- If your winter riding is anything like ours
here at GMBN, then your bike's gonna have to put up
with all the abrasion and wear
that a wet, muddy winter puts
on your drive train and everything else.
Give your bike a bit of a spring clean,
and it's gonna be prepped and primed for summer trails.
First up, before we get in the workshop,
let's give the bike a bit of a clean.
It is pretty filthy,
so you want to make sure there's nothing on there
that's in sort of a bad state.
Work your way around, make sure everything's clean.
Give your transmission a bit of a clean.
Whilst your doing it, it gives you the opportunity
to make sure there's no damage that's gonna need fixing,
like frame cracks, or slashes in your tires,
anything like that on the way around.
Give that bike a clean, and then we'll see you
upstairs in the workshop.
With your bike being at least sort of respectably clean,
now you can have a decent look at it,
and see what things you need to refresh on there.
Some things are gonna be replaceable,
i.e. changing your derailleur cables
if they're a bit sticky.
You might also find some damaged parts
and components on there.
Now, this is an ideal time of year
to replace those, so either you can do that yourself
by following one of our other how-to videos,
or if you're unsure, you can take it
to your local bike shop.
Now, I like to work from the front of the bike
to the back of the bike.
That way, I can be systematic, and not miss anything.
First up, I'm just gonna inspect the tires,
make sure there's no nicks, or cuts, or anything in there.
These are fairly new tires,
so they should be fine.
I've not lost any pressure, but in your case,
they might have been on there some time,
so there's a good chance they might have some damage.
If you do manage to find some damage
to your tire side, would be that slash,
or a minor nick in there, we do advise
repairing that as soon as possible,
or replacing it if it's an especially bad one.
We did do a video on sewing up
the side or slash on a tire.
Basically, you stitch this up, you patch it on the inside,
and you vulcanizing solution on the outside.
It does mean that that tire is suitable for use
until the tread does wear out,
but it's not always that easy.
If you want to find out how to repair a tire slash
just like the one we've just shown you,
the link is in the description below this very video.
It's a really good one, to know how to do that.
It does save you some money, at least in the short term.
As I'm working my way around the wheel,
I'm just looking for any sort of visible damage to the rim.
I want to make sure the spokes are all
fairly evenly tensioned, nothing is out of place or loose.
I'm also having a look at the disk rotor,
making sure it's not warped,
making sure everything runs nice and freely, and then true.
There shouldn't be any sort of visible damage to the bike.
Want to make sure there's no play in your bearings.
Don't forget, this is just a spring cleaning on the bike.
It's not a full service.
You just want to make sure your bike is in good condition,
and everything is working so you can hit those trails.
If you run any sort of tubeless tires
and you've been doing this for any length of time,
you'll notice that, over time,
the sealant does dry up,
so you do need to keep an eye on this,
and it will certainly depend on
the sealant you use and the weather conditions you ride in.
Here in the UK, I tend to top up my tire sealant
maybe once or twice a year,
and it tends to stay pretty good.
Something that does tend to happen quite a lot is,
the valve cores get clogged up,
so I do recommend making sure
you take the valve cores out, and picking out
any bits of rubber that are clogging them up.
It normally happens at the bottom end here,
which is going on the inside.
That's what hampers air getting into the valve.
What tends to happen as a result of this is,
if you have a puncture when you're out on the trail,
or even if you just want to top up on air,
you'll end up bending your valve core,
and it will be the day you don't have a spare one with you.
When you remove your pump, the core comes out,
you lose all the air out of your tire.
You're forced to set your tire up
with a tube on the inside, a lot of faffing, a lot of mess.
If you keep your valve cores clean and clear,
and make sure that they're not bent,
they're not gonna let you down on a ride.
That is exactly one of those sort of things
that you want to be doing to make sure
your bike is ready for the trails this spring.
Whilst you have the valve core
out of your bike for cleaning,
give the wheel a little shake.
You notice, on this particular one,
I can't hear any sealant inside,
which suggests the sealant is actually dried up.
I'm gonna take the opportunity
of the valve core not being there,
and put some fresh sealant in through that empty valve.
The best way to do that is with a basic syringe.
There are various ones available on the market.
You can quite simply suck up some sealant,
and pour it straight in.
I can't recommend using a syringe
for putting fresh sealant in enough
because it does mean you don't have
to reseat your tires again.
Everything is gonna be perfect
as soon as you re-inflate,
and you won't need to use the compressor to re-inflate it.
My valve core is nice and clean.
I've got some fresh sealant in there.
It's just a case of putting some fresh air in.
Next thing, whilst at the front of the bike,
you want to pay attention to,
check out your brake caliper, make sure
it's securely fastened to the bike.
You want to make sure the brakes are working well.
Do your brakes pull all the way to the bars?
