Tech tips »
Regular mountain bike maintenance saves you money
Quite often, I’ll pull into the parking lot at my local riding spot and find people wrenching on their bikes, doing something they should have done before they left their home. Worse is when I come across someone on the trail who has a mechanical because they failed to perform even the most basic preventative maintenance on their ride.
Below is a checklist that you should run through on a regular basis. If you remember to run through the list, my bet is that you’ll spent less time on trailside mechanicals and more time riding your bike.
Before every ride
- Do a quick check of all the major bolts on your bike: crank bolts, chainrings, headset, fork, pivots.
- Make sure your chain is well lubed. Use a quality chain lube like TriFlow or something like that.
- Check air pressure. In your tires, your fork, your shock. Proper air pressure helps your bike’s components perform the way they were meant to.
- Check your brakes. Nothing’s worse than getting to the trailhead and finding your hydro lines have a leak or your v-brakes have burned a hole in the sides of your rim.
- Check quick releases. There’s nothing more unsettling than riding down a trail and noticing the skewer on your front wheel is dangling loose.
Every few rides
- Wipe off mud from your frame and check for cracks. Chances are low that you’ll actually have a fracture but you’re better to be safe than sorry.
- Clean your drivetrain. Dirt and grit are the biggest contributors to a prematurely worn drivetrain. And with a high-end drivetrain (rings, chain, cassette) running between $200 and $300, milking it for a couple extra months gives you better value for your cash.
- Check your wheels. With disc brakes, it’s much harder than in the past to tell if your wheels are out of true (since an out of true wheel no longer rubs your rim brake’s pads). Also check the spoke tension; if you’ve got loose spokes, your wheel needs some love.
These things take very little time — maybe five or ten minutes for the ‘every ride’ checkup and another ten or fifteen minutes for the cleaning — and will save you time and hassles. Did I forget something? Drop me a line.
1. Posted by Cleaning your dirty bike makes parts last longer » The Biking Hub | 3:00 pm, 8 December 2005
[…] The article stresses that, in addition to performing regular checkups on your bike, it’s important to replace things like worn or dirty cables and cable housings on a semi-regular basis to ensure reliable shifting and (when applicable) good braking. […]