After a while, your cables will need a little work. If you live by the ocean, have wet weather or ride through mud, you’re going to have humidity issues and possible rusting going on. And in order for your gears to work, your derailleur cables need to be in tip-top shape.

Here’s how you can string them.

First things first: derailleur cables and brake cables are NOT interchangeable so please make sure you get the proper cable.

Next, move your chain down to the smallest cog on the freewheel so that the cable has the least amount of tension on it. Clip off the ferrule (or the end cap) that is nearest to your derailleur, untighten the anchor bolt to release the cable and proceed to remove the cable and the respective housing off the bike.

Measure off the cable and the housing. If you have wound cable housing, make sure you have proper cutters for the job.

You know how sometimes your gears don’t change with firm frankness? When they don’t snap into action like German watch works or have the precision of the pistons in an F1? Or even when they react like the voice automated system that understands “Constitution Hall” as “Congressional Balls”?

If this is the case, you may need to check your derailleurs.

As with anything, this complex procedure gets easier to figure out with time and practice.

So let’s go through the steps.

Watching these YouTube videos, I am pleasantly surprised when someone can make a bike tutorial funny. Why I was pissing myself laughing at this particular video had to do probably with the deadpan tone of the narrator’s voice, in a Canadian accent, making little puns. It was pretty endearing.

How often you overhaul bike hubs depends, as always, on how you ride. If you’re off-roading it, you’ll probably want to do that once a year. Roadies will probably need to be doing it every other year. In both cases, if you go underwater (riding through huge puddles/lakes/swimming pool), get an overhaul as soon as you can. Things will rust and your ride will be crap.

You will need:

Cone wrench

Regular wrench

A magnet

Screwdriver

Grease (preferably not of the vegetable-based variety)

Degreaser

It is recommendable that you put in new bearings, seeing as that you’re already in there anyway. They are cheap and it’s better to err on the side of caution than not.

How To Adjust a Mountain Bike Rear Derailleur

Whether you mountain bike down edgy rock gardens or slog out singletrack switch backs, glitchy gears can aggravate. Since, they are also dangerous, it is important to adjust the rear derailleur of your mountain bike right away.

One of the ways you can keep your bike riding smoothly is by giving it a good cleaning, both inside and out. Overhauling a bottom bracket will most likely not be in your weekly cleaning regimen and depending on how you ride, you might not even have to really look at it too much. But it is a good thing to know how to do when the time comes.

For this task, you will need several things:

1. Crank puller
2. 17 mm open end wrench
3. Adjustable wrench
4. Bottom bracket wrench
5. Pin Spanner
6. Hooked lockring wrench
7. 36 mm wrench
8. Solvent 
9. Grease

Keep rags on hand so that you can keep your hands and your bike clean. Small trays or containers are also handy when you take out the parts, and especially the ball bearings, so that you won’t lose them. And buying ball bearings can be a pain in the ass.

I like being thorough and bike mechanics requires a lot of attention to detail. If you don’t get it right the first time, your ride suffers. And the level of competence, time and patience can result in either a good ride or an accident.

This tutorial is about how to install a bottom bracket, which is the point on the frame around which your pedals revolve. 

There are different types of bottom brackets.

You’ve got the cup-and-cone.

You’ve got the cartridge. That tool above the crank arm is what will be used to remove the bracket.

And the one-piece crank bottom bracket. 

Up in Washington state there lives a man, by the name of Ed Orcutt.  By some miraculous chain of events he holds public office, and yet he believes a bicyclist burns just as much CO2 as someone driving a car.  This story brings together everything that is wrong with transportation policy in America.  The story was first broke by the Seattle bike blog.  Ed made the clam in an email exchange with a local bike shop owner, who opposed a new bike tax in Washington's transportation budget.

Riding with ill-placed handlebar tape sucks. To make sure you don't have unsightly gaps and do it properly, you need a couple of things:

1. Handlebar tape
2. Scissors
3. Finishing tape (electrical tape works well)
4. Handlebar end caps (they usually come with your tape)

Make sure you start the wrap from the bottom of the handlebar and work your way up. Leave a little overlap off the edge of the bar when you start so that you can tuck it in with the caps after you finish. As you work your way up, overlap in the ballpark of 1/4 of an inch. Overlap too much and you won't have enough tape when you get to the end. Overlap too little and you'll have huge gaps showing. 

When you’re shopping for accessories, it’s good to keep your options open. Kickstarter’s motto is “Fund & Follow Creativity” and the projects on their site speak for themselves, among which are that necessary staple of every biker, the bike light. What you learn when you go through all these videos, however, are two things:

As bikers, we all want to be spoiled for choice. The Triathlete wouldn’t dare ride their carbon fiber cheese slicer to the corner shop nor would the Downhiller even dream of busting out the double-suspension 29er for a coffee run.

Solution? Why not give a carbon belt drive bike a spin for your commuter money?