For those of you who frequently work on your bicycles - commute and/or sport - what are some insider tips you have to share?
I was taught to use a syringe filled w/water to remove grips that aren’t bolted on - just inject some water b/w rubber and handle bar and they slide right off. When recabling a bike, cut housing with some scrap cable inside to avoid the inevitable squish, especially when your cable cutters are old or dull. Last,
Use a Dremel with a cutoff wheel and you don’t squish the cable or the housings when you need to cut them.
When putting grips on use hair spray to fix them on. It slips on no problem and when the hair spray dries it locks them in place.
Keep an old piece of chain and make a chain whip for pulling cassettes, like this.
Use old toothbrushes to scrub out the rear derailleur sprockets with a little bit of WD-40. A clean driveline is a happy driveline.
Always ride with 2 releasable cable ties attached to the bar for the emergency repairs where you need a third hand. And for things that are not emergencies, pay someone else to do it. I have been saying for 30 years, if I had the time to maintain my bikes, I’d use it riding them. Now I’m retired…ah, same applies.
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A dollar bill is an essential part of a flat repair kit. If you cut a sidewall fold the bill twice & put that between the tube & the tire. It will prevent the tube from popping out of the cut & be good enough to get you home. I know some people like to substitute a foil gel pack in place of the bill but I don’t like keeping something dirty in my bag.
A little magic marker line on the seat post where it goes into the frame ensures you always put it back in at the right height.
If you do any work on your bike get a stand.
But not one by Feedback. The threaded bolts are cheaply made and often go into a hole that’s drilled too large – so large they put a helicoil inside it to hold the bolt, but if it ever comes out, the entire stand must be replaced.
If you get a new bike, uglify it to deceive thieves: wrap used inner tubes around your posts so your commuter bike looks terrible as it’s locked to a solid post (because we all know that any expensive-looking bike will be stolen, so make sure it looks old and cheap).
I’ve taken to using motorcycle chain oil from a spray can just because it’s easy and I always have it around…
And I might be late to this, but the last pump I bought had two connectors built-in so I no longer need adaptors for Presta valves.
A bearing press is a nice tool to have if you do a lot of riding, particularly on mountain and cyclocross bikes where the bearings have a hard life. Doesn’t cost a great deal - £30 and upwards.
You can change cartridge bearings on bike hubs, bottom brackets, and headsets with caveman tools, ie a hammer, block of wood, and a lump of metal. I don’t mind this for knocking them out, but pressing them in it’s good to do it right.
For mountain biking - best trail repair I ever saw was when I properly taco’ed a wheel in a local, grass-roots type of race, and was contemplating a long walk home. An experienced rider took the wheel off me and walked over to a rise in the ground, held it horizontal and walloped the wheel down against the slope. Straightened it out perfectly, rode it home nae bother!
Must have been complete luck to get it so true, but worth a go as a get-you-home fix if it ever happens.
I always rub a small drop of bearing grease on threads before tightening them, as it will prevent the bolt rusting or locking in place, and will make getting it out at any point later much easier.
If you do have a bolt that is frozen due to rust, or the head is stripped (happens with hex bolts so common on bikes), carefully file a groove into the head and use a standard screwdriver to loosen (then throw it away).
If you live in an area where you get lots of flat tires due to thorns, I have used a spare tube, slit lengthwise, as a cheap tire liner (heavy, not as good as a real one). On a bike trip we met a guy who used an aluminum slat from a window blind as a tire liner. Brilliant. If it came down to it, at least with a fatter tire on a mountain bike, if you flat and are out of tubes and patches, and facing a long walk in the woods, you can stuff the tire with enough grass, leaves, or whatever to make the bike barely ride-able without necessarily destroying the rim.
After a ride I always shift to one of the lowest gears. It will reduce tension on the cables and springs, as well as minimize the bend of the cable at the shifter, which is where most cable breaks occur (due to constant bending/straightening). May help things last longer.
