Originally Posted by
Campag4life
I use a torque wrench pretty exclusively on the seat clamp in particular...for both carbon and Ti bikes. 51 in-lbs. A tip is...use carbon paste on your seat post. It allows the post to stay in place with lower torque. Use a small piece of tape...I use a sliver of electrical tape to mark your seat post just above the clamp. That way you can easily keep track of your saddle height and also determine if it slips over time.
Other tip I will give you is, if you are serious about your cycling. Keep a journal aka chronical. Doesn't have to be elaborate but observations about your fit and condition. I generally track my fit and overall fitness. Again, short blurbs over time only.
As little kids, all of us were excited about a new bike. That never changes.
Good tips. And I totally have a spreadsheet set up to document fit, etc.
As for kids and bikes. My son has a weekly writing assignment. He can write about anything but he has to write a paragraph about something, just to help his writing skills.
It's pretty serendipitous that he wrote this:
Bikes and Me
by <my son's name>
Bikes… Are… AWESOME!!! I love them. They are my life. I am going to talk about my experiences with bikes. My first bike was a tiny little peewee size Schwinn and it was yellow. It was pretty cool. I learned how to ride it when I was 4 on training wheels. I kept these until I was good enough to go without them. When I was about 7 or 8 That bike was getting too small, so I started borrowing my neighbors mountain bike, which was too big for him until we could get me my own. I eventually got this Triax kids mountain bike that I later found out was a piece of crap. After 3 months it was impossible to shift gears and the brakes made a whole bunch of noise. We put it to the road when I was 10 and went to REI to get me a new one. We settled on a GT mountain bike. I still have that one and it’s terrific. A little while before the GT, I found out that my friend Wesley had a 1990 Diamond Back BMX bike. I fell in love with it and had wanted it ever since. Then, two weeks ago, my dad agreed to let me have it. I originally was going to have to pay $20, but Kelly, his mom, decided I could have it for free. I have had to do a lot of stuff to it. I gave it a new seat and grips. I also realigned the the handlebars to the wheel. I am also going to paint it. I love it.