Just remember these two:

#1
Guitar picks are best tools for removing/disassembling/prying rubber and plastic components. In heat of the moment we usually take a screwdriver and partially destroy the stuff with it. Won't happend with a nylon pick. They are up to 2mm thick.

#2
Cantilever braking surface on your rim can be easily clean with a 'gator grit'. It's a synthetic steel wool, give it a good rub, then degrease it with a degreaser (something like M600 or similar, you can get it in any auto body shop, usually the call it "silicone spot remover", it's for prep before painting - won't destory any rubber or plastics, it's very mild but effective) or soapy water.

Another destructive method of removing a freewheel
 

I needed to remove a Maillard freewheel. The tool
needed to remove this freewheel was the CT-3 from bicycletool.com (http://www.bicycletool.com/normandym...wheeltool.aspx) or the Normandy Maillard tool. The freewheel has 24 splines where the tool should fit. I didn't have the possibilitty to acquire the tool. To remove the freewheel I used a 27 milimeters hex bolt with two nuts. The head of the bolt fits perfectly in the splines of the freewheel, the freewheel as an inside diameter of 31 milimeters. The two nuts where strongly screwed against each other. One of the nuts was clamped in a benchwise and the head of the bolt was used as the freewheel removal tool.
Some images of the nut and the freewheel after removal.

http://i53.tinypic.com/w2obuo.jpg
http://i51.tinypic.com/25frlon.jpg
http://i52.tinypic.com/jf9so5.jpg
http://i56.tinypic.com/2lnwa69.jpg


If the nuts slide against each other, than they are not sufficiently tighten. I used a bolt with the strength of 8.8. The head of a weaker bolt might have been deformed. http://www.roymech.co.uk/Useful_Tabl...s/Strength.htm is a table with the strength of bolts. I think this method can be used to remove other types of freewheels. In my case the freewheel splines are intact, but the bolt head was deformed.

What unusual tools or supplies do you like to carry on the road for unanticipated repairs? I've heard of pieces of cut-up inner tube, lengths of duct tape, lengths of wire...

What else?

When building wheels with very light gauge spokes like DT Revolutions, spoke windup can be a real pain. There are tools to hold the spoke from rotating, but usually good technique (overturning the nipple then backing off) will avoid the windup. The trick is to see the twist. I use "flags" made out of short strips of masking tape stuck to each spoke about in the middle of the length. If you line these up on every spoke all facing in the direction of the rotation of the wheel or all across the rotation direction, it is easy to see when a spoke is turning and correct the twist. I got the idea from building a wheel with aero spokes which act as their own indicators of twist. You can easily see when the flat of the aero spoke is not facing forward. So I figured I could make a simialr indicator for round spokes out of the masking tape. Hope this helps.

That's excellent! I'll try it. I guess post-it flags would work, too, but they would cost more.

For my sanity, please don't credit the above spammer with the tip he posted. It's a cut and paste from page 1 of a post I made over 3 years ago. I've reported the post as spam.

Thanks for the report, spammer is no longer among us.

Cold Weld for braze-ons and other attachments
 

I have a tutorial on my blog for repairing broken braze-ons and eyelets at home for under $6. This process works for pretty much any frame material.click here

Looks pretty good. If you pass e.g. a piece of welding rod through the intact braze on and into the other side, it can hold the repair in proper alignment while the epoxy dries.

This is a cut and paste from a recent stuck cotter
thread. I did not invent this, but honestly don't
recall where or when or from whom I learned it.
Somewhere in the vast Internet universe somewhere
I think. If it is out of place, let me know and I will
remove it:


I've had pretty good luck lately on several cottered
cranks with fairly old and rusty cotters by using a
twenty dollar drill press vise as the press with a
9/16 ( or thereabouts) socket as the negative space.

First you oil up the buggers with Triflow, PB Blaster
(as seen on TV), or your favorite penetrating oil,
having loosened the nuts to provide access for
squirting the oil. Now the hard part .. wait ten
of fifteen minutes for the magic of chemistry to
do its thing. Leave the nuts on, but with about
an eighth to a quarter inch of space so the cotter
can move as you press it.

