Sal Bandini

I recently purchased 2017 Specialized Sirrus Sport. Was considering getting Zinn and the Art of Road Bike Maintenance. IS this a good reference or is there something that might be better? I notice there is also the same type but for mountain bike.

bradtx

Look in your public library and see what manuals appeal to you. Bicycling Magazine used to have, and may still have updated versions of a pretty good repair book that was easy to understand for newbies.

Brad

skiingfury

I really like the Park Tool Big Blue Book of Bicycle Repair. Great illustrations and the version I used (2nd edition?) covered everything archaic to modern.

tandembethesda

Second checking with the library.

I just picked up Zinn's Road and Mountain books so I can decided which one is more appropriate for my Tandem.

My initial opinion is that they are pretty good, but I often find youtube to be better.

Sal Bandini

Thanks for library suggestion. I will check what mine has.

As a kid I had the Glenn's Complete Bicycle Manual. I loved going through that. I agree lots of help with youtube but I really enjoy an old fashioned book.

Hermes1

I have had Bicycle Magazine Repair book, Zinn's Road Bike & Park Tool Blue Book. Of the three, at least from my perspective Park & Zinn's are the two best and I prefer Park overall and am now down to only the Park Book and very happy with it.

Barabaika

I have Zinn's book.
It's boring.

I much prefer to read Sheldon Brown-Bicycle Technical Information and watch repair videos on YouTube.

tyrion

+1. Youtube and this forum.

(what are these "books" you speak of?)

Davet

The Park Blue Book is my go to, along with the Park Tool Repair section on their website. It's updated pretty frequently as things change.

Sy Reene

Could be Amazon doesn't show most recent editions, but Park most recent edition (3rd) appears to be 4 yrs old. Zinn's latest edition is from 2016. Perhaps though not a lot has changed with bike components that benefits from more updated instructions.. not sure.

superstring

I would recommend Barnett's Manual DX. I took John Barnett's bike mechanics training course in 1992 and, since most of the bike work I do these days is on "vintage" machines, I still use the edition of Barnett's Manual that I used back then - the 1st Edition. I've owned many bike repair books and this is, hands down, the best I've encountered.

Barnett's Manual is now in its' 11th Edition and is available as a DVD or download and, IMO, worth every penny!

You can read about it here:

https://www.bbinstitute.com/the-barnett-manual

Marcus_Ti

Zinn will have most of what you need to know. Anything else you can find Youtube video tutorials on. Park Tool's website is also quite good.

cpach

Congrats on the new bike, and good on you for taking steps to learning to work on it! The good news is the bike you purchased is pretty ideal to learn to work on--there's nothing very exotic about it, but everything should be of decent quality.

Books are best for teaching theory and more overarching subjects. For for specific procedures, the Park site combined with manufacturers service manuals are generally the best tools. I personally don't like videos for most things but there's good resources out there in that format.

It's been a while, but I liked the Bicycling Guide to Complete Bicycle Maintenance and Repair for good overviews of topics, and good suggested service intervals and tool suggestions. I've also read Zinn's books--also pretty good, with good illustrations.

I recommend you check to see if there are any bicycle tool cooperatives in your area. If they are, they can help walk you through learning various procedures, as well as having tools that you will infrequently need. If you ever want help learning a skill from a professional mechanic, some shops will have events to learn from their employees. Otherwise, remember that it's not primarily their job to teach wrenching. If you catch them at an off-peak time and the schedule for the day is reasonable, many mechanics would love to help you learn about working on your bike--it would be good form to tip in cash, beer, cookies, etc if they can help you out like this.

I recommend against buying prepackaged tool sets. You're better getting some basic, general purpose tools, and then buying any specialty tools as needed, as really you only need the tools that apply to the bikes you own and the procedures that you perform. Have any decent set of alan wrenches 2-10mm. A 4-5-6 mm Y wrench is not necessary but is nice sometimes. You can usually get away with a large adjustable wrench and a small adjustable wrench for most purposes; if you wrench more you'll want a set of metric wrenches 6-17mm. You need a decent phillips screwdriver and a flathead screwdriver. You need tire levers and a pump. A repair stand is extremely useful, although if you search you can find some decent improvised alternatives. A chain tool is useful to have around.

You can also learn as you go. For the moment, I'd recommend you know how to:
-Change a flat. Identify tire wear and damage.
-Keep your chain lubricated and clean. Identify chain wear (either get a chain checking tool, or learn to do it with a ruler).
-Inspect for brake pad wear; be ale to adjust the brakes on your bike.
-Adjust the cable tension/indexing of your derailleurs. Be able to check that the limits for your derailleurs are correctly adjusted.

Further down the line, it'd be advisable to learn to service the bearing assemblies on your bike, and replace cables/housing. Learning to do minor wheel work is a useful skill.


Good luck!

Standalone 

I have the Bicycling one. I mainly use it to remind myself which pedal or bottom bracket side is reverse threaded. Nice to have a book rather than a digital device on my crusty greasy workbench and in my greasy hands.

Squashednuts

I bought the Zinn book but, to be honest, it just sits unused on my book shelf.

There's so much information on the net, YouTube,this site, GCN etc. And it's all in colour often with instructional videos.

+1 the net

Sal Bandini

Thanks for all the replies. I will probably just use youtube for now although I do like reading through the books. I have detailed shop manuals for all my cars and read through the sections before I do some of the repairs, but I do find youtube to help more by actually showing someone doing it.

The main issue I have with youtube is that I have to keep finding a video. I bookmark them but then my favorites is so big now. Plus sometimes videos get removed. My only solution is to copy them to my computer.

I'm toying with idea of changing the cassette but there are so many Shimano variants and hard to find info on them.

mtnbke

I like the Park book. Which I think is on the 3rd version?

After the Park I'd recommend the Zinn book (mountain/road) whichever you have. As you become more sophisticated as a bicycle mechanic, if you do, you might eventually want the Barnett's manuals. If you become entrenched working on Classic & Vintage bikes, including Belgian or French makes the Sutherland reference manuals come into play. Strange French and Italian stuff can be perplexing in terms of sizing/thread pitches until you have something you can use to cross check against for the reference.

My wife has a Libertas mixte that is a maddening hodgepodge of Reynolds 531 main tubes combined with the lowest production quality of welds/brazing I've ever seen. Bike boom era and the chrome is just silver spray paint. The whole bike is an Alice in Wonderland hole of strange French standards and components that don't really have modern or English/Italian correlation. You figure it out with the right reference materials, but some bikes just shouldn't exist!

shelbyfv

I like the Zinn books and the Park Tool website.

Vintage_Cyclist

I've got pdf's of Sutherland's and Barnett, as well as a hard copy of Zinn's road bike manual.

I cut the spine off the Zinn book, 3 hole punched it and put it in a big ring binder. This has subsequently gotten updated with other sources, like Park and Sheldon Brown, printing things that I need and adding it to the binder. Instructions and manuals that come with parts go in there also.