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TECH NEWS

Bike Doctor 2.0 adds new repairs, runs on iPad

Popular bike fix app gets new guides, iPad version

Popular fix-your-bike app BikeDoctor has just hit version 2.0, with 42 guides to fixing various parts of your bike - up from 29 in version 1.0.

The new edition works on iPad, iPhone and Android devices.

Bike Doctor is the brainchild of Andreas Kambanis, who writes the London Cyclist blog. The inspiration, he says, was paper bike repair manuals.

“I nearly gave up on maintaining my bike myself, after getting frustrated with all the bike maintenance books I had read,” says Andreas. “I decided there must be more cyclists like me out there who have tried and failed to follow other guidebooks. I created Bike Doctor to be an easy to follow guide that would always be available, whether you are out cycling or at home.

“Whilst I know even Cytech mechanics use Bike Doctor at times, it is designed for complete beginners.

“After the first draft of the instructions were created for the app, we tested them out on bike maintenance beginners. Looking over their shoulder as they went about completing the repair, we made notes where things went wrong and improved the instructions. The result is that this is the easiest to follow bike maintenance guide you’ll find.”

Bike Doctor 2.0 covers common bike repairs such as punctures and squeaky brakes, as well as more advanced repairs, such as bleeding disk brakes. The app also includes guides to avoiding punctures and completing a bike safety check.

Bike Doctor is available for £2.99 from the Apple App Store for the iPhone and iPad and from the Android Play store.

Here’s a video with Andreas showing off the app’s features.

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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