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.
The absolute best thing I ever did in regards to figuring out bike maintenance was to buy a really crappy bike and just try to fix it, similar to what you’ve done. I went into it with the attitude of “if I break stuff, that’s fine, it was super cheap and old anyways” and wasn’t imagining I’d actually get a sound bike out of it. I used park tool YouTube videos mostly, and from that bike (and a few others) I learned how to do pretty much everything maintenance-related short of redoing the seals in a mountain bike fork (and that’s likely coming up soon). Wheel truing is tough but absolutely doable - again, but a really cheap bike (marketplace special), take the wheels off and apart, and just try to get them back together - that’ll force you to true them. Park tool again was an awesome resource for that.
You’ve hit the nail on the head. This describes my mindset. Thanks for the encouragement.
How out of true were the wheels that the brakes didn’t work? When you say it wasn’t aligned, what wasn’t aligned? You may have an incredibly unsafe BSO instead of something worth fixing up.
The wheels wobbled a few millimeters. This caused the brake pads to touch at various points while the wheel rotated (with the brakes disengaged). I believe the spokes just needed a little adjustments to straighten out the wheel alignment. After briefly adjusting the spokes, the brake now function (albeit poorly) without touching the wheel unnecessarily.
From here, I think I’ll spend some more time finetuning the spokes to make sure the wheel is as straight as possible before further tuning or replacing the brakes.
I am just taking it on short and slow rides around my neighborhood right now. I’m not too worried about safety. I’m not fixing it up as an investment. I mostly a fun project to learn more about bikes.
right on! just be careful you don’t tighten the spokes so much that they poke through the rim tape. I made that mistake and punctured waaay to many tubes. Now I just let my LBS true them. I’m terrible at it and they’ll do it for 10 bucks a wheel.
If you’re content with the wheels I would maybe look at replacing the brake pads next once you can verify that they function well with the trued wheels.
After that, I’d look at the drive train and see what can be done about the indexing on the front and rear derailleurs, limit screws, ect and maybe take the rear hub apart and make sure that is all in proper working order [prongs engage, disengage correctly], give the cassette a good look over for wear [shark fins] and check the chain for stretching [chain tool].
How much rust is on the chain and gears?
After that, maybe look at the bottom bracket and seeing what can be replaced/upgraded to make sure there’s no clicking, rubbing, and making sure you have a solid chain line to the cassette.
I appreciate your insight.
There is minimal rust on the chain and gears. There is quite a bit if discoloration on the gears, but its not rust and doesn’t seem to be a structural concern. The drivetrain definitely needs some work, but it’s functional enough that I’ll probably work on brakes first because they are simpler.
Sounds like I need to get these wheels straightened out first, then I’ll probably fix up the brakes, then the drivetrain.
