Bike Maintenance

The Bike is OOC

Posted by Bryan on Sep 7, 2009 in Bicycle Parts, Bike Maintenance, Blog | 9 comments

I drove up to my mom’s house for the holiday weekend and as I always do when I’m up there I use my dad’s shop to give my bike a thorough cleaning and tune up. It’s been a month since I’ve done it and I could really tell on my last couple of rides that things felt a little out of sorts. Little did I know how out of sorts they were.

The first thing I always do is give the bike a good cleaning to get all the road grime and build up off. While doing it this time I went ahead and took apart the chain rings and rear derailleur to clean them well. With the rear derailleur off I discovered my first problem. The derailleur hangar has a crack in it. Luckily, my hangar is the replaceable type so it’s done it’s job in not letting the frame crack. The bad part is that it needs to be replaced. I had actually broken my first hangar after only having my bike a few months because of a bad shift. It looks like this crack was a product of age and/or fatigue. I know I’d probably crack under the pressure of carrying an elephant around.

One of the last things I do is clean my rims and the front rim was the last one to get cleaned this morning and it held the last surprise. One of the spokes looks like it’s pulling through the rim and on the break surface side the rim is splitting apart. Not good and actually very dangerous should the rim have decided to fail while riding. I had replaced my rear rim about a year ago due to a similar problem (although the front rim is in much worse condition) so I was probably due to replace the front anyway. It is the original after all.

So, with those two problems it looks like I won’t be cycling until I can get them fixed and I’m not sure when I’ll be able to. Truthfully, I was actually worried something like this might happen with all the riding I’ve been doing but I think the bike held up pretty good considering its age and my weight. I’ll probably take it to the bike shop tomorrow to get an estimate on a rim, hangar, and a few other things that need to be done, and I’ll take it from there. It kinda sucks but I think my century ride is probably in jeopardy. It’s probably in jeopardy anyway if I end up getting the job I want back in Jacksonville.

3 minutes to a better bike ride

Posted by Bryan on Aug 5, 2009 in Bike Maintenance, Blog | 2 comments

All of us have forgotten something when heading out for a bike ride. If we haven’t forgotten something then we’ve overlooked something on our bike that’s caused our ride to not go so good. I had one of those rides yesterday hence the reason for this post (big surprise). If each of us would take just a few short minutes to run through a quick checklist before heading out we could save a lot of heart ache (and feelings of inadequacy in my case). Here’s a few things to check:

Make sure you’ve got your water bottle(s). I forgot mine several weeks ago and didn’t notice until about 10 miles into a 30 mile ride. Not good. They were still sitting on the car bumper when I got back.

Tires are pressurized properly. I used to be very bad about this but now make it a point to check them, and usually touch’em up, before each ride.

Your seat bag is stocked. Open up that seat bag and make sure you’ve got a spare tube, tire irons, multi-tool and whatever else you carry in there. If you’re with a group somebody is bound to have something you need but you don’t want a reputation of being a bum either. If you’re solo and don’t have what you need you’re screwed.

Your clothing is in order. Shorts/bibs and jerseys are no-brainers but some of the other assorted articles you may need are easily forgotten. I’ve forgotten socks, sunglasses or a headband on more than one occasion.

Your bike is mechanically sound. The real reason for this article today. I had the worst ride ever yesterday. My legs were blown after a mile and I couldn’t maintain any kind of respectable speed. I was getting passed by EVERYBODY including lots of people who had no business passing me. I was upset because I couldn’t understand why I was performing so poorly. Was my fitness/cycling actually declining when it should be getting better? I was seriously distraught. I fought it for 10 miles before packing it in. If I would have taken 20 seconds to spin each tire on my bike before starting out I would have easily noticed my rear brake rubbing the left side of the rim along its entire circumference. I know…I’m an noob. While spinning those tires stop’em with the appropriate brake to verify they work. You don’t want to plow into the rear of some unsuspecting cyclist…or car.

This is a pretty short list with plenty of room for other stuff. Let’s here about what you look out for before heading out to ride and how you remind yourself to bring everything. Got a good story related to forgetting something? Lets here it.