WD-40 is a decent de-greaser, but should not be relied-on as a lubricant.
If you are trying to change a tire and it is difficult to get back on, wet it and also try soaping/simple greening the rim.
If you have v-brakes on a bike and they won’t stop squeaking, try reverse tow.
Make sure to install your chainring with the pin aligned with the crank arm.
Sometime baby powder helps with tire installation.
Have you ever seen the grass in tyre work first hand? It’s the type of thing that sounds very resourceful but always wonder if it might be hopeless in reality. Definitely worth a try, though - it’s a fact that any walk-out with a busted bike feels like three times longer than it actually is, just on the psychological effect of a ruined ride and having to walk in cycling shoes.
Know of more than a few mountain bikers who failed to proceed due to complacency over how good tubeless is - punctures are so rare that it’s easy to neglect your spares, e.g. mini-pump that doesn’t work because it’s not been used in 18 months, spare tube that is actually punctured as it’s jangled around the bottom of a camelbak for ages.
A particularly aggravating one is a corroded locknut on the valve - a normal tube has a thin locknut that will never do this but some tubeless valves have more substantial ones that can. Mavic’s old UST ones were terrible for this. If you hadn’t checked the valve in a long time and flatted out in the wilds you would need a pair of pliers (ideally two pairs) to get it out, and most bike mini-tools don’t have them. Piss-boilingly frustrating, as it’s such a simple thing (and impossible to improvise a pair of pliers for something that small, AFAICT).
Contrary to @Treppenwitz, I’m convinced you can save a lot of time and money by doing your own bikeservice.
Get a stand or knock one up with timber, if you can get the wheels of the ground and you can turn the pedals that should be enough.
Start with simple things like standard maintenance, lubing. If you feel up to it, continue with some other stuff. Hit youtube to see how and buy the tool you would need for the job. That way it’s not really expensive as you build up your tools over time and you don’t buy the ones you don’t need. Don’t go for the cheapest gear for things you’ll need to use frequently, but for once in a year things I usually just macguyver something.
On the road or trail: carry a spare tube, even if you’re setup tubeless, tire levers, tie wraps, duct tape. Some disposable gloves can also come in handy.
No, you are right, I have never tried it myself. Here are a couple of examples of it being done (MTB, and Road), but while possible, they are both consistent in saying it is not advised, and only to be used as a last resort (both riders also imply having to do this sucks as well).
Soapy water also works well to get the bead to seal with the rim when you’re putting on a tubeless tire.
On exposed areas of cabling on the downtube or top tube I’ll cross the cables to prevent them from rattling if I don’t have any of those little rubber doughnuts to put on. I rode my Stumpjumper for 20 years in that configuration and never had an issue for those of you about to say it’ll fray the cables. It doesn’t.
I also use the Blue loc-tite on pretty much every bolt as it helps prevent the threads from getting gunked up and seized plus keeps them from falling out. For chain lube I have taken to using Boeshield T9 (Great stuff!) or dipping my chain in liquid paraffin after a good cleaning at the beginning of the riding season.
This is all really good advice in my opinion - most experienced mechanics and riders I’ve worked with would say the same thing (except for the parafin wax part, I haven’t been around many people who do that - maybe I’ll try it).
Even if your bike is not built for it, it’s possible to run an outer cable all the way to your rear derailleur. You’ll have to work around the frame stops a bit, but it’ll hold onto to the bottom bracket because of the cable tension. It keeps the maintenance down, especially if you drive offroad.
You can use tie wraps to slide handlebar grips back on. Use them length wise between the handlebars and the grips so the grips can slide over them. When they are in the right position, you can pull the tie wraps from underneath the grips.
It’s something an old Roadie taught me in the early 80s before all the high performance lubes came out. The combination of heat and the liquid para drives all the moisture out of the internal bits of the chain and as it wears it lubricates while not being greasy. The bonus is it doesn’t attract dirt in dusty conditions. Then over the season I’ll clean and spray with T-9.