Put the drill press vise on the crank with one face
pressing on the nutted pin end, and the socket
on the other face to provide negative space for
the pin to move into. Crank it down hard .. wait,
crank it down hard again.. wait again. They usually
pop free by about the third application of force.

You may need to put a short cheater on the drill
press vise handle as they are too short to provide
much leverage. Make sure the vice screw is well oiled
or greased.

These are readily available at Home Depot or any
of the chinese tool import places. They work as well
as specialty cotter presses at a fraction of the price.

I have hammered out a few over the years and always
found it to be a somewhat risky and problematic
procedure. This works better, although I am forced
to agree with Tom and Bikeman that it is not nearly
as satisfying as pounding on something with a hammer.



Mike Larmer

Dear moderators:

I started this thread a few years back, hoping it would be a valuable resource for cyclists, with all sorts of neat tricks that would augment one's bicycle mechanics arsenal of knowledge.

It seems that the seed has borne fruits - and so, the "(hopefully)" is not anymore necessary.


Could you please edit the title of the thread so that "(hopefully)" doesn't feature anymore?




Thanks,



mario/wroomwroomoops

Done. :)

Do not use Simple Green on aluminum. It attacks aluminum. If you absolutely must use SG on aluminum, there is a version specifically formulated for such use, Simple Green Aircraft if I recall correctly.

Don't get the grease on you in the first place. Pack a bunch of latex gloves in your repair bag. Put them in a ziploc bag so that nothing in your toolkit pokes holes in them. They compress down to nothing.

And when you're done working on the bike on the roadside, the gloves serve well as a trash container: hold whatever dirty/greasy/nasty garbage in your hand and pull the glove off, turning it inside-out over the trash. Repeat with the other hand. Now it won't funkify your toolbag either.

Found this on the web.
http://bike.shimano.com/publish/cont...ty%20Chart.pdf

I found it useful.

Wow, that's complicated.

Thanks. Incredibly valuable and, of course
it goes without saying, absolutely insane.

That one company could smilingly offer such
a wide range of confusion in interchangeability
says volumes about where we find ourselves
these days in Bicycle World.:lol:

Cosmetic tip:

I found the grey/white-ish scuff marks in my saddle (badly scuffed) a bit annoying. If the leather is black (as in my case), you can "dye" the off-color leather with a black permanent marker and follow up with a leather wipe such as Weiman.

Silk rag. Packs SMALL and light for a large rag. It makes cleaning up after a roadside repair job easier. I also carry a "wet nap" alcohol wipe for the times when you get even greasier than just patching a tube.

A silk rag can be made out of an old silk blouse. If you don't have an old silk blouse that you need to throw away then buy a whole silk shirt from Goodwill, Salvation Army, or other resale shop for $2 and re-purpose it. You can make at least a half-dozen rags out of a $2 blouse -more if it was a size 20 blouse...

My bike didn't come with reflectors on the front and back, so after a snowplow knocked some off of the road, I took them and pried the reflector bits off of their cases and glued them onto my bike. They've since fallen off, but if I you use a better adhesive than Dollar Tree superglue, it makes a great free repair.

I've used 3M reflective tape (r.g Conspicuity Film / Scotchlite. . also marketed as "Sidelights" in the early to mid 1990's). Not as good as a real light, but pretty good.

I debated on getting some reflective tape, but then I realized that I hardly ever ride in the dark so I didn't want to pay for it.

(1) Set properly-toed brake pads very close to a very true rim, and 90% of brake problems go away

(2) Cable tension is what actually moves the derailleur, and the derailleur will move just as far as the shifter tells it to

(3) Pre-load bearings slightly (ca. 10% of expected load) when setting cups, cones, etc.

(4) If all you're doing is enduring, you're not enjoying

(5) keep it clean.

My tire levers

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5259/...37bac09e6f.jpg

Works like a charm. I use the smooth side, and yes those are from forks (or spoons, don't remember)

Vertical drops and fixed gear do not a happy bike make - my tip is forget about the imprecise half links, and skid-free tensioners/derailers, either suck it up and find a framebuilder to change your drops or get a new frame!