Politely disagreeing with the replace-early-and-often orthodoxy. Running chains to the second wear step and then replacing chain and cassette together as a pair has worked out cheaper for me over five years than three chains a year, because a cassette lasts a long time and chains are not free either. The catch is that you must replace them together and you must not put a new chain on a worn cassette, which is where people who try this get a skipping drivetrain and conclude the method is wrong. Both approaches work. The one that does not is ignoring it until something snaps.
That is a legitimate strategy and I should have said there are two schools. Mine is chosen because I hate the week of skipping while I wait for parts, not because it is provably cheaper.
I ignored a chain for two winters because it was still shifting. When it finally started skipping under load I had worn the cassette and the middle chainring, and the bill for chain, cassette and ring together with labour was several times what three chains would have cost me. The mechanic showed me the teeth and they were visibly hooked. Buy the gauge. It is the cheapest tool in cycling and the only one that regularly saves you money.
@pannier_pat · 3mo ago · 3 replies
My year on a similar mileage in a salty climate, consumables only. Three chains, because I replace them on wear rather than on failure. One cassette every two or three years as a result. Two pairs of brake pads, sometimes three if the winter is filthy. One rear tyre a year and a front every two, since the rear wears roughly twice as fast. A couple of inner tubes, a bottle of chain lube, cables and outers once a year on a cable bike.
That list is not enormous in parts. What it costs depends entirely on whether the shop fits them, because the labour on each of those jobs is frequently more than the part. That is the actual decision you are making.
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@pannier_pat · 3mo ago
A basic chain wear gauge with the two standard steps on it. When the first step drops in, the chain is done. That tool costs about the same as one inner tube and it has saved me several cassettes.
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@kerf_wander · 3mo ago
Three chains a year sounds like a lot until you say it stops you buying cassettes. What are you measuring them with?
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