- Back again with a whole number of hacks and bodges
that are pretty cheap to do and a whole number of top tips
that are gonna save you money.
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Goggles and mountain biking,
go together like tea and biscuits.
But what happens when your lenses get scratched?
You throw 'em in the bin, don't you?
No, don't do that.
Save yourself some cash and do something cool with 'em.
I've got these old goggle lenses here,
pretty scratched up, save them for a rainy day.
So that is if you're a full face helmet wearer,
when you ride in some really, really muddy conditions,
get that goggle lens, tape it onto the front of your peak
and that's really gonna help catch that spray
that comes off your front wheel and goes back into your face
and on the goggles you're actually wearing.
If you look at Danny Hart's run from 2011 at Champery,
he was wearing one of these
taped onto his peak of his helmet.
All you need some good old-fashioned duct tape
or any sort of strong tape.
It's a super simple hack.
Bit of tape.
Tape it on the front.
Doesn't have to be pretty.
So of course this is a complete hack,
it doesn't look very nice, but when you're riding
in absolutely foul conditions, maybe you're in the Alps
on holiday and you get one of those wet weeks,
that will genuinely help improve the vision you have
and you won't having to be stop and use tear offs
or anything like that that's even worse.
So, it's a really good solution
so keep those old lenses and when they're completely done
and you want to get rid of 'em,
make sure you recycle them
'cause they are plastic after all.
(mellow music)
Now whilst I always prefer to use a wet
or dry oil direct from a dropper on the bottom of the chain,
some of you will still always use an aerosol or spray
de-greaser directly onto your chain and cassette area here.
Now this is actually a suggestion from another viewer.
So, my idea is always to stuff in some shop towel
into the spokes here just to catch any mist
that might go towards your disc rotor.
But this helpful viewer said use a shower cap.
Shower caps costs almost nothing.
You can obviously get them wet.
So, they're going to deal with that fine
and you can spray away until your heart's content
knowing that nothing's going to go near your disc rotor.
If you do insist on using a shower cap for anything,
A, don't put it back in the shower
for someone to use and get all oily with.
But you could use it for something else actually.
If you've got a saddle, for example,
that's got any sort of stitching or Kevlar saddle
maybe that's going to soak up water
and you leave your bike outside,
shower cap it up.
Sorry, not sorry.
(mellow music)
Whenever it comes to replacing
in the cable from your bike, whether it's for
your dropper post, suspension controls,
or your rear derailleur or even your front derailleur,
it is worth keeping hold of them because you can trim
them down and use them on shorter runs.
For example this one was a rear derailleur cable,
it frayed and eventually snapped.
I've chopped this one down so I can reuse it
in a shorter position on the bike.
So it would be beneficial to use it on the dropper post,
also on the lockout system I've got on this bike.
But another one, if you've got one that's extremely short,
it's worth chopping it down, keeping it in your riding bag.
If you're unlucky enough to snap a gear in the cable
out on the trail, you can thread this through
directly into the rear derailleur.
You take the outer housing out,
take the remaining inner cable
out of the derailleur completely
and then using this as a cable stop thread it through,
put it through and then pull the derailleur into the gear
that you want manually and then tighten up
against that cable, that will give you a decent gear
to better get home on without having to use
your hardest gear.
So well worth keeping and yes, I know,
I'm fully aware that I've got a frayed cable right there
that I need to replace so I'll also be keeping that one
trimmed down, maybe for use as my
walk out one at a later date.
(mellow music)
Inner tubes, always keep your old inner tubes.
It's worth a rainy day spending a bit of time
and fixing them up.
That is, of course, unless you've completely slashed
them to bits and they're beyond the point of repair.
So, in that case, go through each of them
and if like this one particular here,
you can remove the valve core.
It's worth taking the valve core out
and keeping that for later, because they do go wrong
time to time and if you run tubeless on your bike,
they do gunk up every now and then,
and they're all the same, so keep those valve cores.
Have a little box of bits, keep those things separately.
I'm just gonna remove a couple of these valve cores
because they're damn useful things to keep.
