Two benches, a wall of tools, and no shop floor

The space

One room, about seven metres by five, with a roller door at one end and a bench along each long wall. Wren works on the left, Ossie on the right, and the middle stays clear because that is where bikes get wheeled in and out all day.

Above each bench is a pegboard with the tools hung in the order they get used rather than by size. It looks slightly chaotic and it means neither of us spends the day opening drawers.

There is a rack at the back holding bikes that are booked in, a smaller one for finished bikes waiting to be collected, and a shelf of frames from bikes that were not worth repairing. That shelf is where the frame for the student single speed came from.

It is warm in winter, which matters more than it sounds. Cold hands do bad work.

The tools that decide what we can do

Most of a bike workshop is ordinary hand tools. A few things are not, and they are what determines whether a job can be done properly or only approximately.

Two repair stands

One at each bench, both height adjustable, both clamping the seatpost rather than the frame. Nothing gets clamped by a top tube here.

A wheel truing stand and a tension meter

The truing stand is the reason we can true a wheel in twenty minutes rather than an hour, and the tension meter is the reason the wheel stays true afterwards. Truing a wheel in the frame, by eye, gets it straight. It does not get the tension even, and uneven tension is what pulls a wheel out again a fortnight later. This is the difference our wheel work is built on.

A dishing gauge and a spoke length calculator

Both unglamorous and both non negotiable for a wheel build. We calculate spoke length from measured hubs and rims rather than from a published chart, because published figures are often wrong by a millimetre or two, and a millimetre is the difference between a spoke that holds and one that fails.

Facing and chasing tools

For preparing frames. Bottom bracket shells arrive from the factory with paint in the threads and faces that are not parallel. Cutting them true is invisible work that stops a bike creaking for a decade. Every custom build gets it.

A derailleur hanger alignment gauge

The single most useful diagnostic tool in the workshop. It is the first thing we reach for on any bike with gear trouble, because a bent hanger looks like an indexing problem and cannot be fixed by indexing.

Torque wrenches, several

Two small ones for the low figures that matter on modern parts and one larger. Nothing on a bike is tightened by feel here if a number exists for it.

A parts washer and an ultrasonic bath

The bath is how a cassette comes out of a full service actually clean between the sprockets, rather than clean where a brush can reach.

How booking works

There is no online calendar, no deposit and no queue system. It is an email and then a time we both agree.

1. Tell us what is wrong. Email hello@crahift.com or use the contact form. What the bike is, roughly how old, and what it is doing. If it makes a noise, describe the noise, we are used to it.
2. We reply with a slot and a rough price. Usually the same day, always within two working days. The price is genuine, not a hook.
3. You bring it in. Drop off takes about five minutes and we will ask you a couple of questions while you are here.
4. We look at it properly and confirm. Once it is in the stand we can see what a description cannot tell us. If the number changes, you hear from us before we do the work.
5. You collect and pay. We will walk you through what we did, what we replaced, and what to keep an eye on.

Dropping off and collecting

Drop offs are by arrangement so that one of us is at the bench rather than under a bike when you arrive. In practice that means we will suggest a window rather than a precise minute, and anything inside that window is fine.

Bring the bike as it is. You do not need to clean it, and we would slightly rather you did not, because a clean bike hides wear patterns that tell us what has been happening.

Do bring: any keys for locks fitted to the bike, and anything you want kept on it. If it is an e bike, bring the battery and the charger, and the key if it locks to the frame.

Do not bring: panniers, luggage, child seats or accessories we do not need, unless the fault involves them. We will take them off anyway and they take up rack space.

Tell us: if the bike has any part you supplied yourself, anything that has been repaired before, and if there is anything on it you do not want touched.

Collection is during opening hours, no appointment needed. We hold finished bikes for seven days at no charge. Past that we will start ringing you, and past a month we will ask you to collect, because rack space is genuinely the limiting factor on how much work we can take.

What we cannot do

We would rather tell you now than after you have carried a bike here.

No suspension fork or rear shock internals. No motor internals on e bikes, though we service everything else on them and will diagnose the system. No frame repair, alignment or cold setting. No paint or refinishing. No carbon frame repair.

We know good people for most of that and will point you at them rather than attempting something at the edge of what we do well.