Prepare to Ride and Repair your Bicycle

To limit your troubles out on the trails and roads, learn a few Rules of Thumb about your bike and check its condition before you leave on a ride, then ride at sensible times, in sensible areas, and with a sense of your own limitations. That’s all simple advice, but the type of advice we tend to forget. So here’s a short collection of reminders about your bike and how to use it.

Rules of Thumb

1. In this guide, “left side” means the left side of the bike when you are sitting on it facing forward. The same principle goes for “right side.” Each paragraph of the guide has a tag that lets you know what kind of bike it’s about: mountain bike (aka MTB), road bike, or cruiser. If you have a hybrid bike, most of the parts on it are like mountain-bike parts, so read those MTB paragraphs to solve your problems.

2. To shift your bike into a LOWER gear, you have to move the right-hand gear control the hard direction (against resistance) and the left-hand gear control the easy direction (no resistance). To shift your bike into a HIGHER gear, you have to move the right-hand gear control the easy direction and the left-hand gear control the hard direction. This rule works no matter what kind of lever, ratchet, or twisting grip your bike has for controlling the gears. The only exceptions occur in rare gear systems with counter-sprung front or rear changers. For more hints on gear shifting, our dedicated section.

3. On most bolts, nuts, and other threaded parts, clockwise (cl) tightens, and counterclockwise (c-cl) loosens. NOTE THESE EXCEPTIONS: left pedals and some right-side bottom-bracket parts. They have left handed threads, bless their twisted souls; tighten them (c-cl) and loosen them (cl). Got it? Don’t forget and screw up your left pedal and crank!

4. All threaded parts are easy to strip (that means ruin the threads). Before putting any two together, make sure they are the same size and thread type; start screwing one into the other BY HAND, slowly. If they resist each other, don’t force their relationship. Back off. Get parts that groove before you use tools on them. And use only small tools to tighten up small bolts and nuts. Tightening those 8- and 9-mm nuts takes deftness with the digits, not beef with the biceps. Save the beef for hill climbs.

5. Nine-tenths of the work you do to solve any bike problem goes into finding out just where the problem is. Even if you know what’s wrong in a general way, don’t start dismantling things until you know exactly what is amiss. You, your bike, and this guide must work as a team; look closely at your bike as you go through the DIAGNOSIS or PROBLEMS section of the section that applies to your problem. Don’t work on the bike without looking at the guide, and don’t read through a whole section of the guide without looking at your bike. That way no parts will feel left out at the end.

6. Dismantle as little as possible to do any repair. When you have to take something apart, do so slowly, laying the parts out in a neat row, in the order they came off. Work over a rag or a T-shirt or a flat piece of paper or even bark off a dead tree limb, and put the row of parts on that work surface, so you don’t lose parts in the weeds. The more careful you are as you dismantle a unit, the less time it’ll take to find the parts and put the thing back together.

7. Think twice before attacking rust-frozen parts, especially if you are out in the backcountry. Is there any way you can get home without undoing them? If so, try it. You’re liable to break those rusty parts as you try to loosen them up, and chances are you won’t have replacements with you.

8. There are lots of ball bearings on a bicycle. Some times they are in sealed, replaceable cartridges. But most spend their time racing around in happy circles between cones and cups. Either the cone or the cup of each bearing unit is usually threaded, so you can adjust how much room the balls have to play in. You don’t want too much play; just enough to let the balls roll smoothly. To adjust any bearing set, first loosen (c-cl, usually) the locknut or lockring that holds the whole unit in place, then tighten (usually cl) the threaded part that’s easiest to get at until you feel it squeeze the ball bearings. Then back it off (c-cl) a bit; usually less than a quarter turn is enough. Finally, re tighten the locknut or ring (cl) so everything stays nicely adjusted. Spin the part on its bearings. It should coast smoothly and gradually to a stop. See if you can wiggle it from side to side on the bearings. If it is free to wiggle more than a hair’s breadth, or if it is not free to roll smoothly, readjust the thing. Keep those bearings oiled or greased, adjusted, and Out of the rain, and they’ll give you years of happy, free-rolling service. If your bike gets covered with mud or gritty dust, you can wash it off, but don’t aim powerful blasts of water, especially water with detergent in it (like at a do-it-yourself carwash), at any of the bearings. You can ruin bearings by washing the lubricant out of them; even “sealed” bearings can be ruined in this way.