The Bicycle Seat Bag – What should you carry in it?

Rainy day blues

Posted by Bryan on May 11, 2009 in Bike Maintenance, Blog | 10 comments

I haven’t been able to ride in four days. It’s killing me. One of those days was due to me needing to do much needed maintenance that I couldn’t perform until Saturday. Another was due to traveling up to my Mom’s place in Oklahoma. The other two were due to rain/storms and driving back to Dallas.

After a ride last Wednesday I started to feel really uncomfortable with my bike and how it was behaving. The rear rim was getting out of true, the front hub didn’t sound/feel right and my front brakes weren’t working right. Because of all that I didn’t ride on Thursday due to safety concerns and planned on doing a lot of work on Saturday so I could use my Dad’s shop. So that’s what I did. I spent about six hours working on my bike.

Make Shift Bike Stand

I made myself a make shift bike stand to make it easier to do work on the bike. It’s basically a rope run up to the ceiling of the shop with each end secured to the bike. One end on the handlebars and one end on the saddle. It worked.

First thing I did was re-pack the front hub with a little bit better grease and I’m satisfied with that now. I also think I may not have gotten one of the cones tight enough last time but I think I got that squared away.

Second item on the list was my rear wheel. It was in bad shape. I found four spokes that were very, very loose. I set about tightening those and got it into pretty good shape if I do say so myself. Eventually I’m going to need to go to a better set of rims due to my weight and all the riding I’ve been doing. Gotta make due with what I’ve got for now though.

The front brake is still giving me problems. For some reason the cable side arm isn’t springing back correctly after releasing the brake lever. I tried everything I could think of to solve the problem. I totally disassembled the brake and cleaned it and removed the brake cable and lubed it with no solid success. These are cheap Suntour Blaze brakes that came with my bike over 15 years ago so they aren’t the best wheel grabbers out there. Maybe it’s time to upgrade. It’s just kinda weird that they stopped working all of a sudden. I think I’m going to need to take it to a shop to have them looked at. I hate having to do that. Anything suggestions you readers have will be welcome.

Next I thoroughly cleaned my drive train. My chain looks in pretty good shape but I think the pulleys on the rear derailleur could stand to be replaced. The components are, again, old Shimano Exage and aren’t the best quality. The pulleys actually felt like hard plastic which surprised me a little. They were pretty easy to pull off and put back on. I also gave the bike a thorough cleaning which made it all nice and shiny.

All the work I’m having to do on the bike is starting to worry/frustrate me. I know every bike needs work but it’s getting to the point where I’m having to devote quite a bit of time to getting it ready. It could be the age of the bike but could easily be due to my weight. Or a combination of both.

Tonight I’m supposed to have group training at the loop so I’m looking forward to that. I hope the weather clears up enough for us to get it in.

Good hill repeat ride this evening

Posted by Bryan on May 6, 2009 in Bike Maintenance, Blog, Cycling and Weight Loss Report, My Rides, White Rock Lake | 0 comments

Today is Wednesday so I headed down to Flagpole Hill near White Rock Lake to get my hill repeats in. My ride itself was actually pretty boring. I did five repeats up the hill to start with (five miles with the recovery sections), then headed to the lake for one loop (12 miles), and then one more time up the hill (about one mile). All told I was right at 18 miles for the ride. I think my legs were still a little heavy from the one-leg drills on Monday but I needed a good hard ride.

When I road around the lake I was really surprised to see all the trash still there from the weekends heavy rains. They had cleared the debris from the trail but the trash was still there. They have volunteer Saturdays to pick up trash but with it as bad as it is I’m surprised the parks department here in Dallas hasn’t taken care of it. Maybe there’s a reason they haven’t such as money.

I also saw a couple of groups rowing out on the lake. If I counted correctly each of the shells had 8 people in them. Pretty cool.

I’m a little concerned about my bike. My rear rim is working its way out of true and making some noise again, the front brake is giving me problems and my front hub doesn’t feel right. I may forgo rides tomorrow and Friday so I can give it a good once over up at my Mom’s house this weekend where I can use my Dad’s shop. I probably need to take it in for a complete overhaul when I have the cash. I just have a feeling it needs more love than my maintenance skills can give it.

