Intro to the World of Restoration
 

So, my name is Hailee. I'm from California but just moved to Maryland. I recently found myself strongly interested in the art of restoring discarded bicycles. My first project has started with a 1989 Giant Quasar. I found it in the dump and bought new handlebar tape, tubes, and tires for it. I recently found out that this bicycle isn't worth much, but I have a very close love for it simply because it's my first. I don't have many tools for it because I moved across the country with just the clothes and electronics I own. I'm only 18 so the tools I've used have always been my father's tools. I am an EXTREME beginner and only have a basic understanding of how to tear things apart and backtrack to put them back together (though I think that's very easy, and you only need basic logic to figure this out).

All in all, my whole point in posting is to hear about any of your beginning experiences with restoring bikes for the first time and some advice to get me started. I would love to hear it all. I'm super excited to start up this new hobby!

Welcome,

I spent a good amount of time frequenting Sheldon Brown's extensive website, and Park Tools' site as well. There are many threads here and also a proliferation of worthwhile YouTube videos with tips.

Cheap bikes are primo for first attempts. If you mess up, no great loss. So fun! Enjoy the ride.

You're gonna do just fine. ;)

I've only been riding/rebuilding bikes for about five years, and got my start with pretty much the same sense of things that you stated above. Be patient, use the resources available on the internet (both here and youtube), and realize that a lot of bike-related work requires specialized tools. With that last point in mind, see if you can locate a local bike co-op; they'll have both the tools and knowledge you're seeking.

Mostly though, enjoy! I was surprised at how simple it is to work on bicycles; the hardest part is diving in there in the first place and it sounds like you've got that handled already. And welcome to bikeforums! :thumb:

Whereabouts in Maryland are you? If you're close to Baltimore, check out Velocipede bike coop (when they're open), they have some intro to bike repair classes and lots of spare parts. Baltimore Bicycle Works also holds workshops on all kinds of bike-related stuff.

Hi and welcome. This is a fun hobby and you will find plenty of good folks here to share it with. Each new project is like a puzzle. You have 3 basic directions you can take. Preservation, restoration and customization. You can use one, two or a combination of all 3 . Once you find your project bike, you picture in your mind where you want to take it. Then the puzzle starts. You have a series of problems to solve to take the project from where you found it to the goal you set in your mind. Great fun...and true, addictive.

My first build was a Peugeot UO-8 frame/fork that I paid slightly too much for. I knew nothing when I bought it. Quickly I found out that not all bike manufacturers play nice together but this also got me very close to the employees of bike co-ops.
This forum is a wealth of knowledge .Sheldon Brown's website will be a regular suggestion. All in all, good luck and always take pictures of the drive side .

In addition to Park tools and Sheldon Brown sites, check these out.

MY "TEN SPEEDS - Home Page

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaA...2xiBbAUVZsvDYQ

A magic word that will save you a lot of pain and misery is "STOP". There are some things on a bike that will require both the right tool and force, removing a freewheel there for a long time, bottom bracket again left for a long time and the ubiquitous handlebar stem/saddle post that was last greased a long time ago and "may" have welded itself to the steerer tube or seat tube. But for the rest, and even for these things mentioned, they almost always come apart and go back together again without a great deal of force. So when you aren't able to remove something and are ready to take that long handled steel tool to horse that aluminum part off the bike-"STOP" and really look hard/come ask for advice on the forum. There's usually a reason something is not coming off or going back on easily and penetrating oil and time for it to soak in, new grease, a different tool, etc. will remove/install the part. Going past "STOP" to breakage is a hard teacher.

One benefit of modern electronics (aka cell phone and cameras) is, that you can take pictures of how things come apart. Most often you are not able to reassemble everything right away. So after weeks or months it is helpful to recall how spacers are placed or the amount of washers necessary.....
You get the point, take pictures before and during your progress . Side benefit is you have documented your work as proof if you later plan to sell some of your projects.

Ha! You beat me to the required Cautionary Pedantry for n00bs!

[MENTION=494621]bleucheddar[/MENTION], in all seriousness, it does help to use terms correctly around here. That way, if you ask a question about something, you'll have a better chance of getting an answer that's helpful. Wheel ≠ tire around here. You can learn the glossary of terms easily enough by starting out with what you already know and then use your google-fu to figure out what the heck people are talking about when you see a word or phrase that's confusing.

Heh. I lived in Seattle a little over 10 years and rode the bus exactly once. (No, it was't a bad experience, I just always had a car, several motorcycles, and a bicycle on hand and no time for fooling' around).

The question is, why didn't ride the bike back? Slam that seat post and tough it out.

Welcome to our little madhouse, you're about to enjoy a very fun life.

