Carbon Fiber: What Does It Do For My Bike?

Blog Tags: 

Carbon Fiber in ColorCarbon fiber is a material that is relatively new in the biking world but has been around since the 50s when it was first developed, in a weaker, low carbon version, by a guy named Roger Bacon in Cleveland, Ohio. It was further developed in Japan and Great Britain in the 60s, with Rolls-Royce taking the baton and leading with innovations in the development of jet engine parts.

How to Bleed Magura Hydraulic Brakes

Company: 

I’ll probably repeat it a bah-jillion times but it is worth repeating: if you are bleeding hydraulic brakes, mineral oil and DOT fluid ARE NOT INTERCHANGABLE! It’s kind of like when they tell you not to put diesel in a regular gas engine. And in this case, super faulty braking can be the result. Thing is that DOT fluid is classified by number, from 1 to 5. The higher the number, the more head the fluid can resist therefore helping the braking accuracy when you are super grinding on the brakes, especially you downhill folk.

Like Shimano, Magura brakes DO NOT USE DOT FLUID. DON’T BE A NIMROD! YOU’LL SCREW UP YOUR BRAKES!

Okay, so the bleed procedure is normally from caliper UP TO the lever. You’ll want to remove your wheel.

DON’T GRIP THE LEVER WHILE THE CALIPER IS NOT ON THE ROTOR! Doing this will cause the pistons to too far and it’ll take a hell of a while to get your pistons functioning again. All you have to do is once you’ve got the wheel and the brake pads out, slip a caliper block where the pads were so that you can keep the pistons well separated. If you don’t have one of these blocks, use a 10mm hex wrench.

Remove the bleeding screw and attach the prepared syringe with mineral oil. Make sure there are no air bubbles in the syringe. The point of this process is to get the dirty oil and the bubbles that may be stuck in different points of the mechanism out, both of which can cause shoddy braking so making you’re not putting in more bubbles will mean less work for you.

Up top, make sure you turn the reservoir level so that when you take off the lid, you don’t dump all the fluid on the floor or on your bike. If you have a mechanism like the one in the video, use a syringe.
Proceed to depress the syringe slowly and then retract. If you have an open-top reservoir, depress until the liquid is about level and right before overflow. Do that several times to make sure you get all the bubbles out.

Give your lever a squeeze and see if there is resistance. If not, keep at it. Once you get the proper resistance, close up the reservoir and carefully clean it. Do the same with the bleed port at the caliper. Use a rag to catch the oil that may come out when you remove the tubing.

There are some recommendations I would make in addition to those the guy in the video made: 1. Wear gloves; 2. Don’t use the same rag that you used to clean the caliper of oil, to hold the brake pads (they can get contaminated and lead to faulty braking) and; 3. Clean off everything of mineral oil BEFORE putting the brake pads in and the caliper on the frame.

How to Ride on a Roller

Blog Tags: 

You look at the damn thing and think “Who is the insane bastard who decided this was safe and necessary for biking?” But lots of people use them and the argument is that it’s more of a natural movement (albeit on a flat surface) in comparison to using a trainer. With a trainer, you mount your rear tire on the roller but it does elevate you slightly so if you don’t have a riser, the feeling of you going slightly downwards is a little disconcerting.

How to Adjust a Caliper Brake

Adjusting a caliper brake is pretty straightforward.

First off, loosen up the cable anchor bolt with an allen wrench. Make sure the quick release lever on the caliper is closed and not opened. Next, close the caliper with your hand to right about where you’d like them to be, in terms of distance of the brake pads from the rim.

If your brake pads are not perfectly on the rim and are either angled up or down, loosen the bolt that holds the pads in place. Close the caliper to position.

Brake Caliper Descriptive

How to Remove and Install a Shimano Cassette

Company: 

First things first: a freewheel is not a cassette. There are several differences between the two. In a cassette, the ratcheting mechanism is part of the hub and is integrated, not screwed on. A freewheel is threaded onto the hub. A way to tell is to look for a flat lockring on top of the smallest cog. If it has splines or grooves, it is a cassette and not a freewheel.

Freewheel vs Cassette

Cassettes are used more typically nowadays, whereas freewheels can be found on older bikes.

You also have to remember that most companies make their freehubs non-compatible with cassettes from other companies. So if you have a Shimano cassette and need to replace a cog, a Campagnolo will never work because they are splined differently.

In order to remove the cassette, you’ll need a freewheel or a cassette lockring removal tool (make sure you get one specific to the group you have on your bike because some tools are handle-like and others are cyclindrical; due to the explanation above regarding the specific splines of each make, you will have to obtain a tool for your particular cassette), a wrench (if you have a handle-like cassette removal tool, you won’t need this) and a chain whip.

Secure the chain whip to the cassette. Take out the skewer and insert the removal tool. Adjust the crescent wrench on the tool and place it at an angle. If the wheel were a clock face, you’d hold it at 10 o’clock. Holding the tire upright, press down on the cassette tool or wrench.  Depending how hard you ride your wheels or how much you’ve ridden can affect how tightly wound the cassette is to the hub.

To put on a new cassette, lightly grease the freehub, line up the splines with each cog and then put on the lockring and tighten by hand. Use the cassette tool to finish tightening and you are ready to go!

