An unfortunate thing happened last week… my wife ran over my son’s bike!

Actually she was backing up the car and my son left his bike behind the car.  As she was backing up, she heard it fall and stopped immediately.  Even though she basically just tapped the bike and if fell, it was enough of an impact to cause a slight misalignment with the handlebars and break one of the brake levers.  The brake levers were plastic so I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised…

Now we debated about going to the store and just buying another bike (at around $200+ a pop), but I thought I could fix it for less (plus it was only about 1 year old).  So I asked Mr Google if he could help and sure enough I found an excellent video on replacing brake levers.

Here it is cost saving video that showed me how to do this DIY project:

 

So the brake lever cost me $17.00 and the handle grips cost me $8.00 for a total cost of $25.00.  So by fixing it myself, I was able to save about $175!   The surprising thing was that it was very easy to do, and the system we now have in place is actually better than the previous system that was on the bike!

I was surprise how easy it was to do it myself and fix the brake levers!  I ended up replace both brake levers with some nice metal ones that I got on eBay, that way they look like they were meant to go together and give the bike a better look than having two different brake levers.

I also was surprised that I found that replace the broken parts was kind of cool because I learned a few things I didn’t  known before!  So not only was the replacement frugal, it was beyond frugal because I learned something cool in the process!

While replace my son’s brake levers wasn’t too difficult, I’m sure you could google other parts that need fixed on your bike…

Cheers,

MR