9. Cultivate a keen ear for those little complaining noises your bike makes when it has problems, like grindy bearings, kerchunking chain, a clunking shock fork, or a slight creak-squeaking of a crank that is coming loose. You don’t have to talk to your bike when you ride it—just listen to it affectionately, and take care of its minor complaints before they become major problems miles away from home. And speaking of being nice to your bike, here’s a tip that’ll save you a heap of trouble:

Always lay your bike down on the LEFT side. If you lay a multispeed bike on its right side, you can bend, bash, and misalign its tender gear-changing parts. If a multispeed bike FALLS on its right side, the gears are almost sure to go out of adjustment.

10. Find a good bike shop in the area where you do most of your riding. Good shops are not necessarily the big flashy ones; they are the ones with people who care. Do as much of your bike shopping as you can at a shop that cares, and send friends to get their bikes there. The prices may be a bit higher, but the value is also higher in the long run.

11. If you need help out in the country, don’t be afraid to ask for it. Use discretion with strangers if you are riding alone, but if you are in a group, don’t be shy about asking folks if you can use their tools or make a phone call. You’ll be amazed at how many friendly folks there are out there; all you have to do is show a little politeness and humility.

When and Where to Ride

Ride during the daytime, on trails or roads where bikes are allowed. Don’t ride on high ridges in lightning storms, don’t ride in desert gullies during downpours, keep off farms where the farmers tend to shower visitors with shotgun pellets, and don’t ride in blizzards at night unless you are an insomniac survivalist. Oh, hell, you can ride wherever and whenever you want. But if you go on rides that don’t make sense, don’t expect this guide to save you from your own foolishness.

Quick Maintenance Check

When you’re itching to go on a ride, you don’t want to spend much time fooling around with your bike. Just check the following three items and you’ll cover about nine-tenths of the causes for trouble encountered on bike rides.

1. Chain: Make sure it is clean and lubricated. Check it for excessive stretching and kinks, too.

2. Tires: Make sure they’re pumped up to the correct pressure and make sure the tube isn’t bulging out anywhere.

3. Brakes: Make sure they’ll stop you. When you squeeze the levers, they should only go about two-thirds of the way to the handlebars before the brakes are fully applied. Check for frayed cables and loose or cockeyed brake shoes.

Those are the most important items. There are a few other things you can look into if you have been getting any hints of trouble on previous rides. If your gears have been slip ping or making weird noises, check the cables and adjustment. If your cranks have been squeaking, check the mounting bolts for looseness; if your wheels are loose, tighten the nuts or the quick-release lever, or adjust the bearings. Check your seat, handlebars, and headset for looseness, too.

Tools and Other Stuff to Take

You can’t take every tool and spare part you might need for every imaginable repair. Take the mini-kit below on short rides, and put together a maxi-kit for longer treks, bike tours, and your shop at home. No matter what size ride you’re going on, WEAR A HELMET. If you protect and use the gray matter inside your helmet, it’ll help you work out makeshift solutions to your bike problems with the tools you have at hand. And you’ll find that gray matter, unlike most tools, improves with use under pressure.

1. Adjustable Wrench (crescent wrench). Get a good one. Attributes of a good one are a forged body, milled and hardened jaws, and a precise adjusting action. To test a wrench, open the adjustable jaw a little and see if you can wiggle it in such a way that it moves up and down in relation to the body of the tool. A good adjustable wrench will wiggle very little, and the jaws will stay parallel. The six-inch size is best. Some people hacksaw the end of the handle off to make the thing even smaller.

2. Screwdriver/Pocket Knife. A screwdriver with a forged steel shank and a thin blade end is best. A pocket knife with a screwdriver blade will work fine for most adjusting screws, and it’s good to have a knife for things like slicing cheese for lunch out in the open country. Just don’t do any heavy prying or tire-removing (see below) with your pocket knife or screwdriver blade. The screwdriver tip should be about 1/4 inch wide and the shank 4 or 5 inches long.

3. Tire Patch Kit and Tire Irons. A patch kit can be bought as a unit from any bike shop. It should have a tube of glue (keep the cap on tight or the glue dries up), several small and large patches (the kind that taper out to thin, flexible edges are best), and something to scrape a rough spot on the tube, like a swatch of sandpaper.

