November 2009 Archives

Anyone who works on bikes that are ridden regularly is familiar with dirty hands. Whether you're simply cleaning your bike(s) or fixing, adjusting and maintaining or doing full overhauls, unless you wear gloves (not a cheap solution) your hands will come up at the end of the work with a level of embedded grime / grease that's seriously hard to remove with just soap and water.

My solution is to scrub with used coffee grounds -- Read the full article for details ->>

For many riders, flat tires are high on the list of repair problems, usually running second to drive train maintenance. Here are some tips on flat prevention and fast flat-fixing. A flat while riding is never fun, a flat while braking hard or in a turn can result in a dangerous accident!

The easy stuff, avoid 'em, sweep 'em off, inflation

Broken glass is the cause of most of the flats I've experienced, when riding, look ahead for glass in the road and if possible (i.e. be sure there's no cars-back) try to avoid riding through it. When you see you've ridden through some glass, you can reach down with your (gloved) hand and sweep the wheel, just touch the surface while continuing to ride for a couple of seconds, this will dislodge most glass shards, avoiding the flat. It's possible to reach down to the rear wheel between the seat stays and seat tube, but I prefer to unclip and sweep the rear tire with my shoe, either way sweeping the rear tire MUST be reserved for a straight secton of road. If you are going to do the rear with your hand, my friend Ulandt pointed out the correct way to do this:

I.e. HOW NOT TO MANGLE YOUR HAND
Hook your thumb firmly into the seat-stay above the brake bolt and then *LIGHTLY* touch the moving wheel surface to sweep off glass .. again, you're wearing gloves when trying this right?

For what to do back home and products to help minimize occurrence of flats and repair them quicker, see the rest of the article ->>

While maintaining a bike's drive train isn't difficult from a technical standpoint, it's where the most maintenance effort is spent. Tires probably run higher in material costs, but the drive train - the chain in particular - needs frequent cleaning and chains (at least Shimano/SRAM) need to be replaced about every 2000 miles. (In my experience, Campy drive components wear far more slowly, not surprising, as Campy uses wider sprockets and chain bearing-surfaces.)

I've developed a way to at least minimize the cost of replacing worn drive train parts, as well as feel good about staying 'green'. Manufacturing bike parts uses energy and resources and the longer you make them last, the lower your cycling will be. (to be clear, I'm not alone in coming up with this idea, I've found several websites and one chain manufacturer (KMC) who have noted this method)

Summary: you can extend the life of both chains and front/rear sprockets by up to 50% by cycling through a few different chains over the life of a cassette / chainrings, see the full article for details:

All too often I see people riding with the helmet straps hanging loose an inch or more below their chin. THIS IS SERIOUSLY UNSAFE! That loose a chin-strap can allow your helmet to come clean off in a crash, likely losing all of it's protection.

Beyond not being loose, helmet straps should be tight enough to keep the helmet stable in a crash with significant impact. I keep my strap reasonably tight but last March when I crashed in a criterium race, it was a shade looser than usual which allowed the helmet to rotate down over my forehead on impact which, in turn crushed my glasses lens against and into the left eye/socket Pretty bad news, it has permanently affected my vision (changed my astigmatism by about .5 diopter).

To clarify, by 'a shade loose' I don't mean that the strap was hanging visibly loose, just that it was not set as recommended (only 2 fingers should fit comfortably under the chin).

See the two links below for proper helmet adjustment, adjusting the 'triangles' formed by the straps correctly to fit your head is key as is being sure that the head-circle band is snug ---

nhtsa.gov
helmets.org

Helmets today are designed to slide on pavement, older designs tended to catch, resulting in neck injuries/strains, but making the most of the new designs still requires correct adjustment. I find I have to re-tension the chin strap every hour or so of riding to accommodate slippage, as always, ymmv.

I'm sure this seems anal, but having lost a good bit of my visual acuity permanently was an unfortunate price to pay for my unusual failure to adjust correctly ... this said, I probably should have been riding in sports glasses that day, rather than wire-frame glasses also.

Ride safe!