[Closed] Bike Mechanic Apprenticeship

Local FE college do a course?
Get a job in local bike shop and train on the job?
It depends on your age, but I got a Saturday job in a bike shop aged 15.
Paid peanuts, but I got showed how to do everything, got to practice on my own bike with decent tools, and got trade discount 😉
If I'd wanted I could have gone full time later on and I'm sure I could have got official qualifications.

[url= https://www.cytech.training/careers/apprenticeships/ ]Cytech Apprenticeships[/url]

Go an see some local bike shops and have a chat, best way to get an idea.
Cytech gets you a qualification but won't always mean a job etc.

This is what I did

Start fixing things at an early age (4 years old)
Play with Lego, build models, help my dad on the car... anything like that
Start fixing punctures etc
Buy MTB.
Be too skint to pay for it to be fixed
Learn from articles iN MBUK (pre internet)
Learn by taking my own bikes apart
Learn by working on friends bikes
Buy loads of tools get better
Learn stuff like wheel building and fork servicing off the internet
Be made redundant
Pay for Cytech
Take first job that comes along....
Keep learning
get second job by winging it a bit
Keep learning.....

Etc
Etc
🙂

Halfords is a worth a look if you can't get in at a local bike shop. Learn on the job. I did a few years with Halfords and now working at a nice local boutique bike shop playing with some rather nice road bikes. Don't dismiss them too quickly.

Do an apprenticeship in something that will actually pay decent money over the long term... minimum wage or there abouts is fine when you are 18 but very little progression possible as a bike mechanic

This is true - try to get some work experience in a shop to see if it’s actually what you want to do. It mostly isn’t building fancy new bikes, it’s mostly fixing cheap old wrecks for people who don’t want to spend money 😀

Okay, that’s a bit cynical, but it’s definitely a job that most people do for the love of it, not the money.

It mostly isn’t building fancy new bikes, it’s mostly fixing cheap old wrecks for people who don’t want to spend money

Yep. Very true.

But that's where the skill and the interest is, for me. My first job today was fitting a set of adult stabilisers to a bike for disabled lad... These damned things never want to go on, and it's always a proper faff to get them safe and solid, starting with replacing the QR axle with a nutted one and 50% of the time the two are different threads and there's extended head scratching about getting the cones/seals/spacers sorted.... and so it goes on.....
Any berk can sprinkle an XTR groupset on a Santa Cruz, then pop a pair of factory Mavics into it, and fitting a Dura Ace rear mech is exactly the same as fitting an Altus rear mech.

Or unboxing prebuilt bikes that are never assembled to an acceptable standard...wheels already in with cones that are miss adjusted and not a spot if grease/anti sieze anywhere.....

Still miss it.

Be best to find a job in a shop and then train from there.
But you may get some funding depending on your age to just do the cource.

But as much as I mostly like my job and have had a fun 20 years the poor money and silly people are now getting a bit Boring so time to move on maybe.

But with no other job qualifications I can't easily.

So get a proper trade first then if you want have fun playing with bikes knowing you have somthing to fall back on

I've spent time working as a bike mechanic between jobs - I have no Cytec qualifications but on the basis of having an engineering degree and that I've designed and built medical prosthetics and high-pressure gas systems, bikes are pretty easy.
If you're really serious about apprenticeships, do an engineering technician apprenticeship - skills are far more transferrable, you'll earn 2x as much and you can always become a bike mechanic at any time you want.
As PP says, it's rarely about custom builds of top-end bikes, but assembling BSOs, having to practically rebuild them and finding the seatpost bolt is 7mm and made out of plasticene that snaps when it's the final job of the assembly!

Halfords is a worth a look if you can't get in at a local bike shop. Learn on the job.

That's what I did when I was younger. Quickly realised it wasn't going to sustain my long-term goals as the money was poor, plus I started to resent having to work on my own bikes after a week:

assembling BSOs, having to practically rebuild them and finding the seatpost bolt is 7mm and made out of plasticene that snaps when it's the final job of the assembly!

As I approach retirement(in about 30 years!!) I will probably get back into it as a way of getting off the treadmill and doing what I love doing but for now I'm perfectly happy keeping bikes as purely a hobby I love.

You've mentioned qualifications and the go to one is usually cytech but velotech do courses as well. I got a free place on one and it was actually really good(had a good instructor)

I got on the course by volunteering at a local bike recycling place so that's an option for you if you have one near. Loads of experience to be gained in a place like that.

I'll second the post above about figuring out random jobs on different or odd bikes It's the best bit 🙂

Doing a spot of research atm.

Velotech

Cytech

And city and guilds

Seem to be the main 3.

As a self funder which would you choose - city and guilds on paper seems to be the most comprehensive for the money but it looks like cytech has the ability with bolt ons to be have more specialist accreditation.....

Fyi I'm in a similar boat to dovebiker but for my own development I want to do the formal training for a couple of projects I'm working on in quiet times.

Yeah, also look at Velotech. Depending on where you are this might be more accessible.

You'd want practical experience before starting any formal education so find out what shops or other organisations are in your area that might be after some hours from you.

A formal apprenticeship pays basically nowt (a national scandal really).

yes the glenmore courses for velotech do look tempting as they aint too spendy they also seem a bit short for the information they talk about conveying for my liking- although i do feel they are focused on teaching you where to find the information and giving you set of enquiry skills rather than teaching you bikes. - but thats no bad thing as its something our education system lacks through test based learning. - My first boss at the bike shop taught me those skills - stood me well through my degree and numerous projects.....