Already paid for those inner tubes,
so you may as well keep those valve cores.
There you go, I've got three valve cores
out of three old tubes that I know
have got really bad pinch, punches, slashes in them.
So whilst you can fix those, it's only
a temporary fix because they do tend to split again.
But they are worth keeping to use
with my tubeless valves for later down the line.
However, with other inner tubes that aren't so good
it's well worth using these in your bike
to protect them against chain slap.
So, you get yourself a length of inner tube.
Nice simple one this.
You can literally wrap it around a chain stay.
It's not the prettiest solution,
but it's completely free because you've already
got another inner tube for another purpose.
Give it a bit of a stretch to help it on.
Mount it all the way around and you just need
a single cable tie or bit of gorilla tape
just to hold it in place at the far end.
(mellow music)
So, when it comes to tires, it's often
worth keeping old tires, as well.
You can cut sections of tire up
to use as down tube protectors.
Quite an extreme example, but if you're perhaps
going out for a few weeks to do a trip
in the Alps or maybe at Whistler Bike Park,
you're going to get a lot of wear happen to your bike.
And you see quite a lot of people who do like seasonaires,
staying out there, doing that sort of protection.
But also a tire like this one,
this particular one, I've already clipped down
and used this as a rear tire,
but it's actually worth bearing this in mind.
You can give a tire fresh edges
if you just clip them down with a pair of snips
and cut nobbles down, it takes a bit of time
to do it but you can work your way around
and turn what was effectively a worn,
but good tire into a semi-slick tire.
So this is still got some miles left in it.
I'm gonna continue using this one,
and it's well worth considering doing that yourself.
(mellow music)
Part of mountain biking is riding in varied conditions
and if you're like us here in the UK,
you have some very wet and muddy seasons
and some very dry seasons.
Well, they're a lot shorter for us.
Now, I don't like to chop and change my tires too much
and I tend to actually run three tires
and run those for most of the year round.
And the way I do this is so I don't have to have a dedicated
mud set of tires for winter
and it becomes expensive having lots of tires.
Now on the front of the bike I like to put
the grippier tire, that's generally the way.
Even in summer, I've got Trail King on the front
and Mountain King on the rear.
So for winter I'll swap that Trail King to the rear,
the Mountain King will sit on the shelf until
harder weather again and I'll put a Der Baron on the front,
which is much more like a mud tire.
It's not, it's a wide aggressive tire
but for my local conditions it's way
too aggressive to use until it's really soft and muddy out,
so it's a good combination of actually
saving a bit of cash as well, having three tires,
and you get a lot more use out of 'em by doing that
'cause you're constantly swapping 'em around.
Now, depending on what brand you want to do
it's a good way of doing things,
'cause you're gonna have that semi-slick style tire
out back and you can have a couple of options.
It could be good for use on the front, also on the rear.
Much cheaper, certainly, than having two sets of tires.
Saving you, of course, with the cost.
(mellow music)
Now, if you ride a lot of bike parks,
then it's fairly likely you're going to cook those
rear brake pads and the rear disc rotor itself.
Now, what I mean by that is A You're going to be
wearing them out but also you can actually
almost polish that disc rotor.
So the brake pads aren't going to grip
quite as well on them.
So, the first thing you can do is to actually
renovate those brake pads and the disc rotor.
So, what you wanna do is take the brake pads
off the bike and the disc rotors as well,
and then using like a specialist brake cleaner or anything
like an isopropyl alcohol that will evaporate,
clean that disc rotor and clean those brake pads up.
Of course, I've got greasy hands at the moment,
but this is an old one that's actually bent
so we're not fussed about this option.
So you want to clean them up and then
using a really coarse emery or glass or wet and dry paper,
roughing those up basically afterwards
and you want to basically rescore
the surface all of the way round.
Now, you also want to be doing this
after you've cleaned up the brake pads.
Like I say, give them a good clean using brake pad cleaner.
Then make sure that they don't
have any residue on afterwards.
There's a long process for doing this.
