I recently bought a junk bike. I want to slowly fix it up myself for two reasons: 1. To have a nicer bike. 2. To learn about bike maintenance. I’d like to improve it slowly (weeks or months) while keeping it functional. What order should I consider improvements?
I’ll elaborate. When I first bought the bike, I tuned the brakes (linear pull). I struggled. I realized brake tuning was difficult because my wheel wasn’t aligned. In retrospect, I should have straightened/replaced the wheel before tuning the brakes. I’m wondering if there are any insights you could provide about the order I should tackle this project (e.g., wheel alightment before brakes).
When I was coming up learning about maintenance, this site was a life saver:
I did a similar thing many years ago, so take this with a grain of salt.
Your wheels need to be true. Have a pro do it at a shop, because that’s a skill that takes practice and you don’t want to fuck it up. If your wheels aren’t true, everything else will suck.
Your bike has four important sets of bearings, in order of importance: rear axle, bottom bracket, front axle, and head tube where the fork inserts. They should all spin freely and with minimal resistance. Whether you can service them or not depends on the style and make for each component. You might be able to take them apart, clean out the gunk, and re-apply grease, but again this is something better left to the experts. If you fuck up your bearings, your buying a bunch of new parts.
Once the wheels are true and the bearings are clean and lubricated, you can start on the DIY stuff. Changing a tire is probably the first thing, but tuning your brakes is also a great place to start. Flip the bike and align the calipers, replace the pads if needed, and then adjust tension until you can stop the bike with a gentle squeeze.
You should also get familiar with your derailleurs and shifters, because fine-tuning your gears will sve a lot of frustration. You can replace the cables in your brakes and shifters the same way you replace the brake lines, but remember that the cables are not typically interchangeable. Brake cables must pull, but shift cables pull and push. Some people like to clean and lubricate old cables, but I’ve always felt like that’s a lot of work to save $2 worth of cable.
Last thing is making sure all of the clamps and bolts are tight. Common problem areas are the seat post and the handlebars. Make sure you can loosen the seat post clamp, the headset and the stem, and adjust heights and angles as needed. Most importantly, you should be able to tighten them down so they don’t move or slip. You don’t want to overtighten, because that’s how clamps and bolts get stripped, but you should be able to get it tight by hand or with tools you carry with you. Older bikes can have worn clamps or bolts, and the posts or bars can slip. You don’t want to be in traffic when your stem comes loose and you can no longer steer.
One thing people tend to focus on is the chain, but unless you are splashing through mud, you probably don’t need one of those fancy machines or expensive lubricants. Wipe off any gunk with a rag, and then apply chain grease once every few months, maybe sooner if you ride in the rain or around a lot of sand or dust. If your derailleurs are properly tensioned, your gears are in good shape, and there’s no rust or bends in the chain, it’s probably fine.
Fantastic comment. Only item I might disagree on is bearings IF the bike has cartridge bearings as those are easy to work with. If it’s cup and cone/loose ball then yea, I’d recommend just letting the shop do it only because cone wrenches are a pretty specific tool.
Lots of bike shops (especially community bike shops) offer inexpensive courses on bike maintenance which are a great option for learning.
Thank you! I think this is exactly what I needed.
I like the concept of drawing the line between DIY and “just take it to the shop”. Based on my minimal knowledge, I purchased a bike that looked like it only needed DIY fixes. Sounds like I should take a closer look at these wheels before I move forward.
Yeah, some things I look for when buying used:
- are the wheels true? - spin it and see if it wobbles; also check tension of a few spokes, they should all feel taut
- is there resistance when pedeling? - change to the lowest gear, lift back tire off the ground, and spin the pedals
- are there any cracks or damage to the frame? - less of a concern for steel frames, a huge concern for carbon fiber, and moderate concern for aluminum
- does it shift smoothly? - run through all of the gears; if there’s multiple chainring cogs, you only need about half of the rear gears to work well per cog
- is the chainring damaged? - it’s not that hard to replace, just kind of expensive; a chainring in good condition will look even on both sides of the teeth, a worn one will look like a shark fin
If there’s frame damage, I just move on to the next. The rest just impacts how much I’ll offer for the bike. I’m not too worried about consumables (brake pads, tires, rear cassette, chain, etc), but the rest can add up.
You’ve gotten a lot of good advice here, however, I don’t think anyone’s mentioned Bike Co-ops. If you have one nearby, it sounds like that would be an ideal spot for you to work on your bike while getting advice from more experienced mechanics.
Sadly, there are no bike co-ops that I know of in my area, but I’ll ask around at some local shops.
That’s definitely a good place to start. You also might want to check out any local Universities/Colleges. My University had a bike shop that was basically a co-op, but it’s officially owned by the Student Union. I took a repair class and regret not continuing to learn by volunteering to work on their donated/salvaged bikes.
The other option might be looking for less formal repair networks. For example I know some groups have repair clinics every-so-often in local parks. Or even local cycling groups, or word of mouth. A lot of people are more than happy to share their passion for bicycles and maybe you can find a mentor.
I had the same problem and just went to a frame with disc brakes and never looked back.
the only other thing like that I can think of is if your derailleur hanger is bent you might not be able to perfect the derailleur operation.
For the first pass, I’ll see how well I can tune the existing hardware. The derailleur hanger looks maybe slightly bent. Hopefully I can at least improve it a bit. I’ll definitely consider disc brakes for the next bike.
you don’t have to get disc brakes either. you can true the wheel in the frame with temporary zip ties to guage distance and a spoke wrench, with the bike upside down or in a stand. I just hate doing it enough to not want to do it to the degree required for brake performance is unaffected.
I would recommend even just a cheapo spoke tension meter from aliexpress or something to make sure you dont over tension any. I like to oil the spoke nipples then loosen or tighten them all to be about the same before starting, and then just get it as close as I can without going too high. too high depends on the spoke guage mostly but if the bike has rim brakes they are probably pretty thick and can take more than the literal toothpicks my current bike has which I have snapped a few of.
Down the line if you do get a bike with disc brakes, cable pull IMO doesn’t offer enough performance improvement to be worthwhile but hydraulic introduces more maintentance procedures. I’ll personally take it over rim wear and truing affecting brakes but it is potentially troublesome work. I have also found that even common aliexpress brands for hydraulic brakes are on par with the name brands in performance and reliability at a fraction of the cost, excluding the absolute top of the line which after testing I don’t feel I’ll ever need anyway.
I definitely didn’t start with truing wheels and adjusting bearings but I tried it when the need arose, it is totally doable. Be careful, watch YouTube videos, get the tools you need, and give it a shot. Spoke wrenches and cone wrenches are cheap. I didn’t bother with a tension gauge, just compared the pitch before and after to get to the right ballpark