You can buy patches that are self-sticking, too. They require no messy glue. They are not as durable as the glue-on type, but I’ve known some that lasted over a year. Add a boot to your patch kit; to make one, cut out a ¾-inch by 3-inch piece of thin sidewall from an old bike tire. A good boot can rescue a tire with a bad slit in it, or at least make the slit tire usable to get you home. Each tire iron should have a thin, smooth, rounded prying end, and a hook on the other end to fit onto a spoke after you have pried up on your tire bead. Make sure the tire irons are top quality, either steel or heavy-duty plastic; cheapo thick or sharp- edged ones make holes in your tube like a screw driver if you aren’t real adept at using them.

4. Spare Tube. It can be a real lightweight one; roll it up tight and it’ll fit in the small pouch you use to carry your mini-kit.

5. Allen Keys (Allen wrenches). Depending on what kind of bike parts you have, you may need sizes ranging from 1.5 mm to 6 mm. You can gel a “Y” tool 4 mm, 5 mm, and 6 mm, which is fine if your bike requires only those sizes. Some bikes have parts that require other keys. For these bikes you might get a folding set of Allen keys that has 5 or more keys. Park Tool also makes a dogbone-shaped set that’s great. If you get a new part that requires an odd size Allen key, buy the wrench at the same time you get the part, and add the wrench to your mini-kit. Keep them all together with a rubber band so you don’t lose the little buggers.

6. Chain Tool. For driving rivets in and out of the chain. Get one that is the right size for your width of chain, either standard or narrow. Inexpensive ones work, but don’t last long. Save the spare tip if you get one with yours; the tip tends to pop out of the tool and get lost. If you’re plagued with tip loss, you can blow a bunch of money on a heavy-duty plier-type chain tool, or you can keep a close eye on the tip of your cheap chain tool; when you see it flaring out like the butt end of a wedge where it’s been hammered, as shown in the Ritchey Tool illustration below, carefully file that flare off with a small metal file, so the tip won’t get stuck inside the chain’s sideplates.

7. Tire Pump. Get either a well-made bike frame pump or a strong mini-pump. It can be small, as long as it has a head that fits securely on your tire valves, and solid working parts that won’t fail when you really need them. Many mountain bikers carry mini-pumps in their fanny packs; they run no risk of having the pump getting joggled off their bike frame, and they run no risk of having the pump stolen if they leave the bike unattended. But it takes a lot of pumping to inflate a tire with a mini-pump. If you get lots of flats and need a full-size frame pump, strap it to the frame with a Velcro-binding pump strap so it can’t get joggled off.

8. Friend. No description needed. Take a good one on all long rides, though, for parts-holding, morale-boosting, and, if things get really bad, help-fetching.

9. A quarter and a couple of dollars. Not as important as a friend, especially when you are far from “civilization,” but handy for calling home from the nearest gas sta tion, or buying emergency food from country stores.

You can put all the tools in the mini-kit inside a small cloth pouch, such as an under-the-saddle pack, and strap this pouch to the rails under the back of your seat. There are even multi-tools, such as the Cool Tool, Ritchey Tool, or the Topeak Alien, that combine things like a wrench, chain tool, Allen keys, headset wrench, and other tools, so you can save weight and bulk in your mini-kit. The Cool Tool, Ritchey Tool, and Topeak Alien work well for many jobs if you use them carefully. Some other multi-tools are almost worthless, they are so poorly designed. Shop carefully if you get a multi-tool.

MAXI-KUT for long treks or your home shop

10. Cable Cutters. The best ones are the heavy-duty bicycle cable clippers that grab the cable in a diamond-shaped hole and shear it off clean. Park Tool makes great cable cutters. Expensive, but worth it. The chomping types of wire cutters (such as those on needle-nose pliers and diagonal cutters) will do, but if they are dull or flimsy, they mash the ends of the cables; you have to thread the cables through their housings before you cut them to size, and re threading is a real pain.

11. Pliers. The hardware-store variety are OK. Channel- lock pliers are better. Some jobs require vise-grip pliers. To be used only as directed. NOT a valid replacement for a good crescent wrench.

12. Lubricants. Keep light oil such as ATF (automatic transmission fluid) or a bike lubricant such as Triflow or Finish Line Dry Lube for your chain and other moving parts. You can get tiny little containers of some lubricants, perfect for stuffing in your tool bag or mini-kit. In a pinch, you can use motor oil, chain- saw oil, or even salad oil (I’ll never forget the hot dusty day when I stopped at the mountain cabin of my friend -- and she gave me some olive oil for my dried-up chain!) to lubricate your chain. The only lubes we steer clear of are ones like liquid wrench and WD-40; they contain penetrating chemicals that soon dry up. Use fine cycle grease for all bearings.

