have you just bought a new bike either online or from a shop and you need to set it up and
this video might be for you here's eight tips for setting up your new road bike
getting cockpits set up can be pretty straightforward there are a lot of bikes that come
out of the box with in my opinion the controls set up in the wrong location on the handlebar
so we're going to show you a really easy way of setting up the handlebar so that it it's optimally
uh laid out for you to reach the handlebars on the controls start off loosen the stem bolts on
the front of the bike this is obviously a jig and what we're going to try and do is start off
with and this is a generalization and but it'll work for most handlebar types we want to get
the end of the handlebar flat on the end looking at this bubble here this is the starting point
to start offsetting the reach of the handlebar because it can add quite a lot of unnecessary
reach to the front of the bicycle so we're gonna get that completely level once you set
your handlebar rotation what we're probably going to need to do is unwrap the top of the handbars i
don't have to do that in this case but we're going to unwrap all the way along the bottom all the way
across the tops right to underneath the hood and we're then going to peel the hood back this is the
case for most shimano my sram shifters peel the hood back take a five millimeter allen key it's
easier with a p handle like this rather than a multi-tool and you're just going to loosen it off
and get that control so that it's there's a slight element of personal preference
i personally tend to like them just slightly elevated from completely level on the grounds that
when you present your hand to the lever you're not having to roll the wrist and rotate the wrist like
so so we're gonna get that nice and high and what that does is has the potential to reduce the reach
which is a major driver for discomfort and pain in cycling uh by up to 25 30 millimeters without you
having to change anything i find myself having to do this on particularly on the trek branded bikes
a lot of the time they come with a what's called a vrc handlebar it's a very long reach handlebar
it's quite a nice shape in my opinion but it does have quite a long reach and they usually
the hoods are set up quite a lot lower than i would like so if you've got a track then it's
probably worth having a look at that ultimately it's gonna make a lot more comfortable for you
next one is a really useful tip uh completely free most levers have reach adjustment uh for
the brake levers so if you have small hands you might want to adjust this if you have big hands
you might want to adjust this for these shimano shifters you've got a peel back this to access
the bolt which is right on the top here you put your allen key in the top and wind it in as you
can see the lever moves closer to the bar that means you can reach it more easily when you're
in the drops or on the hoods depending on what levers that you have this bolt can be in lots of
different places so if you google shimano tiagra lever reach adjustment should be able to find
where the bolts are on each one worth noting that if you're using rim brakes with cables
uh you'll need to readjust the caliper after making this adjustment based on how much you've
wound it in uh usually it's just a barrel adjuster should be an easy enough job
get your saddle level you can do this in a couple of different ways first by eye so put your bike up
against the wall or if you have a wall like that you can line it up against the drawers
most saddles are designed to work flat or with a tiny bit of nose down tilt so as a starting point
you want to get it as close to that as possible if your saddle looks like this which is a very
common type of saddle with a pressure relief channel in the middle there and a little bit
of a curve you want to aim for the middle point to be level like i said you can either do this by eye
or you can get a spirit level and something flat and find out that it's not that level
oh hang on if your new bike has come with a flat saddle you can put a spirit level
straight on it because it's flat just make sure it's set up completely level
most pedals have an adjustment on them that allows you to change the tension so if you're new to the
sport and you're not used to clipping in loosening this off can be a really good idea equally if you
are racing and you really don't want to risk unclipping i do it on my mountain bike all
the time i crank them up quite high because i don't want to pull my feet out usually it's a
2.5 millimeter allen key in this case and you can wind and adjust it you'll probably hear it
clicking all it does is adjust the tension on the spring that's in the pedal and uh yeah job's good
make sure your quick releases are tight can be a pretty critical way of avoiding injury when you're
riding your bike now most bikes will come with the wheels already in the frame but if you have
to fit the wheels to the bike uh when the bike's been delivered uh then this might be something you
want to check secondly it's actually worth noting that over time the quick releases will get softer
anyway so you'll need to continue checking that they're tight most quick releases will have an
open they'll it will be denoted on the lever whether it's open or closed most of them can
actuate it as well when you close the lever it should leave a light imprint in your hand
that tends to signify that you've got enough pressure through the hat through the
um through the closure uh the way of adjusting it is there is at the opposite end of the cam
there's a female nut on the end of it we're gonna turn that barrel slightly to
increase the amount of uh tension that's going to be applied through the lever and that will
yield a uh a firmer grip in the in the drop outs of the wheel it's worth noting that when you are
doing these up you need to make sure buck is inevitable you're not gonna have a bike in a
stand you're gonna have it on the floor like we've got it here it's important to understand that
you don't want the bike at an angle when you're closing these levers because what will happen is
it will lock the wheel in place at an angle which means your gears won't work properly neither will
your brakes so make sure the bike is completely vertical and also where you close the lever down
should generally be orientated like this don't close it up against the frame like so because
you won't be able to get a good enough purchase in order to open it i will i would tend to always go
between the the seat and the chainstays the anatomy of a quick release skewer riveting is
