More About Storing Bikes
Storing your bicycle involves taking consideration of various factors, which we explored in a previous article. We gave lots of helpful tips there, which included cleaning and servicing your bike, and the best ways of preserving the longevity of your tyres. If you can get rid of any mud that has stuck to it, oil up any moving parts, and pump up the tyres prior to storage, then you have something that might be ready to go as soon as you take it out of the storage facility again. It was also suggested that hanging the bike on the wall may be a better idea that simply leaving it on the floor, since this will reduce wear on the tyres and will also mean you don’t keep falling over it and knocking it over when busy storing other items!
However, what we didn’t mention was a very important part of the puzzle, and this is what type of storage facility solution you should be looking to use for storing a bike. We often think first about storing vehicles of all sorts in a garage, since that is largely what garages are built for, but in fact this turns out to be unwise in the case of bicycles. Ironically, storing a bicycle in an outside garage introduces the main problem that we want to avoid altogether when trying to maintain an item that is made of metal and needs to support the weight of a person using it – that being rust.
To reduce the change of your bicycle getting afflicted with rust, we need to eliminate one of the primary factors of it, which is air moisture. As such, leaving your bike in the garage or cellar may be inviting in humidity, which will eventually lead to deterioration of the bicycle frame, which is definitely something to avoid! If you absolutely have to store your bike there then it might be worth looking into ways to reduce humidity, using methods we have provided that can reduce dampness. The other alternative, which will work out if you have many other items to store, is to consider putting the bicycle into a storage facility near you. Your local storage provider should be able to offer a climate controlled solution, or at the very least be able to maintain the relatively dry air conditions that are required to preserve the items of all their customers.
Posted in: Storage Info