Bicycling Miscellany: Maintenance
Over the past few months, I’ve been re-reading my back catalog of cycling magazines, pulling out points that I thought were worth remembering and/or sharing. This second installment contains some tricks for maintaining your bike.
Blue Dawn dish soap really is a high strength grease cutter, which makes it appropriate for some (but certainly not all) areas of cleaning the bike.
There's an apocryphal story that rubbing a bit of toothpaste on the clear plastic surface of your cyclo-computer will clear up scratches on its surface. It's worth a try, anyways.
Another dubious suggestion is to apply Rain-X protectant to your (sun)glasses if you're riding in the rain. While this might help keep your glasses clear, be sure to test it out before using it on plastic lenses!
Whenever you replace a tube or tire, if you align the tire's label with the tube's valve stem, it'll be easier for you to inspect both the tire and tube when you get your next puncture.
The handles of the quick release skewers in your hubs go on the left (non-drive) side of the bike. If your tires only have labels on one side, the labels go on the right (drive) side.
In addition to the usual items in your seat pack (spare tube, patch kit, multitool, tire levers), carry a Ziploc bag with Ibuprofin, a cleat screw, and chain replacement links/pins.
Consider also carrying a Presta/Schrader valve adapter. You can put this in that Ziploc, or just leave it installed on one of your valves.
To lubricate your shift cables, shift into the large chainring and cog, then shift all the way down without turning the cranks. This'll make it easy to remove the cable housing from its stops, so you can wipe and lube the cable before replacing it.
Whenever you remove your rear wheel, shift down to the smallest cog. This will make removing and replacing the wheel easier.
The right pedal goes on clockwise, and the left pedal counterclockwise. The left pedal and the right side of the bottom bracket are the only parts on the bike that are reverse threaded (that is, they don’t follow the “righty-tighty, lefty-loosy” rule).
When hand-truing a wheel, use the barrel adjusters to trim the brake blocks to give you a fixed point to eyeball your rim’s wobble, just like a truing stand.
Clockwise is tighter when you are looking at the spoke through the rim. Remember that on the rear wheel, drive-side spokes are more heavily tensioned than non-drive side.
When replacing a chain, use a bent paper clip or coathanger to keep the chain taut while you install the connecting link. That way you don’t need four hands.
When your chainring teeth start showing wear, you may be able to preserve them by rotating them a quarter turn on the crank, so that different parts of the ring are now at the power stroke points. This may not be feasible however with new chainrings that are designed to assist shifting.