What you're going to need to start: 1. A set of metric wrenches. Good ones, but they don't have to be expensive. For bicycle use, I've found Harbor Freight wrenches work just fine, whereas a professional motorcycle or automobile mechanic will sneer at them. Probably with some decent reason. 2. A good set of screwdrivers. See comments on wrenches. 3. Tire irons, metal. Plastic ones may be ok for occasional road use, but for general use only metal will do. 4. Cone wrenches, for hub cones. Yeah, they look like their regular wrenches, but they're a lot thinner. Said thinness is for a reason, which will become apparent once you start using them. 5. A pedal wrench, for getting the pedals off. 6. Necessary wrenches and crank pullers for taking the crankset and bottom bracket apart. 7. Freewheel removing tool (for freewheels) or freehub tool and chain whip (for freehubs). Every make of freewheel uses a different tool, so you end up buying what you need to that project.

In essence, refurbishing an old bicycle is a matter of taking it apart, cleaning the good parts, replacing the worn parts, lubricating all necessary surfaces and reassembling. How does one learn such a skill? Back when I started (age 13), I started out cautiously. The first bike I ever worked on (my good Schwinn, given to me by my father five years earlier as a birthday present), it was a simple procedure of take something off. Then try putting it back on. If it goes back on properly, remove it and go for part #2 . Repeat back and forth until you've got the entire bike in pieces, and hopefully you've already gotten a feel about how it's going to have to go back together.

Yeah, this sounds incredibly pedantic. It sounded pedantic to me as I wrote it - except that when I was doing it for the first time, I had a basic knowledge of how to use hand tools and absolutely no knowledge about the bicycle except what I'd watched over the previous five years riding it. No doubt I was way over cautious in my method. But imagining facing my father with the bike spread all over the garage floor and no clue how to put it back together . . . . . . .

And in the end, the only place I screwed up was my Schwinn dealer having to show me how to adjust the cable of the Sturmey Archer 3-speed. Happily, the ride to his shop was downhill all the way, because I was stuck in third.

You're embarking on one hell of a fun adventure. Just remember, the magic formula is N+1, when N=the number of bikes you currently own.

I did my first overhaul last September and now I love that bicycle best. It started as a slightly twisted Trek hybrid bike from the 1990s and after stripping it to the frame and rebuilding it, it emerged as something wonderful and uniquely mine. It was super satisfying and I keep on thinking about the next one; I'd like to build one for my wife. I definitely couldn't have succeeded without the patient guidance of my local bike co-op. I did most of the brute work at home, but brought it there at the end to make sure I hooked up all the bits correctly: brake cables, shifting, the chain, etc. It was cool being able to bring it to a place where I could put it up on a proper bike stand and work on it with decent tools and the help of a volunteer mechanic who put up with my questions. He also showed me how to true the wheels, all kinds of things that I think would have intimidated me. So I'd second or third the recommendation to find a co-op local to you. Not only can you work on your own bikes, you can accrue experience helping others with theirs.

My start in restoring bikes was in maintenance. My neighbor in our building, when I was about 12 in 1965, had a Phillips three-speed that he never rode. I just started riding it (left him a note), and realized I had to leave him a bike that worked if he ever come over and demanded his bicycle. I started adjusting, tightening, aligning and lubricating. I finally paid him for it. I finally test-rode some new Raleigh (they had bought Phillips) three speeds, and they were not better than this old 1950-ish one I had maintained and tuned. Silly me, I sold it!

If you find it easy and logical to take stuff apart and put it back together and have it work, maybe even better, that's a good place to start from. You probably already have a decent feel for what tool you want in your hand when faced with a task, and perhaps an eye for quality. I would say keep your eyes open for tools and parts. The Craftsman brand has been a reasonably-priced quality leader since the 1950s, which is when my dad bought his. I'm still using his, in some cases 60 years later! It was a Sears house brand and are no longer under warranty, but if they are in decent mechanical condition (Phillips tips and flat screwdriver tips still in decent shape, for example), they still have the same inherent quality as when new. So I really recommend that when you are at a flea market or a used stuff store, look for these - cheep and ready for the lifetime of their second owner.

For info and instructions, the best overall books were '70s through '90s, and are throwaways for most folks. But this means you can do well and cheaply in used bookstores or Goodwill/Salvation Army stores. Good instructions are good whether from a book or a website. Sheldon's legacy websites are connected with links, so you can jump from the advanced to the elementary levels as you need to, almost like a Wiki.

A great little paperback that gives you a better sense for improvisation is "Anybody's Bike Book" by Tom Cuthbertson. It was usually a paperback book. Mine was copyright 1971 and printed in 1973. This is the "old hippie" voice in bike repair. Tom passed away many years ago, but as before, what he had in there is good information and still true. Another one, a little more like a textbook, is "The New Complete Book of Bicycling" by Eugene A. Sloane, printed in 1974 though there were many printings. This is the kindly high school teacher version of bike repair, usage, and maintenance. Lot's more content than Cuthbertson, but he takes you far afield from just "fix it and go." Not to say these are better than a good website or Youtube, but these books will be cheap in used bookstores.

And keep taking things apart and logically putting them back together. I like to have a torque wrench not because I like to really crank stuff down, but because on old bikes the nuts and bolts are often unique and hard to replace correctly. You'll have to use your own mechanical sense to decide when you need it "just right" and when not, but let replacements be for good reasons, not that you broke it due to careless over tightening. Ask me how I know!