Professional Cycling

For the not so profi cyclists that don’t have their own mechanic and car with extra parts, lets make a list with a few tools that may come in handy when you’re on the road.

First of all, you need something on your bike to put the tools in. We know a few different places where you can put luggage on your bike, the main places are under your saddle and in your frame.

Most of the bike shops have an big assortment of saddlebags coming in various sizes.

Choose one that is easy to get to, with handy zippers and not too voluminous to stick-out and chafe your thighs. Let your own taste decide what kind of bag/tool holder you like, as long as its small, easy to get to and doesn’t hinder while cycling.

The tools are more important, here is a quick list of what i bring with me on an average ride:

Spare tire, Spoke-spanner, tire lifter, glue, small piece of sandpaper, a bike tool with imbus/chain tool.

When I’m off for a few days, and need to traverse some rougher country, I’ll take some extra spokes with me, just in case….. Today, you wont need to bring a device with which you can change your cassette since the triple almost everybody with a bike that’s older than 2000 will have enough gearing to ride everything that has asphalt on it. If you have a double gear at the front, you might bring some extra crones to change your gears accordingly to the landscape your riding through.

I’m using a Topeak mini tool which carries almost all the things listed above, its good if you have a cycle that is well kept, its of no use if you need it on rusted or corroded parts. Its not that strong and doesn’t give enough leverage to apply a lot of power.

Now, the only thing you need is knowledge of how to change everything on your bike when necessary for this you have lots and lots of books, websites and bicycle stores.

to make it easy, I’ll give a bunch of links to bicycle maintenance with some nice “you-tube” videos.

Repairing spokes

Fixing a broken chain

fixing derailleur problems

Okay, we’ll leave it at this for the moment, just remember that steady maintenance keeps you from getting to soon in too much trouble.

to be continued.

One of the most tricky things on your bike, the derailleur, its the key-machine in why you’re riding a road/off road race bicycle, to be able to shift gears.

What if the gears don’t shift easily anymore? or what if your cable breaks during training or tour?

I’ll try to give a short explanation on how and why, just enough to get you back on the road in no time at all.

During your rides, the cable may get a little off tension, that way you notice this is because the gears shift a little less fluently and the noise your derailleur makes gets louder. At one moment your gears may shift out of itself when you hit a bump in the road or when you apply a lot of pressure on the pedals. This means you have to tune your derailleur back to its efficient place.

One of the things most bikes have is a tuning wheel on the cable that leads from the gear shifters to the derailleur, with this you can increase or decrease the tension on the cable for a little bit, an increase in tension leads to a shift towards a lighter gear, a decrease shifts towards a heavier gear. Big sprockets are lighter and smaller sprockets are heavier. The only thing is that you’ll get problems with shifting to the out-most gears, so when you change the tension on the cable most of the gears will run smoothly except for the lightest and the heaviest gear.

Below a picture of the derailleur to make the you-tube video a little more comprehensible.

Follow the you-tube below for adjustments made on the derailleur itself.

If you want to get in to it to become a bicycle mechanic, check this link .

see ya

Ever had to quit a ride because the chain broke? No? Well, you’re lucky then, because when you’re in the mountains or in a deserted place somewhere upcountry you can’t hike back to known territory within reasonable time and hoping someone will find you and give you a ride back is also not preferable…

So here is a compact description of how to repair a broken chain:

First of all you need a chain tool, this is a tool that by screwing a piece of metal through the chain you push the chain apart. see the picture on the left.

just pick a link in the chain, apply the tool and twist it until the pin from the chain link is almost pushed out of the chain.

The first few twists need some force, and you’ll probably hear a snap, once you heard the snap the rest is easy going.

Once the chain is opened, you can twist it a little and separate the links.

Remember, that when you do a quick repair because its broken you have to remove a pair of links of the chain, cause its hard to fit two outer links together see picture above for detail.

For a more visual detail:

Good luck!

Once again, you-tube will give us some simple explanations by showing some vids.

I found a couple of you-tube bike maintenance vids. pretty handy if you ever get mechanical problems in an place far far away from any mechanical bike shop.

I had on a trip through Italy, my spokes gave way under the pressure of my luggage and I had to fix them myself. Using a spoke wrench, my home bought spare spokes and my very good hearing helped me back on the road.

Funny thing was, I had no idea how I could fix the spoke and keep my wheel from falling apart on the next bump in the road, I figured that the tune of the tension on the spokes should be the same, so with a little bit of gut feeling I began to put tension on the spokes and tried to get all the tunes in line…… luckily in knew how to turn my spokes to get them tight or loose. but if you don’t watch the vid below.

about tuning your wheels, fixing spokes etc.

for the really beginners here’s a vid about fixing your flat tires.

This I can show when my girlfriend is asking me again if I can fix her tire… tiring