With me having problems with my rear rim again I’m becoming more convinced that I need to invest in a set of wheels that can support me better. Maybe the Velocity Deep V rims that jaxgtr keeps talking about. My rear rim was replaced about 8 months ago when I noticed a problem at the seam. I almost wonder if this new rim isn’t as sturdy as the original was. The bad thing is that the Velocity rims will set me back about $280 and I’m concerned about the rear spacing because of my bike being older. I would have to take it to the bike shop for some advice. The only problem is that I haven’t found a shop I’m comfortable with yet.

The best laid plans are…well, you know

Posted by Bryan on May 3, 2009 in Bicycle Parts, Bike Maintenance, Blog, My Rides, Nutrition, Recipes | 6 comments

As I write this I’m watching the Tour of Romandie coverage on Versus. I’m blown away by the conditioning of the riders and how fast they can ride. Equally impressive is the countryside there in Switzerland. Hard to believe how green the fields are. Just awesome.

I took Friday evening off from riding so that I could do some work on my bike and be fully prepared and rested for a hard Saturday ride. I planned on getting up early on Saturday, heading out to White Rock Lake for an early morning ride and, in the words of Phil Liggett, “suffer like a dog”. At least that was the plan.

Friday evening I did something to my bike that was long, long, long overdue. Get my point? I don’t think you do. I mean something like 8 years overdue. You see, 8 years ago was the last time that I think it could have been replaced when I had my bike overhauled and the brake cables were replaced. I’m talking about replacing my handlebar tape.

I had never done this myself but wasn’t afraid to try. I watched the video over at Bicycle Tutor and did it with no problems. The feel after I was done was amazing. I couldn’t believe I had waited so long to do it. I also gave everything else on the bike a good once over and it all seemed in order.

I got up early Saturday morning, had breakfast and headed down to White Rock Lake. I knew something was amiss when I started seeing orange cones at the entrances to the parking areas along with police offers. I stopped to talk with one of the officers and he said the lake was closed for the race….like I knew what ‘the race’ was. I could see some runners with numbers on their jerseys so it had to be a running race (yuck!) but I could see a few cyclists out there riding. I tried to find another place to park but they had everything blocked off. I finally gave up and decided to head to the .8 mile loop where I’ve been doing my group ride training. That’s when the rain started.

And it rained almost all day. There was drizzle, lightning, thunder, gully washers and wind. You may have heard about the Dallas Cowboys practice facility that collapsed. That’s probably about 20 minutes or so from where I live. There was no way I was riding on Saturday unless it was on the Ark.

Chicken and Linguini

Saturday night I put my culinary skills to use and decided to give the recipe I saw over at Cycling Tips a try. It’s super simple and turned out great if I do say so myself. It’s linguine topped grilled chicken, avocado, tomatoes and olives. There’s a picture of the dish to the right.

Sunday morning dawned overcast but it wasn’t raining. It was chili too at only 58F. I suited up and headed out to the lake. In the parking lot I was putting my bike together when a runner went by and said, “You’re brave riding today.” I asked why and he said because of the wet roads. I said I need to get it in and he responded that that’s the right attitude. I agree.

Spillway at White Rock Lake

I headed out and within about a half-mile noticed a big problem. The huge amount of rain we had gotten yesterday had caused the lake to swell overnight. The water wasn’t a problem because it had receded but the debris it left behind was. I’m talking big tree limbs, small limbs, slush, and trash. Huge amounts of trash. I couldn’t believe the trash. Totally unreal. There were three of four spots where this debris covered the trail and you were really taking a chance riding through it. I did with no problems but could have easily dumped myself too. The picture to the left is of the spillway at the South end of the lake. It’s hard to see but the water was seriously moving over the spillway and throwing up a good spray and a lot of noise. Totally cool.

The rest of the ride around was no problem but I decided to only do one lap so I didn’t have to mess with the debris again. It was a short 10 miles but tomorrow is group ride training day. Looking forward to that. And suffering like a dog.