She's a real left winger 'cause she been down south

[venta]

Hurrah. Go me. For the first time that I remember, I've just managed to change an inner tube on the back wheel of my bike without assistance.

I mean, I know how to do it - but there's always been a bit where I've just lacked the brute force to carry it out by myself. Usually either getting the tyre back on the wheel, or getting the wheel back on

Comments

[sammason]

Well done! You may be a brute but you're a skilful brute.

[venta]

Thank you :)

And relating to a comment of yours on your own journal earlier... a (male) colleague of mine did sit and chat to me throughout and, even when I was struggling a bit, didn't muscle in. I know from long experience that he's extremely willing to help out if asked, but he did sit back and let me get on with it.

[bateleur]

Brute force FTW! :-D

Which probably requires me to understand the adjustment of derailleur gears.

That particular task proved to be the limit of by own cycle maintenance skills. Or rather, slightly beyond the limit. :-(

Technically I did adjust my derailleur, but the result was more surprising than helpful.

[venta]

I do intend to prioritise the understanding over the adjustment.

Whether that works out remains to be seen ;)

[hirez]

(The late) Sheldon Brown.

[feanelwa]

You could pop a mole wrench round the valve to stop it disappearing into the hole when you push the pump on, maybe.

I found a solution to putting tyres back on and now I can't remember what it was. I think it was to have several sets of tyre levers and use two in each hand or something. Doing it indoors definitely helped over doing it outside in the winter.

[venta]

Mole wrench would work - or a small, plastic clamp thingy which would be lighter to carry around.

I was changing tyres outside, but in reasonably nice weather. It is now chucking it down - the weather politely waited for me to finish and get indoors. This is in itself suspicious and probably means that some form of catastrophic weather misfortune is going to befall me later in the week.

[pm215]

Huh. I thought Presta and Schrader valves had different diameters such that you had to use the one that was the correct size for the hole in your wheel rim...

[undyingking]

There is a third kind of valve, the Dunlop, which is the same diameter as the Schrader but which fits a Presta pump. And I guess is often elided with Presta for casual purposes?

[pm215]

IME Dunlop/Woods valves are almost nonexistent for actual bikes here. I had a rental bike in Japan once with Woods valves and they were a complete pain in the neck. They also have a comedy user-error mode where you can take the middle of the valve out completely resulting in the sudden total deflation of the tyre you were hoping to pump up a little...

[venta]

The valves are certainly different diameters; the Schrader valves are rather wider-bore. I hadn't really thought about it, and assumed they were interchangeable.

Certainly the front wheel is the one which originally came with the bike, and came with a Presta valve on it. The back wheel was replaced relatively recently, and I guess the shop that replaced it put the same tyre and (Presta) tube back on after replacement. I then put a Schrader tube on the back wheel without problems...

[pm215]

It looks like Schwalbe's schraeder-valve inner tubes come with the threaded retaining nut thingy, incidentally, as do Continentals, in case you have a preference for the valve in some other respect.