"work out what its supposed to do , work out why its not working , work out what can be done to make it work again"

Pretty much that Terry. The Gold course also focusses on some of the non-tech aspects of working in a shop; audit trail of actions, estimating and recording man-hours, taking care of tools, being organised etc. Things that many technical folk see as unimportant or difficult or not their job, that home mechanics don't bother about or that forum dwellers can't see have to be built into workshop pricing.

the City and guilds with the webbs also focuses on that side as well. No idea about cytech but i know a man who does - have you done the velotech courses Colin ? - might need to nip your head again some time. - I'm over doing my outdoor first aid at laggan in November if your around for a bike ride.

i still cant help but think 2 days is too short to convey the information and assess you as competent - based on my experiance as an SME and Competence assessor in an unrelated industry.

But then its a fine balance between a bit of paper for insurance purposes and cost - If it costs too much then shops wont do it paper thin margins wont stretch that far.

Just a word of caution....
When I did my Cytech 2 course I was already a fairly decent mechanic. I could take hubs apart, service forks, bleed brakes, build wheels etc.
Cytech was still hard work (that I really enjoyed) and I learned a load of stuff.
But it won’t turn you from a novice into a bike mechanic. It assumes a basic level of knowledge. There was one guy on my course who really struggled with wheel building because he didn’t even know how to true a wheel....
Qualifications are certainly desirable, especially these days, but they aren’t the be all and end all. Neither, in my opinion, is experience. Again, loads of knowledge in your head and years of experience are great but I’ve worked with some who have all this but no desire who are just going through the motions and can’t be arsed.
So there’s three qualities:
Qualification
Experience
Desire

But I reckon there’s a fourth and that’s ‘Aptitude’
If you’re not mechanically minded you’re buggered. It doesn’t matter about the first three if you can’t work a new problem out.

At the end of the day, if you wanna do it, you’ve just got to start doing it, either at home or in a working environment. There’s no set career path imo. 🙂

i still cant help but think 2 days is too short to convey the information and assess you as competent - based on my experiance as an SME and Competence assessor in an unrelated industry.

Velotech trainer here.

Gold is a 4 day course, unless you can demonstrate you have the skills required to bypass the up to silver set out days.

it's very much hands on. it's supposed to be set out so there's a gap between the silver and gold, so that those continuing can practice what they've learned and come back with feedback to focus on over the gold.
The Gold is essentially a little more theory and guided hands on, with a day of practice practice.

then there's the written assessment (MCQ's)

yeah so by 4 days you mean 2 days silver 2 days gold not specifically 4 days for just the gold - im going by the syllabus for each mentioned on the glenmore lodge website which would be my local course.

having now read your velotech website its clear that there is a lead in from the basics -which is not clear/or indeed mentioned on the third party site.

good info though. My situations slightly different to the OP(apologies for derailing the thread) I'm looking to qualify 10 years OTJ(in multiple busy shop enviroments) learning but not naive enough to think ill walk it as there are certain things that no doubt are processed differently , bad habits to extract and of course the information I've forgotten in the 6 years I've been out the trade . I'm erring towards the city and guilds purely from the aspect of it sounds like it will bring my knowledge base back into this decade and such like as well as having more time to focus on other aspects rather than glancing over it which may be fine for current practicing mechanics.

Different horses for different courses - which is a pain as i like Aviemore 😀

yes, it's not always clear, Graeme, the course developer at velotech cycling allows some flexibility in the approach to how the courses are ran at each training centre, which can mean that there is no standard text for websites etc, other than links to the velotech site, which gets updated when he's not supporting teams or developing the course content.

I no longer train unfortunately, used to for ED's Cycle Co-op in East Dunbartonshire, but as they are no more, and our geographical training ground was restricted to ED (ish) I have my hands tied a bit.

I don't know how Glenmore deliver their Velotech, but from my perspective, we would have to try to strike a balance somewhere, depending upon who it was attending the courses. We'd get beginners, who'd knew a little, but wanted more confidence maintaining bikes for schools, bike clubs and charities and we'd get guys who wanted to learn how to rebuild every type of bike out there.

Somehow we'd have to satisfy them all, but often you don't have the luxury of numbers of people knocking at the door wanting to pay hundreds for a course, otherwise we'd allocate different times and match ojectives, so everyone gets bundled in together and it up to the trainer to try to ascertain what each person wants to get from the course and pitch it accordingly.

Undoubtedly experience of courses will sit largely with the abilities of the trainers to read the participants needs and react accordingly.

C&G is traditionally difficult to manage for trainers, just by the way the course material is distributed. it's all upfront costs for sets of 10 (for example) participant info packs which you can't just get individually, so requires a little investment. It's a decent course for participants, also I think fairly easy to get funding for, though cytech and velotech are now much easier to fund externally from training grants than previously.

But as you say, weigh up the various costs, contact the training centres and discuss what you want to get out of the course and see how they respond.

🙂

A guy I work with got the Velotech Gold fees (partially?) funded through his ILA.

cheers for that lovewookie appreciate the explaination.

I'll have a think about it and like you say contact providers and the recent past students i know.

Unfortunantly im not eligible for ILA scotroutes 🙁 although the OP may be.

One thing i am certain of is i cant sit here rotting much longer or ill go mad.