In this case, they feel absolutely fine.
If those are pulling all the way to the bars,
it's either an indication they might need bleeding,
or perhaps your brake pads are worn.
The best way to check that
is to simply remove the wheel from the bike.
Of course, if your brake pads are worn out,
you definitely want to be replacing those
as soon as possible.
Whilst the wheel's off the bike,
you want to inspect the disk rotor,
and just look at the braking surfaces.
If you can, avoid getting your fingertips
on the actual braking surfaces 'cause
you have got oil in your fingers
that can affect the brake pads and those braking surfaces.
What you're looking for is any sort of heavy pitting,
or any sort of ridges or scores even
in the rotor surfaces that might've happened
from worn out brake pads,
or if they look glazed or polished over.
If that's the case, with rotors,
you can clean them with isopropyl alcohol,
and get some fine emery paper on them
to restore some of that grain to them,
and re-bed your brakes in.
As with brakes, because they're a safety thing,
you heavily rely on your brakes,
I recommend doing it sooner rather than later.
Now it's just a case of removing those brake pads,
and inspecting them to make sure
that there's plenty of life left on them.
Depending on the manufacturer of your brakes,
they remove in slightly different ways,
but you'll tend to have a retaining bolt,
and then one of these spring lushes between the pads.
As you can see here, there's plenty
of life left on those.
What you're looking for is plenty of the pad
in relation to the backing plate.
If your brake pad's in bad condition,
then replace those pads at this stage.
Very easy to do.
You literally simply pop them back in,
and they will be brand new brake pads ready to go.
Of course, you do have to bed them in
as per a new set of brake pads.
If your brake pads are fine,
and your lever is pulling all the way to the bars,
it's very likely that
you're gonna need to bleed those brakes.
There's a link in the description below this video
of how to bleed this very brakes,
which are SRAM Guide brakes
with a bleeding edge port on them.
There's also links in that video
for Shimano and other Avid or SRAM brakes.
Next up at the front of the bike,
obviously, you want to make sure that
all your controls in your cockpit's safe,
but assuming that is, you want to make sure
your transmission and your gears are working nicely.
I'm just gonna run the bike through the gears,
and my shifter actually feels really nice and smooth,
and indexing is still good on the bike.
However, it's very common, after a winter's ride,
in that your gear shifting's gonna be quite stiff.
That's down to one of two things.
Either water and muck has got into the outer housing,
and it's either corroded the inner cable,
which is generally causing additional friction,
or there's some friction inside the shifter.
In this case, I know that my gears are working fine,
but I'm still gonna put some grease
on the inside of the shifter
'cause it helps keep rain from getting
into that cable in the first place.
Now, I like to use a very thin spray grease for this,
and the reason for that is, it stays in place,
and helps form a really good barrier,
but it's not so thick that it congeals
or gets in the way of the actual shifter action.
Depending on your shifter,
it's gonna be slightly different.
It's a three millimeter bolt on the top
of this SRAM X01 shifter.
You simply take the cover off,
and you get access to the inside of the shifter there.
I'm just gonna slacken it off,
put a bit of a rag underneath here
just to catch any spray that goes
where I don't want it to.
Make sure it gets some, just going to
where the water can get into to actual outer housing.
Nicely done.
Wipe off any excess that's gonna help attract
dirt, and muck, and grime to your shifter.
Then replace that cover.
If your shifting does feel stiff,
and it's not the shifter itself,
then you're gonna need to either
flush out the outer housing at the very least,
or replace the gear inner cable.
More than likely, you're gonna need
to flush out that outer housing
and replace the inner cable, but sometimes,
if it's in that bad of a state,
you're gonna need to replace the outer housing as well.
In this particular case, it's working just fine,
but if you want to replace your inner cable,
this is how you do it.
You simply remove the top of the shifter
just like I showed you to grease the inside.
I would still replace some of that grease
on the inside there.
Then start threading through the new inner cable
so it comes out of the barrel adjuster.
Make sure the barrel adjuster is wound in.
I would always be inclined to unwind it one click.
Pull it all the way through, replace the cover
on the shifter, and refit it to the bike.
Then just flush in some lubricant
through the outer housing
before threading the cable into that.
Following winter is a good time
to replace things on your bike because
you've got a maximum use in the bad conditions.
You want to start the year off
with a nice, fresh drive chain so that,
if you do need to replace your chain,
now's the time to check it
just to see how it is wearing.
Use one of these chain checker tools,
and you can check the wear on it.
In fact, this one's so new,
I can barely get the chain into the tool itself.
I just bought this, a few weeks old,
so as I would expect, it's not worn at all.
It does depend, if your chain is 8, 9, 10,
11, or 12 speed, there's always recommendations
on the checkers, new chain,
between .25 and .5, and replacing at .75.