This is just the fast way of doing it.
And then really score up the surfaces.
Again make sure they're grease free,
make sure they're completely dry.
And then, when you reinstall back to your bike,
go through that bedding in process again.
And the fact that they're both a bit coarse,
hopefully, means that they will mate back together again
well and you'll get slightly better braking.
That's ideal if you're on a trip
and your brake pads are starting to fail,
because if you put fresh there brake pads straight on,
what's going to happen is you're gonna glaze
them over again, it's not gonna work well unless
you buy a new rotor at the same time.
Now one other workaround you can do with that
would be to take your front brake pads off and swap them
to the rear and then buy some new for the front.
And the reason you're doing that is those front
brake pads well they're already mated
into a disc rotor so they're gonna work better
on that glazed disc rotor
than the brand-new set are of course.
The brand new set go on the front, bed them in as normal.
Hopefully, your brakes will be working better.
But just take into account as well,
that the way that your brake pads wear.
Some riders will use the rear brake more,
some will use the front brake more.
The front brake, obviously, you're gonna
load up the front wheel more.
It's got more traction so the wheel that's
on the ground more with the traction
that is gonna control your speed more.
The reason that you're just gonna be skidding
down the trail is because your back wheel is light
and you can't control the speed with that.
So if you're sort of riding around steep terrain,
you can use your front brake probably
more heavily than you are the rear brake.
So just take into account how much they wear
and never let them wear all the way down to the metal.
That's just gonna cost you more in the long run
'cause that could damage your pistons,
could damage the actual disc rotors as well.
Of course, that means buying all new parts
and you want to minimize having to do that.
(mellow music)
Now although it's not a money saving tip as such,
it will save you money in the long run
by looking after your investment.
So it's well worth having some sort of
frame protection on your bike.
Now there are a number of dedicated kits out there,
like Invisiframe, which literally are
the best thing that you can put on your bike
but really it needs to be going straight on a new bike.
But there are some other options
to those high end options like Invisiframe.
You can get 3M helitape in rolls, you can get it in sheets.
it's not the most expensive stuff
and it is worthwhile having some.
And in particular, areas you wanna look at
are top tube of your bike.
So you may not think that's an area
that gets a lot of wear and tear
but actually if you wear knee pads,
you'll find that systematically you'll be
rubbing your knees when you're going through turns
and you actually dull down the paint finish
on your bike a lot faster than you might think as well.
So if you get some heavy tape,
get some of that on the top tube.
Make sure that you float the stuff on
and make sure you get all of the bubbles out
so it sits on there clean and you barely
notice it's on there to be honest.
Other areas worth doing are areas on the inside
of the seat stays where chains likely to chip the paint,
where cables are likely to rub on the frame,
any areas like that, the side of the forks,
they always see a bit of action as well.
So take that into account.
Of course, like I said there are a number of dedicated
complete frame options, there are smaller frame kits
or you can do it yourself.
(mellow music)
And finally, probably the best thing
that most mountain bikers can do to save money
in the future is just to simply
keep your bike clean and lubricated.
Mine's fairly clean but you know does need
a bit of attention.
But I do give it a post ride check.
Every time I ride it I make sure give it a once-over,
any noises it made during the ride, I check that.
Make sure the chain is clean and lubricated at all times,
check the pivot bolts, all that sort of stuff.
But when you wash your bike, get into the habit
of checking your bike for cracks,
checking for any sort of damage.
Inspect that chain, make sure there's no damage,
that the chain's likely to split, snap, anything like that.
And generally, just look after your bike.
The more you look after it, the longer it's gonna last,
the better condition it's gonna be in,
and the less money you're gonna need to spend on it.
Think of it as doing little and often
rather than do one big overhaul
and then discovering that several things
are loose, worn out, need replacing.
It's a better way of doing things.
For a couple more maintenance related videos,
click up here for another load of hacks,
including some pretty wild ones
of an angle grinder in there.
And click down here if you want to see
a full sort of cleaning detail video on a bike
and exactly what to look for when you're inspecting it.
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