Essential Bicycle Maintenance & Repair This page intentionally left blank. Essential Bicycle Maintenance & Repair Daimeon Shanks Human Kinetics Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Shanks, Daimeon, 1980- Essential bicycle maintenance & repair / Daimeon Shanks. p. cm. ISBN 978-1-4504-0707-6 (soft cover) -- ISBN 1-4504-0707-2 (soft cover) 1. Bicycles--Maintenance and repair--Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Title. TL430.S48 2012 629.28'772--dc23 2012004823 ISBN-10: 1-4504-0707-2 (print) ISBN-13: 978-1-4504-0707-6 (print) Copyright © 2012 by Daimeon Shanks All rights reserved. Except for use in a review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying, and recording, and in any information storage and retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher. 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Box 5076 57A Price Avenue Champaign, IL 61825-5076 Lower Mitcham, South Australia 5062 800-747-4457 08 8372 0999 e-mail: [email protected] e-mail: [email protected] Canada: Human Kinetics New Zealand: Human Kinetics 475 Devonshire Road Unit 100 P.O. Box 80 Windsor, ON N8Y 2L5 Torrens Park, South Australia 5062 800-465-7301 (in Canada only) 0800 222 062 e-mail: [email protected] e-mail: [email protected] Europe: Human Kinetics 107 Bradford Road Stanningley Leeds LS28 6AT, United Kingdom +44 (0) 113 255 5665 e-mail: [email protected] E5443 Contents Foreword ix ■ Acknowledgments xi ■ Preface xiii 1 The Modern Road Bike . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..1 Understanding Your Bike and How It Works .................................. 2 Building Your Home Tool Kit............................................... 7 Setting Up Your Home Workshop ......................................... 14 2 Basic Maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..15 Preride Checks ....................................................... 16 Postride Checks....................................................... 17 Tune-Ups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 3 Frame and Fork. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..23 Installing a Headset.................................................... 24 Installing a Fork ....................................................... 32 Repairing a Frame..................................................... 34 4 Handlebars and Stem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..39 Installing and Adjusting Stems and Handlebars.............................. 40 Wrapping the Handlebars............................................... 43 Installing Grips........................................................ 45 Working With Special Styles of Bars ....................................... 45 5 Saddles and Seatposts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..53 Installing a Seatpost ................................................... 54 Installing a Saddle..................................................... 55 Adjusting an Integrated Seat Mast ........................................ 59 6 Wheels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..65 Adjusting Skewers..................................................... 66 Truing a Wheel........................................................ 68 Replacing Spokes and Nipples........................................... 75 Adjusting Hubs ....................................................... 79 Making Special Wheel Repairs ........................................... 82 v vi Contents 7 Tires. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..95 Installing Clincher Tires................................................. 96 Repairing a Flat Clincher Tire ............................................ 98 Installing a Tubeless Tire............................................... 101 Repairing a Tubeless Tire .............................................. 102 Installing a Tubular Tire ................................................ 104 Repairing a Tubular Flat................................................ 106 8 Brakes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..109 Installing a Brake Lever................................................ 110 Installing Brakes .....................................................111 Installing and Adjusting Brake Pads ...................................... 112 Installing a Brake Cable and Housing..................................... 113 Installing and Adjusting Special Brakes ................................... 115 9 Cranks and Chainrings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..125 Installing Cartridge and External Bottom Brackets........................... 126 Installing Adjustable Bottom Brackets..................................... 127 Installing BB30 Bottom Brackets......................................... 129 Installing BB90 and Other Press-Fit Bottom Brackets......................... 131 Installing Shimano and SRAM External Bottom Brackets and BB30 Cranks ....... 133 Installing Campagnolo Ultra-Torque Cranks ................................ 135 Installing and Replacing Chainrings ...................................... 136 10 Shifters and Derailleurs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..141 Installing Shifters ..................................................... 142 Installing Cable and Housing ........................................... 143 Installing and Adjusting the Rear Derailleur ................................ 146 Installing and Adjusting the Front Derailleur ................................ 148 Troubleshooting Shifting ............................................... 151 Installing and Adjusting Special Shifters and Derailleurs ...................... 152 11 Chains and Cogsets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..163 Installing Chains ..................................................... 