 

How to Adjust Your Road Bike Brakes

Adjusting your road bike brakes is a pretty straightforward matter. And faulty braking, at any level, is something you don’t want.

First, you’ll want to look at what is going on. Maybe the brake pads aren’t the correct distance from the rim. In order to correct that, check to see if the caliper mounting bolt is screwed in tight. Then assess and make sure the tires are correctly placed in their dropouts and see how much, if at all, are they not centered in the caliper bridge.

Check your brake pads. If they are worn, replace them. To toe them in correctly, loosen the pad mount bolt and grip your brake lever to position them directly onto the rim. Make sure you clear both the tire and the spoke edge. If not, consistent braking will form a lip on the pad and if that is on the tire side, it will cause a blow out.

Look for the adjustment barrel and while gripping the brakes with your hand, turn the barrel counterclockwise to bring the pads closer to the rim or clockwise to move it outwards.

If your barrel has been turned all the way out or in, and you still need to do some more adjustments, you can bust out your allen wrench and fiddle around with the cable tension on the side of the caliper. Loosen the bolt that is holding the cable. Grip the caliper to where you want it, pull the cable tense and then tighten the bolt. 

How to Change Gears on a Bike

Bike Category: 

Changing gears on a bike is the heart of what may make or break your biking experience. Even though a mountain bike is featured in this tutorial, the information can easily be applied to road and triathlon bikes.

What you need to remember is that the rear derailleur is controlled by your right hand and the front derailleur is controlled by your left hand. What normally tends to happen (unless you are constantly in changing terrain) is that you adjust the freewheel (left hand) setting first and then play with the combinations on the back.

On your rear derailleur, the bigger the sprocket, the lower the gear. So say you’re pedaling along and you come to a hill. Inclines require that you have a faster cadence, which means pedaling faster but with less resistance. This is so that you don’t screw up your rhythm and can make it up the hill without grinding or pumping the pedals as you go, reducing the danger of falling. The same principle can be applied to anywhere where there is loose terrain as well, such as sand.

When you’re coming off that same hill, you want to go into higher gears so that you have a bit of leverage and catch to pedal harder and to get more speed. You may want to go to the biggest chainring in the front for more power and speed downhill. The smallest chainring is for those tough climbs or very loose surfaces.

It is highly recommendable that you do these gear shifts before you hit the bottom of the hill or the stretch of sand. What can happen if you are changing gears while going up a hill, for example, is that you can put a lot of strain on your chain and it can cause it to weaken. This can also happen in crossgear situations, when you have the chain running from polar opposite points from the back to the front. This action can really stretch out your chain, resulting in a possible chain replacement or (if you ride enough with a stretch in your chain) a chainring and cassette replacement (super costly) as well. 

How to Adjust Shimano STI Shifters

Company: 

“STI” stands for “Shimano Total Integration” and it refers to the fact that the gear shifter and the brakes can be accessed in the same lever.

How it works is that the lever is a vertical one that if you pull the lever towards you, you operate the brake. If you push it in towards the bike, you operate the shifters.

In order to adjust them, you can do several things:

By this time, if you think you need to adjust your shifters, you probably have a good idea of whether it is the front derailleur or the back one. Check your cables: if they are frayed, rusted or corroded, you'll have to get new ones installed. For that, I've uploaded a rather long video on how to replace that (1st vid) and actually clean the shifter mechanism itself.

If it's not the cables, then it'll be the derailleurs. Adjusting the front and the rear are based on the same principles: alignment and cable tension.

If you hear a weird noise (like a metallic rub) then that may be more a case of incorrect alignment of the derailleur. If so, check out the post on that.

To check for proper cable tension, pull on the cables that are on your down tube or top tube. If you can pull your cables off your frame with any sort of ease, you'll need more tension. Adjust this by using your barrel adjusters. On STIs, check where the cable comes out of the shifters on your handlebars. Near the body of the shifter, there will be a piece that can twist. This is the barrel adjuster, which you need to give a turn or two. Run through your shifting again.

This process is via trial and error. You'll know if you've overdone it when it doesn't shift crisply up and down.

Shimano Tiagra STI Shifters

How to Adjust a Shimano Rapidfire Shifter

Company: 

Shimano XTR Rapidfire Shifters

Shimano Rapidfire Shifters are used on upright handlebars and use a mechanism that consists of a thumb and an index finger trigger. The thumb moves you to a larger sprocket and the index finger usually takes you to a smaller sprocket.

Like a trigger on a gun, the Shimano Rapidfire Shifters click over briskly. This is a very popular option, as trigger shifters are the more common option on a bike.

The right shifter controls the rear derailleur and the left shifter controls the front derailleur. 

These types of shifters are usually found on mountain bikes. 

How to Adjust a Grip Shift Bike Shifter

Company: 

SRAM Grip Shift

Grip shifters are basically rings that twist on the handlebar itself. They differ from the trigger shifters in that they don’t have a lever extending from the handlebar, creating a bit of a cleaner look. People opt for grip shifters for a variety of reasons, mostly for aesthetics and/or for the rapidness with which you can shift from one gear to another.

To shift gears, all you have to do is to twist with your thumb and forefinger.

The right shifter controls the rear derailleur and the left controls the front derailleur.

The most popular make of grip shifters is Sram but there are other brands so make sure you do your comparison shopping. 

These types of shifters are normally found on a mountain bike. 

Shifting with Grip Shifters