Things I do to my bike each week
February 28, 2007
I recently bought a Velomann Bike Star repair stand and it has made the biggest difference to being able to maintain my bike myself.
It was such a hassle having to turn my bike over every time I wanted to work on the wheels or gears. The brake and gear levers were awkward to get to resting on the floor, plus they were upside down.
I can now easily clamp the bike off the ground and run through this basic checklist in 20 minutes:
- Clean and oil the chain checking for wear
- Make sure the brake pads are aligned well and the wheels are true
- Check tyre pressures and dig out any flints or shards of glass
- Run through the gears and make adjustments if everything isn’t running smoothly
I’m continually surprised at the size of the flints and pieces of glass I dig out of my tires but I hit 1,600 km without a puncture today so something is working.
March 3, 2007 at 9:08 am
I do most of this stuff but not quite as frequently (every 2-3 weeks), as I do fewer miles than you. And I completely messed up a couple of weeks back, when I forgot to dry and lube my chain when I got home on a cold, wet day. With only 2 days’ standing still, the chain had started to rust.
The picking the glass & flint out of the tyres seems to be paying dividends though – punctures are probably the only thing about cycling that really bugs me, and I use Slime to lessen the effect, but it doesn’t really prevent them. Your ‘personal grooming of the bike’ (think: chimpanzees doing the de-lousing thing) looks like it might be the thing to do.
March 13, 2007 at 9:35 pm
I had a bike mechanic tell me that I should groom my tires AFTER EVER RIDE. I had a stint of 500 miles last year where I got a flat every 25 miles… it was driving me crazy. I had one commute to work where I got 3 flat tires… ran out of tubes and didn’t have any patches, I had to call my buddy Phil to pick me up in his car.
Anyway, I started grooming my tires every trip, and now my flat problems have disappeared.
As for running through the gears…. ah…. the joy of the fixie.