A few more tips....

For a quick clean of your frame..I use furniture polish from a spray can and a microfiber towel. Spray polish onto towel and wipe on frame. Cleans and protects for a little while. I have only tried this on painted frames and only steel and aluminum. Don't know how it would affect Carbon fiber but if it's painted, it should be good. Just don't spray on frame directly as overspray can get on tires and other areas and make it very slippery.

To get surface rust off steel , I have used a piece of aluminum foil and some water and rubbed the foil over the rust and it disappears. Then clean and it looks nice and shiny.

If you have any empty baby food jars and need to store assorted nuts, bolts and other small items. I have screwed the lid of the jar onto the underside of a shelf using a wood screw. I then remove the label from the jar and now have hanging storage for all my items and can see what they are inside because of the clear glass. Easy to install and easy to remove from shelf while keeping your work area clean.

Thanks for all the tips I have seen on this thread.

I'll post this because it look me so long to tumble to the idea - no one wrote about it nor recommended it but did recommend all sorts of other methods for opening removable links (ex: KMC Missing Link). Make a simple double ended hook long enough to grab plenty of chain and create a loop of slack. The photo shows I made mine about 7 inches long just cuz 'it seemed right' and it works great - for removing the link and for putting it back together. No chain tension to deal with and having it out where you can see and handle it makes all the difference. It seems so simple you wanna smack yourself if you've not thought of it already.

Oh in the second photo the link with the bit of white paint is the Missing Link. Easier to find on a dirty mtn bike chain.

Another tip from a little different angle (may save you money and embarrassment ) Lesson learned!

Wanted to service my SPD pedals. It's an easy and quick process...well, at least it should be lol
Used some home hand tools on this baby in a cold 10F /-12C/ garage. What happened with it you can clearly see on the pics.
Instead of buying $2-$3 Shimano Pedal Tool, I damaged $50 pedals. What a deal!
Luckily I have couple more sets of the same pedals, and now I have Shimano tool which came in the mail yesterday. YEY ME! lol

That is a very simple and cool tool/idea. No need for that $20 pliers lol
Normally I don't have any issues with opening the chain with a quick link just using my bare hands, but it's a different story when it's dirty or full of gunk.
Will make it tomorrow and will call it "Prowler chain tool" ;-) Thanks for sharing!

Quick links are quite a bit more reliable than pressing out and replacing a pin, IMO.

PS, I don't think the OP's tool is necessarily a supplement for the pliers, in as much as it relieves tension so you can work on the section chain. You still need something break the master link, if it is 10spd or higher.

True it only relieves the tension on the chain. i swab the crud out the space inside the link with an eyelash brush n mineral spirits then compress the link with a pair of the smallest Channel Loks. easy. Of no tension on the chain makes installation of the link easier too,

Tip: If you have a keyed cable-lock (or any kind of lock that doesn't need a key to lock), carry your lock around LOCKED, not UNLOCKED. If you're out and forgot your key, you might accidentally lock your bike up and strand yourself.

OR if your bike is a billion times more valuable than your time, DO carry your lock around unlocked, so even if you forget your key, at least you can lock it up if you have to leave it somewhere, and come back later with the key to fetch it.

Either way, think about it.

When you're airing up your tires with Schrader valves, before replacing the valve cap, use a bit of "spit" on the valve to see if any bubbles appear, indicating a lose valve core. If the valve core is lose, use the special valve core "wrench" found on some valve core caps to tighten it up so air isn't lost.

That's not a "trick", that's called deception any way you look at it! Hopefully some day you'll get a "used" tool that someone else returned for another tool, and it fails you in some way. You're just causing prices for these companies to go upward for everyone, and will eventually cause them to change their return policy.

??? What are you talking about?

it's okay - "stick it to the man" is how I roll!

In a pinch, a chainring bolt can be used as a derailleur hanger bolt. I needed a derailleur hanger bolt this week and didn't have one, so I took
the bolt off an old crankset I had and after grinding a bit off the two pieces (length), it fit perfectly.

As far as I know, they are the same.

Ian

A couple years ago, I was in the market for 3 seat packs - for my different bikes - to store stuff for fixing flats. My favorite online bike store happened to have some on sale at that time. They also happened to cost more than I wanted to spend. Couple that with the fact that I don't like the look of the typical vertically-oriented seat pack, I also figured I don't really need 'em anyway. As long as I have back pockets on my jersey or jacket I could do without buying something I don't like the look of anyway. Right?

