MiniLance

Post Here You little Tips and Tricks of Cycling.

1. Use old tubes for extra padding on handle bar under tape.
2. Use Tubes for Co2 Bottles so they don't *Cling* in your bag.
...
Post Whatever you do you make things easier and the use of reusing things.

Inverted

I wear a helmet. That makes life MUCH easier.

brianappleby

degreaser and grease are both cheaper at an auto parts store than a bike store. I don't think my bike can tell where i bought them.

DiscoNized

Buying a air nozzle adaptor for .99 cents so you can fill your tires up to par with ease.

UmneyDurak

I perffer floor pump, but I do carry an adapter in my sattle bag just in case.

Anyway SRAM powerlinks work on shimano chains. Makes chain cleanning easy.

steppinthefunk 

SELF AMALGAMIZING TAPE... This stuff is magical, it is a non sticky rubber tape that is stretched and overlapped onto the object - once it has been stretched though, the overlapping rubber fuses together to give one chunk of solid rubber!... get it at your automotive parts store and apply it where you like... I plan on using it instead of electrical tape for wrapping bars but havn't gotten around to it yet...

-Jason-

mellowdave

Learn to work on your own bike.

Buy the mechanincs beer and pizza, and glean all that you can from them.

Doesnt mean you HAVE to work on your own, but I get so tired of people telling me how the LBS had their bike for a week over a derailleur adjustment.

duckliondog

The beer one really works! I do all my own work, and along the way, I figured out the following.

Ever need to pull out the ends of your derailleur cable housing, but you don't want to have to unclamp the cable and ruin your perfect adjustment? Do this: shift to your biggest gears, spin the cranks, stop turning the cranks, and shift back down to the small gears (relieve the tension on the cable). DON'T turn the cranks! The gears will hold the chain in place, which will hold the derailleurs, but the cable is now slack for you to mess with!
This is probably common knowledge to some of you, but I showed it to my friend who is a mechanic and he thought it was pretty handy.

steppinthefunk 

here's another one... If you don't have a cable cutting tool then do not attempt to cut the cables with regular wire pliers! instead try a dremel...

pedex

Fixing a flat doesnt mean removing the wheel or whole tire most of the time, flip bike over, and check for the offending object in the tread, if its still there, then just use tire levers to unseat enough of the tire to get a handful of tube where the hole is, patch it, stuff the tube back in, reinflate and move on. Sometimes you can find the hole in the tread/tube just by pumping some air in and spinning the wheel slowly with your lips close to the tread. You might not feel it with your fingers or hands, or hear it with your ears while at the roadside, but your lips are sensitive enough to feel a pinhole letting air out thru the tread. This has saved me lots of grief, when its like 5 degrees outside patching a flat sucks bad, no need to take any more time than absolutely necessary. Also, if below freezing and your gonna patch a flat, apply the glue, then set it on fire for a second and blow it out, then apply the patch, the solvent in the glue doesnt work well when its cold out. With a little practice doing this a flat can be fixed in like 3 minutes or so.

pedex

when making homemade bullhorns or cutting a fork to size, use a pipecutter instead of a hacksaw, makes a nice neat cut and its alot less dangerous

Matt Gaunt

Grease everything. It will make future maintenance soooo much easier and will increase the life of components. Oh, and lube your drivetrain regularly.

Arom

talk to older, more experienced riders like you guys ^ . By talking to a 50 yearold who rides a connondale i saw at one of my brothers soccer game, i acquired 2 wheel sets, 7 tires a new front and rear deraileur new cranks and new shifters, all because i ride a 27inch and hes 700cc and he has plenty of stuff.

nova

A fine gun smith triangle file works great to.

nova

If you dont got a pipe cutter and need to use a hacksaw use the back end of a file to debur the ends.

KeithA

Steady your chin in your shoulder when taking a look behind you. Before I learned this, when I tried to look behind me, my bike would drift right or left while I was in the process. Doing this has lessened the drift significantly. I don't know why, but it works.

Surferbruce

line up the logos on your tires with the valve stem. then when you pull the tube and find the puncture you can locate the offending area on the tire with ease.

Hipcycler

When buying cycling gear, make sure to consider your overall look on the bike you will be riding. Your look, including helmet, gloves, shoes and other gear should all compliment the overall color scheme of your rig!

Nessism

Puke

Ostuni

good thread idea - hope it keeps going.

ignore issues with vehicles on the road. don't be baited or goaded into reacting. no matter how rude or stupid or even dangerous something is, make a mental note of a license plate number for the most serious stuff, but otherwise ignore and just keep riding...

pedex

Just out of curiosity, besides the obvious financial costs of OCP, how much fitness does it cost as well? Seems like sacrificing all that time and effort trying to look cool could be better spent actually riding the bike? The money alone is easily enough to buy more bikes instead

nova

Hey i think would improve your fitness. After all who would drive their car to a bike shop when shoping for cycling gear?

So you put in lots of miles during your kit hunt

masi61

I think hipcycler has a valid point. Making your helmet, shoes, handlebar tape, saddle, cable housing, water bottles, etc... in matching or complementary colors to your frame is a good idea for a number of reasons. 1) I think how motorists respond to a rider that looks halfway together can decrease some of the hassles you need to endure when sharing the road, you might just get a slight increase in respect ( I realize for some drivers, they're not going to respect you no matter what). 2) Upping the coolness factor helps you the rider to feel better about yourself and what you're doing. Play this down Senior member if you want to but riders that look decent out on the road get my respect a lot more than somebody that looks like they got their rig out of a thrift store. 3) Other bikers respond positively to you. 4) Doing some personalization of your ride really doesn't cost much more considering that you're going to need the parts anyway.

UmneyDurak

First I think Hip wasn't 100% serious when he said it. Second I'm truly sorry for you, because you base your opinions by how people look. Ever heard a saying "Looks are only skin deep."? Personally I don't really care what people ride or how they look. All that matters is how they ride. I will have more respect for a rider who looks like he got his stuff in a thrift store and can drop me with ease, then for someone in full matching kit who strugles up 1% hill.
Anyway for the tip: After replacing a tube, and pumping it up a bit. Go around a wheel moving the tire away from the rim, to make sure there are no pinches.

orguasch

when not riding your bike placethe chain on the smallest cog and small chain ring, this way the spring on your derraileur has no tension on it...