It does vary between 11 to 12 speed chains,
but it's a good recommendation
to get one of these.
This is a slightly more expensive chain checker tool,
but there's a more basic one that's literally
a set of plates you just chuck into your bike.
Cost you about 10 quid or about 10 bucks.
Well worth having.
If you change the chain in early spring
just before your summer season kicks off,
you're gonna have a nice, fresh drive chain
with accurate shifting for at least most of the season
depending on the conditions you ride in,
and how often you ride.
It's quite likely that I'll be running this chain
this time next year.
Obviously, the drive train is nice and clean on the bike.
For indexing the gears, all you're looking for
is just to make sure that one click
equates to one gear change.
Nice and simple.
You can pretty much check this
on the first three or four sprockets,
just ensuring the chain hops up and down.
If the chain doesn't hop up immediately,
if you turn the barrel adjuster
on the shifter counterclockwise, so anticlockwise,
quarter or half a turn, keep doing that
until it shifts up cleanly.
Then repeat for the first three or four sprockets
in both directions, and you'll find it should shift
all the way to the top.
Also at the front of your bike,
you want to pay attention to your suspension forks.
Over the time, during the winter,
they can ingest a lot of mud and muck,
so it is a really good time
to consider doing a lower leg service.
A lower leg service is something fairly basic
that everyone can do at home.
If you're not comfortable doing this,
of course, your local bike shop can do it for you.
If you want to find out more on
doing a fork lower leg service yourself,
it's a fairly similar principle on Rocks forks,
or SunTour, most of the common brands of forks.
There's a link in the description below.
You can do a nice visual inspection in the meantime.
Make sure that the seals are very clean,
there's no visible damage to them.
The key, ultimately, to suspension forks working well
is them being clean.
Of course, doing the major lubrication
on the inside of the forks is done
with a lower leg service.
You can roll back the garter spring,
and get some sort of silicon fork lube spray
on the stanchions here, cycle it a bit,
and you can help pull out
some of that muck that's initially under those seals,
wipe it off, and replace that garter spring.
That's a good idea just to do as routine maintenance,
just to make sure that there's no
drying out going on on your fork legs.
Of course, the real work is done
in a lower leg service.
If you have a dropperpost on your mountain bike,
we want to make sure that's functioning correctly,
goes up and down correctly as it should do,
and it's not sticky.
The first thing is to check that the shifter,
or sort of the remote for it, is working correctly.
This particular one is cable-operated.
I notice that the operation on it
is nice and smooth, I don't need
to replace this cable.
Generally, they're pretty good, I think.
You don't need to do it too often.
If yours is a hydraulic one,
like the Rockshox Reverb,
there is a chance you might need to do
a bleed on the shifter itself.
If that's the case, then there's a link
in the video description below
to how to bleed a Rockshox Reverb lever.
If yours is like this one,
it's very easy to replace the cables.
There's another bit of maintenance really worth doing,
and it's very similar to fork seals
and making sure your forks are working correctly.
On many a seatpost, you can actually remove the seal,
and clean under this very easy.
I'm just gonna check the operation of this,
just sliding it up and down,
and it actually is sliding okay,
but I'd rather be on the safe side,
and make sure it's working nicely.
I'm just gonna undo this dust seal here,
and slide this up.
I'll get access to the bush under there.
Make sure it's all nice and clean around here.
If you use a quality suspension lube,
or a suspension grease just under here,
it can help purge out any nasty grit and grease
that's found its way into the seal,
and make it feel very smooth in operation.
Actually, it does feel a lot smoother straight away,
so goes to show that, even one that feels
like it's in good condition can benefit
from a bit of grease.
Just gonna wipe the surface over
'cause you don't want too much to stick to this.
You're good to go.
Something else I really like to do,
I do this, to be honest, every time I clean my bike,
but it's a really nice thing to do in spring
just to keep your bike a bit cleaner
for a bit longer, is to polish the frame up a little bit.
There's various different frame polishes out there.
They're normally silicon-based.
You can just bring your frame up to a bit of a gloss.
Just like when you wax your car,
it just helps dirt and other muck
stop sticking to your bike in between bike cleans.
Especially good for those wet days,
when you're out on a trail,
and it's just muck that's just gonna stick to it.
There you go.
There are the basics for a spring clean on your bike,
and getting it ready for the trails
this spring and summer.
Hopefully, some of these tips would've been helpful for you.
If you want to find out how to do
that fork lower leg service,
which is applicable to most suspension forks out there,
click down there.
It's a really useful thing to do.
You can do it a couple of times a year,
and it really does make a difference
to how your suspension forks perform.
If you want to find out everything
about getting your gears indexed,
and how to accomplish perfect shifting, click up there.
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