this in some rare cases you might find that the quick release skewers won't even be fitted to the
wheels so you might find them in in this kind of uh form now it's worth noting that there are some
little springs in the in the quick release now they're basically intended and designed
to bring to pull the cam and the female part of the skewer away from the frame to enable the
wheels to drop out of the bike you've just got to make sure that these are always the thinnest part
against the against the frame or against the wheel uh what happens is when if you if you put them in
the wrong way round it will yield a wheel that won't actually sit in the dropouts correctly so
again you will be either be off center or it'll be sat at an angle which as we've mentioned earlier
will have ramifications in your gear and braking systems in modern years we've seen the advent of
bikes coming with disc brakes what that's meant is that they're now mostly coming with through axles
now the benefit of through axle is you can't really get it wrong you won't be able to fit the
axle correctly if the wheel isn't in the frame correctly it's comprised of only one component
you essentially have a thread in the frame on usually on the drive side
so there's your through axle there's one like i said it's one piece one axle it goes inside the
frame and as as i said if the frame is out of alignment you won't be able to get it in
but if it is it'll be fine also worth noting some of them have allen keys on the end
to adjust them and some of them it's just a lever that you can physically pull to be fair
the allen key thing is more of a racing feature and seen on higher end bikes most consumer
and gravel bikes will have a lever which is a little bit more practical
pinch punches are caused when you hit a bump while riding and the inner tube and the tire hit the rim
and then cause it to puncture usually this will only happen if you're running two lower pressures
so you want to make sure your tires are hard if you don't have a pump with a pressure gauge on it
it may just be a case of feeling them if you do have a putt with a pressure gauge on it then
you can check the side of the tire and you'll be able to see the suggested pressures for that tire
there currently this one has no pressure in it make sure your headset's tight now for
the purpose of this argument most headsets are more or less the same with more modern
even with more modern aero bikes so what we're doing is pre-loading the bearings that are in the
top and bottom cups of the headset it basically kind of pulls everything together
something we found uh quite a lot by often with kind of removing stems and what have you
is that usually the the bung that's set inside the steerer which is the tube which is part of
the fork hasn't been tightened correctly we're going to show you how to do that later on
but the way that this works is you always need to make sure that your stem bolts are loose before
you start adjusting the top cap by loosening or tightening this top bolt you're basically
pulling the bearings together and pre-loading them we don't want it really really tight you
just want to do it finger tight um so there isn't there isn't any play so if i back this off
we might see a bit of play you can see there's a play in the headset now and that that will usually
manifest itself as backwards and forwards motion one way of checking for it is if you apply the
front brake when the bike's on the floor and rock it backwards and forwards you shouldn't really
feel any movement it's worth noting that some bikes like with uh with disc brakes you might feel
a little bit of movement but usually with headsets it's pretty obvious so the way of removing that
movement as i said is get five millimeter tighten that up like i say you've only got to nip it up
a little bit there isn't really a torque setting for it because it varies from headset to headset
and then obviously you're gonna make sure that it's straight and tighten your stem bolts
to give you an understanding of what's inside here is this is a this is from a cannondale
historically this uh this what was fitted was it was called a starfangled nut which was basically a
a steel insert with thread cut into it that you would hammer into the stereotube the advent
of carbon fiber stereotubes we've started using these expanding buns where these work
is that as you apply um as you tighten it it expands the bun inside the steerer
what i find a lot of the time is that uh these have been fitted but they haven't actually
been tightened correctly what that means is that the headset works loose over time so
what you need to do uh in in that case and i know i told you not to do this a minute ago
but for the sake of showing you i'm just going to take this top cap off we usually have inside there
a six or an eight millimeter allen key it's like an eight it is and all you gotta do is you might
need to hold the wheel is just give it a little tighten so you don't want the thing moving inside
the steerer equally it's also worth knowing that the this should never sit proud of the top of the
steerer this is actually what you can see here is part of the fork uh so the the part that you're
screwing the top gap into should never sit proud of the steerer and then jesus to our next point
before you tighten everything up you probably ought to use a torque wrench uh
you can buy one of these something about 30 pounds we've got this
posh park tool one which basically stops you from over tightening everything so most stem bolts are
set preset five newton meters this will not allow you to go beyond that which stops you
from a stripping thread speed breaking bolts and c most importantly not cracking the steerer because
made carbon fiber this is a really useful tool for everything actually on most parts of the bike uh i
believe you can get them with interchangeable heads this one has a four millimeter one at the
moment and you can go around and nut and bolt check all the bolts on your bike they come in
lots of different guises this is a pretty basic one uh which has a you know sort of resistance
built into it or you can go right the way up to a pro grade uh digital system which is what we use
in the workshop here but they all do the same thing fundamentally that marks the end of this
video i hope those eight tips were useful for you if you've got a brand new bike enjoy it big thanks
to james for helping me out with this one i'll uh put a link down below in the description if you
have any questions please put them in the comment section down below thank you and see you next time