Then I remembered I had 4 or 5 of these never-used sunglass cases that I'd tossed aside over the last few years, just lying around collecting dust:




Brainstorm! 10 minutes later - with the help of a couple of cable ties to fasten one on to the rails underneath my fi'zi:k Aliante - I had a homemade, compact, stylish-looking saddle pack! It easily holds a tube, a CO2 inflator, 2 CO2 cartridges, 2 tire levers and a postage stamp-sized 6 pack of glueless patches. The best part about it? I didn't pay a penny for it! The second best part about it is I like the look of it better than those fugly-looking turd-shaped ones everybody else has.

One of the neatest, thriftiest, most original ideas I've ever had. Awesome!

We need a pic of it mounted.

+1 mounted pic please, did you ziptie through teh "spine" or the "top"?

I remember one group ride where I was the whole time behind this guy with such a tiny seatbag I had the continual impression it looked like his scrote dangling there.

I'm building up my Raleigh Professional Mk IV and am at the stage of fine tuning things. I frequently mark positions with a bit of masking tape (seat post height, stem height, handle bar angle) with a small bit of masking tape. Ex: sorting out the angle of the handlebars - higher or lower or just right. I need to make really small changes then test ride. I put a small strip of masking tape on the joint where the bar meets the stem clamp. I then carefully cut along the joint with a sharp blade and now one half is on the stem and one half on the bar. Then as I rotate the bar up or down the masking tape shows me where I was and where I am now - sometimes just 1 degree changes. I'll probably not settle this out until after a few 30 mile rides.

I'll use these on the seat post and stem - mark a position then raise it 1/8 inch then see how that feels. Go too far then back off. Or mark the seat angle and make adjustments, or the seat position fore and aft. When I've decided AOK, I pull all the tape off and just ride.

I've found blue painters tape falls off to easy. Just regular tan masking tape.

When i pack bike for customer shipping (and it's the season what with schools getting out) i use masking tape and pen to mark bar angles in stem, post height and other important relationships so they can be duplicated exactly on the reassembly. Andy.

Here is a collection of instructables on bike cleaning and maintenance I pulled together. Might help some people out. I added this in a new thread but I thought it would be a decent resource for people looking for how to walk throughs. Bike Cleaning and Maintenance

Uhhh... I made a freewheel removal tool outta a cheapo socket and dremel tool. It was made to unscrew an old school suntour freewheel with two square notches. I could not justify the cost of a special tool that I would rarely if ever use again.
Just used the dremel with cutting wheel on a socket the size of the freewheel nut and cut out the areas not needed to create two square stick outs that fit the notches on the freewheel.
Took about 5 minutes and saved 8 bucks plus shipping.

when you are truing a wheel a neat trick is to put a bit of masking tape on the spoke you are tighting. this will show you if you are just twisting the spoke or turing the nipple.

I just had to rebuild the hubs on my wife's 2011 Fuji Finest 3.0 because the cones were spalled in the bearing track (rough pitting in the part of the cone where the bearings ride.) The hubs are Formula loose ball hubs, with no identifying markings that I could find. I'm posting what I found after careful measurement and a sucessful rebuild in the hope that it will save some other soul having to start from scratch.

Do replace the balls. If they've been running in the spalled bearing track for any length of time, they will be degraded. Also, carefully inspect the bearing cups in the hub. If there's spalling or damage there, replacing everything else is somewhat futile.

Front Hub:
9mm x 1 axle
3/16" balls
Replacement Cones - Wheels Manufacturing CN-R082

Rear Hub:
10mm x 1 Axle
1/4" balls
Replacement Cones - Wheels Manufacturing CN-R081
NOTE: You will need to press the metal sealing "skirt" off the old cone and onto the new cone. Be careful to get it straight and to the proper depth. The depth isn't critical, but too close will drag against the other side of the interleave seal, and too far will leave the bearing more open to junk getting in.

If you need threadlocker, but have none, Maalox will work as well.

To really shine up your bike use Turtlewax ICE liquid wax.
The advantage is that ICE does not dry white, like most automotive waxes.
You don't have to worry about wiping it out of all the nooks and crannies on a typical bike.

(not affiliated with Turtlewax, or any other brand for that matter).

I'm pretty sure this has been covered. Anyway, I just accidentally discovered a simple but darn effective way to align the handlebars to the front tire. I guess most of us try to align the bars by eyeballing it while keeping the stem straight relative to the top tube. The problem with this method is that the rear half of the front tire can't be seen because its view is blocked by top/bottom tubes making it difficult to see the angles between the bars and tire. Now, turn the stem to either side. Doesn't matter how much. Now you can have an unobstructed view of the whole front tire, telling you right away if the alignment is correct or incorrect.

Are you kidding us? How, pray tell, did you come to know this?