13. Hub Spanners. Buy a set of two that fit your hubs, either a 13-14 mm set, or a 15-16 mm set. Campagnolo and Park make good ones. They cost a lot, but they are essential to wheel bearing adjustment. Trek makes “Wrench Force” ones that are cheaper and at least as durable.

14. Pedal Spanner. Looks like an oversize hub spanner. Should have a 15-mm end and a 9/16-inch end, to fit different makes of pedals. Get a forged, high-quality one, like the Trek “Wrench Force” one, so it won’t wear out.

15. Spoke Wrench. A cheap little tool that can get you into a lot of expensive trouble. That’s why they’re so cheap, and available at any bike shop that will take on a wheel you ruin. So use ONLY as directed.

16. Y Socket Tool. A nifty little thing that fits easily in your hand, fits all of the 8-, 9-, and 10-mm bolts and nuts on bikes, and gives you enough leverage to tighten them, but not strip them, if you take it easy. You can also get a Y Allen key tool, as described in the MINI-KIT section above.

17. Headset Spanner. If you have a road bike or a cruiser, consider getting a wrench that fits the top locknut and the threaded race on your headset. This wrench, called a headset spanner, looks somewhat like a hub spanner, but is much larger. If you have a threadless headset, as most mountain bikes and hybrid bikes do, you won’t need this tool.

18. Chain Whip and/or Freewheel Remover. A chain whip is a short length of bike chain with a handle attached. A freewheel remover is a big nut with either splines or two prongs on it, depending on what kind of free- wheel it fits. You only need these tools for changing the gear cogs or sprockets on your rear wheel. Unless you ride lots and ride hard, you won’t have to do this job more than once or twice a decade, so you might want to skip this tool and let a shop take care of free- wheel switches. Older bikes have freewheels that require a remover. Newer bikes have cassettes for the cogs, which require use of a narrow freewheel remover to unscrew a lockring on the cassette and a chain whip to hold the cogs still while you unscrew that lockring.

19. Third Hand. A springy, curvy little wire thing made for holding brake shoes against the wheel. Bike shops have them.

20. Crank remover tool. Rarely needed; consists of a threaded outer part that screws into the hole for your crank mounting bolt, and a threaded post in the middle that pushes against the end of your axle to pull the crank off of it. Get one that fits your cranks if you work on your bike lots and don’t want to depend on a shop or bike mechanic friend for one.

21. Spare Parts. Spokes (exactly the same sizes as the ones on your wheels, of course), brake and gear cables, a few links of chain (like the extra links you get when you replace your chain), and maybe an elastic “bungee” cord or two.

FOUND AND BORROWED TOOLS

You’d he amazed at the things you can use for tools if you’re stuck out in the middle of nowhere. A stone or rock becomes a hammer or an anvil. A stick becomes a lever. A tree limb be comes a bike stand. Hey, we humans got along fine with such tools for millions of years. And then there are the tools that you can borrow from a friendly farmer or woods- person. We’ve met many farmers who chased us off their land for trespassing, but we’ve never met a country mechanic who wouldn’t let us use a wrench or a pair of channel lock pliers if we asked politely. In fact, we have more trouble trying to politely tell backwoods mechanics that we’d rather fix the bike ourselves, rather than turning it over to them. We’ll never forget the guy who wanted to take his welding torch to our bent Cinelli forks.

WHERE TO GET TOOLS AND PARTS

We recommend you get all parts and tools from the shop where you got your bike. Then you’ll be sure to get stuff that fits, and you’ll be giving the shop valued business. If you don’t live within 50 miles of a shop, you can get a catalog for tools and parts; see the latest issue of a bike magazine, such as Bicycling Magazine, for catalog ads -- or check their web site. Whatever you do, though, don’t go into a shop and use up lots of their time and energy finding out what part or tool fits your bike, and then leave the shop and order the part or tool online or mail-order catalog. That may save you a little money, but it will cost you a lot of respect from the bike shop. Next time you have a pretzled wheel, they may not be willing to straighten it. And catalogs can’t straighten wheels. Nor can they affect whether you are respected or not by the local cycling com munity.

Next: Brakes

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