Blue View - Tuning Our Bikes

Me with bike wranglers/nephews, erik and Dan

In a recent blog, I talked about one of our nephews, Erik, who has spent most of his life around bikes. He was a world class road racer, a bike messenger, and a long distance adventure biker among other things, and for a number of years, worked repairing bikes at performance bike shops. He knows bikes.

We had the chance to go camping with him two weeks ago, and he kindly spent a couple hours showing me how to tune, adjust and maintain our new bikes. He went through one of our bikes with me looking over his shoulder, then he patiently watched as I did the same on the second bike... with ‘patiently’ being the key word as I fumbled around trying to get the derailleur just right. 

Bikes have come a long way since I owned a ten speed 35 years ago. They are quite a bit more complicated now, and there seems to be many more adjustments on our new $89 Walmart bikes than I remember there being on my much older, much more expensive bike. When we were done, the bike shifted smoothly through all its 18 gears, the brakes didn’t drag on the rim, the bike braked evenly, and the seat and handlebars were at just the right heights and angles. Thanks to Erik’s expert tutelage, I think that I might be able to keep them that way - and perhaps even head off a few potential problems before they become actual problems.

That said, despite my almost two hours of intensive bike repair training, I don’t think I’m quite qualified to offer advice on bike tuning yet. I know - that’s never stopped me from espousing my vast wisdom on other subjects before, but, instead, I will direct you to some really knowledgeable people. If you don’t have access to your own Erik, you might check out these websites:

Sheldon ‘Wrench’ Brown has a great, albeit a bit dated, website on all things related to bikes and bike maintenance, plus a ton of articles and unusual custom bike designs. By dated, BTW, I don’t mean the information so much as the look. And, if you can’t find what you’re looking for on his site, he includes a number of links to other bike related websites.

Jim Langley is a writer, editor, author, teacher and mechanic about everything to do with bikes. His website which he calls Jim Langely - Bike Aficionado, is great, not only for bike maintenance, but for all aspects of bicycling.

One more website I found that contains a ton of information is this one, which, to quote the website, is the “Complete illustrated Online Bicycle Repair and Maintenance guide for road bikes, Bmx bikes and general bicycles”. It lives up to its name and is a really great resource.

And that’s all  I have to say about that. See you next week.