SPEND TO SAVE
High price, handmade kit can be good value too.
Attend evening trackdays
» Make next summer the year you bag a few trackdays. Evening ones are perfect for the trackday novice – they tend to attract a calmer crowd, and after a couple of hours you’ll be knackered anyway. Some weekday evenings at Cadwell cost just £49 a pop – that’s a third of the price of a peak season day. And what a great way to leave the working day behind.
Buy old model tyres
» The latest tyres are better than last year’s models but in the real world most of us couldn’t tell. In fact, you’d struggle to spot the model before that unless you rode them back to back with the latest tyre and concentrated really hard. That means you can save a fortune by buying superseded models. These are still brand new – we’re not recommending buying used tyres, or out of date rubber – just not the latest spangly version. So, for example, instead of getting a Michelin Road 5 (about £150 for a 180-section rear), you get the excellent Road 4 (£125) or jolly decent Road 3 (£110). The theory works for all the big brands. And you still get to enjoy great tyres, and feel smug about it.
Use a chainbrush
» Winter is a horror for chains because chainlube and road grit combine to form an abrasive paste that can see off a new £90 chain in a single winter. The answer is to clean the gloop off your chain every week, but it’s such a pain in the arse hardly anyone bothers. That’s where a chain brush comes in – combined with an aerosol chain cleaner (or paran) it swiftly gets rid of all the clag, stopping your chain grinding itself to an early grave. You can get them off ebay for under a tenner.
Fit helicoils
» If you enjoy the occasional spot of garage bodgery you will have at some point stripped a thread, usually in an alloy casing. You could tap it out and use the next bolt size up, but face facts, you’ll probably just strip it again in a year’s time and eventually your bike will be a valueless mess of odd-sized bolts. Far better to fit a Helicoil, which is steel (so less likely to strip again) and uses the same size thread as the manufacturer intended.
Try your local mechanic
» If your bike is out of warranty, you can save a fortune on servicing bills by taking it to an independent specialist rather than a main dealer. Ideally get a personal recommendation from a mate, but failing that Google Reviews give a good idea what others think. Even if you tell the mechanic to use original equipment replacement parts, a service could still be 30% cheaper than at a main dealer because of the lower hourly rate.
Join aforum
» Most models have a web forum, and they are a goldmine of information. If you have a problem with your bike, 30 minutes spent searching the forum’s pages can save you a fortune in wasted workshop time – either because there’s a simple fix you can do yourself, or because you can tell the mechanic what the