164 Installing a Freewheel ................................................. 169 Installing a Cassette .................................................. 170 Maintaining and Repairing Chains and Cassettes ........................... 172 12 Pedals and Cleats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..175 Installing Pedals...................................................... 176 Installing Cleats on Shoes.............................................. 177 Maintaining Pedals and Cleats .......................................... 182 Contents vii 13 Achieving the Perfect Fit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..189 Frame Fit ........................................................... 190 Saddle Height ....................................................... 192 Crank Length........................................................ 193 Saddle and Cleat Position.............................................. 194 Handlebar Width and Height............................................ 196 Stem Length......................................................... 196 Special Fit Cases..................................................... 197 Appendix: Choosing and Working With a Bike Shop 199 Glossary 201 About the Author 207 This page intentionally left blank. Foreword T he world of professional cycling is a tense one. Inside the peloton a mistake of 1 inch can mean many trips to the hospital. A fractional error in tactics can mean the loss of the most important of races. A minute mistake in management can mean the loss of a multimillion-dollar sponsor. Most of this high-stakes tension plays out in the press and on TV screens across the world for all viewers to pontificate on. However, the one element that causes more tension inside a team, behind the curtains, and outside public view is the mechanical side of cycling. Cycling, by nature, is a unique combination of human and machine. If the human breaks, no race can be won. However, the same is true for the machine. Much is spent on perfecting training, nutrition, and physical therapy techniques to keep the human engine from breaking. But unbeknownst to most, just as much effort is spent on ensuring the machines don’t break. Mechanics for professional cycling teams must be absolutely precise in their work, because any flaw could mean a loss of millions of dollars for the sponsor and team. Even the small mistake could cause a failure leading to a crash, injuries, and even death. To say their work inside a team is important is an enormous understatement. The riders at the professional level put the bike through stresses most do not, all the while demanding the lightest equipment—which sometimes makes it fragile and prone to breakage. The riders must trust the work that’s been done on their bikes, beyond a doubt, so they can get on with their high-speed work. It’s a tightrope, and few mechanics can take the pressure of walking it—all this while being asked to live in hotels year round and improvise when proper replacement equipment can’t be found on the never-ending road. The pressure the mechanic crews live under is every bit as intense as that of the riders, and they take their work every bit as seriously. You may not get to see them on TV, but no team is ever a winning team without a top wrench. Daimeon Shanks came to my professional team while it was still a growing and blossoming dream. We were far from the best, the largest, or the best funded back then. As with any small start-up, the hurdles were numerous and the hours were very long. Despite still being a scrappy start-up, mainly based on hope rather than results or real organization, we were given an invitation to the inaugural Tour of California in 2006. However, unlike the largest pro teams, we were low on the sponsorship totem pole when it came to delivery times for our equipment. We had received our shipment of new bikes and parts just a few days before the biggest event of this small team’s brief history. Our sponsors demanded that we use the new equipment, and not any from the year before, so we were faced with the task of building all the bikes up for an entire team in such a short time. And my other mechanic had just quit in frustration. I had one person to rely on: Daimeon Shanks. “Daimo,” as we all knew him, was an angst-filled young wrench with a lot of ambi- tion and drive. That much was obvious to me, right from the start. Whether or not his unique energy could be precise enough for the high-stakes game of professional cycling remained to be seen, but he was all I had in that moment. Over the next few ix x Foreword days, he worked 24 hours a day, literally, building and tuning every one of our bikes. His bloodshot eyes still smiled because he was doing what he loved, and the challenge of doing something no other mechanics could do in the pro peloton appealed to him in some sort of sadistic way. By the start of the race, all the bikes were built. Now, it’s one thing to have put all these bikes together in such short time; it’s quite another to have them actually work. No mechanic I’d ever met (or met since) could accomplish this as a solo act. My assumption was that the first day of the race would be riddled with shifting problems, bolts coming loose, and maybe even a rolled tire. So, with crossed fingers of both hands on the steering wheel, I drove behind stage 1 of the Tour of California, waiting for disaster. Twenty miles passed with no prob- lem, then thirty, then halfway. . . . We made it to the end of stage one without even a complaint from a single rider. I was amazed and forever indebted to Daimo. —Jonathan Vaughters Former racer and current manager of the Garmin-Barracuda professional team