(pleasant music)
- Now, whether you've been riding your bike through winter
or you're pulling it out from hibernation,
it will likely need a bit of a tune up.
You can think of it as TLC for your bike,
getting it running smoothly, efficiently,
and, of course, safely.
Now, obviously, your bike will need
a proper and thorough overhaul from time to time.
But you can keep on top of a few key areas
with a quick 20 minute tune up.
Now, best practice to start any bike tune up
is to have a nice, clean bike.
Now, how much you need to clean your bike
depends on how recently you cleaned your bike
and how filthy it is.
Now, hopefully it's not too dirty,
in which case, you can watch our
five minute bike wash video,
which I will throw you to at the end of this video.
So hang tight for that.
In the meantime, why not head down below this video,
hit the subscribe button,
if you're not already subscribe to GTN,
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But to start the bike tune up,
I'm actually going to start with an inspection
of this thing here, the seatpost,
which I know it sounds quite odd
to do an inspection of the seatpost,
doesn't need to be performed on every bike tune up,
but don't do what I did and completely neglect it
and end up with some issues.
Now, carbon on carbon, carbon seatpost, carbon frame,
isn't such an issue, but they do have a tendency to slip.
So you want to make sure it's got some
carbon grip paste in there.
So, take the seatpost out, have a check of it,
and make sure that that's been applied to it
and keep on top of that.
The issues come there mostly
when we've got carbon post into an alloy frame
or an alloy post into a carbon frame,
because they have tendency to bond to each other.
So if you're not checking up on them regularly,
and making sure that there's enough grease in there,
that can happen, which is far from ideal.
So yeah, just take the seatpost out every so often,
keep an eye on it and keep it well greased.
Okay, moving on to the next area,
probably the first place that I normally start,
and that is the chain.
Now, this is quite a key area
in your bike's transmission,
because it connects the front part of your drive train
to the rear part, and actually is what converts your
pedal power into that forward movement.
And the chain is made up of hundreds of parts.
We've got the outer plates, the inner plates,
the rivets, et cetera,
and that needs maintaining and keeping on top of.
So in some cases that may mean
just simply a quick clean of the chain using some degreaser.
And I would really recommend using a chain cleaning tool,
it makes your life a heck of a lot easier,
it's a lot quicker, and it can really
thoroughly clean the chain.
In other cases, it may mean actually
fully replacing the chain if it is stretched or worn out,
and that is exactly what I need to do today.
So, depending on the chain that you're using,
you may be able to remove it using a powerlink,
if you have one on your chain,
or you can use a chain tool like this one,
as I'm going to do right now.
(pleasant music)
All right, so that's the chain off.
But before I wack the new one on,
that was actually a really good opportunity
for me to take a look at the jockey wheels,
given they're nicely exposed right now.
But whether you are taking the chain off or not,
it is actually really important
you do keep on top of these, keep them well maintained,
and keep them nice and clean.
They do have a tendency to get rather clogged up,
given the location on the bike at the rear,
and quite low down close to the road.
That's not only going to affect your efficiency,
but also the wear of your components and your chain.
So, what we want to do is clean it down,
we're going to use a bit of degreaser on the jockey wheels,
and then you'll rub that down with a rag or a brush.
Or you can take that one step further
and actually use an Allen key or a hex key
and remove the individual jockey wheels
and give them a good thorough clean.
(pleasant music)
Now, this is also a good opportunity
to drop the rear wheel out and clean the cassette.
Again, the cogs collect dirt
that can reduce efficiency, affect shifting,
and reduce the lifespan of components.
Depending on the state of it
and how long you're having to spend on other parts,
you can just leave the cassette
and still use some degreaser
and brush it off fairly clean.
If, like me, you like the satisfaction
of a fully cleaned cassette,
it doesn't take much to take it off with a chain whip
and fully douse it in some degreaser and reinstall.
It's weirdly therapeutic.
Or maybe that's just me.
Right now, back to the chain.
I've got a brand new chain here ready to install,
and I'm going to measure this one up against my old chain.
Now, providing your old chain was the correct length,
you want to match the length with the new chain
or just a fraction shorter,
because the old chain may have slightly stretched.
Then you're ready to install this chain.
And once that's done, just clean the new chain off,
because they tend to come with a protective greasy coating,
and then apply your own chain on
to get it running nice and smoothly.
Right, now that that is all installed,
it's time to check over the gears,
make sure that they're still running smoothly,
or perhaps you already knew
that they needed a little bit of tweaking already.
On mechanical gears, you can just use the barrel adjuster
on the rear mech to just slightly adjust the gears
and get them well trimmed.
On electronic gears, you can pop them into
micro-adjustment mode.
The aim here is to get them running
as smoothly as possible, efficiently as possible.
And that means as little noise as possible
coming from the drive train.
And that will hopefully mean
that the gears are well trimmed
and shifting very well.
(pleasant music)
But now on to the brakes, disc brake or rim brake.
We have a few things to cover here.
Are they clean?
Are they aligned properly?
And are they worn out or not?
Now, if they're dirty,
this can obviously affect braking performance,
as well as maybe bringing some rather
unpleasant sounds with it.
So, just make sure you wash them down, clean them off.
Do be wary if you do have disc brakes,
not to contaminate the disc brake pads in the process.
It can also be quite easy to
knock and misalign your brakes.
So, onto rim brakes, it's quite easy just to,
by hand, push them back into place and realign them.
And ideally, what you're after,
on any type of brakes, is an equal distance
from the brake to the rim
or brake to the disc on either side.
On some bikes, particularly on TT bikes,
you can't adjust them by hand,
so which case you can use these
adjustment screws on the side,
and just tweak them, till you get them set up perfectly.
On disc brakes, you want to release the bolts
that are holding the caliper in place.
Hold down the disc, that's going to realign the caliper
and then retighten the bolts.
But you may just need to replace the brakes after all,
in which case, get some new pads.
I need to do that on my front brakes for sure.
So you can just take them out
using the bolts on the side.
On disc brakes, slightly different,
and then just replace them, realign them, get them set up.
(pleasant music)
Now, our final port of call for a quick
20 minute bike tune up is your tires.
Now, you want to check they're not excessively worn,
cracked, or maybe have any wounds, or cuts to them.
Now, I know it is possible to patch up some tires,
particularly with tubeless tires,
but if you're observing your tires
and you see a rather large cut to it,
I'd say it's time for some new tires.
Not just for performance,
but also for your own sanity and safety,
because there's nothing worse and more annoying
than having to replace an inner tube and fix a puncture
on the side of the road.
Now, actually over the winter,
and also for a lot of my training,
I tend to opt for a slightly harder wearing set of tires
that are slightly more puncture resistant.
I also often go for a slightly wider tire
for increased comfort.
So just have a look at your tires
and consider what type you're going for
for the time of the year.
Now, obviously there are some other areas
that do need some attention from time to time too,
such as your bearings.
But I would say these fall into
a slightly larger and longer maintenance
that you perform maybe slightly less regularly.
But I am talking here mostly about
your headset bearings and your bottom bracket bearings.
And normally this would just require
dropping out your forks,
taking the cranks out and giving some attention to
the bearing cups, clean them off,
drying them off and reapplying some grease.
In some cases, you may need to replace the bearings,
particularly if your bike has been sat dormant for a while,
or you've been riding in some poor weather.
But if you do only have 20 minutes
for a quick bike tune up,
then I would really recommend taking a look at the seatpost,
not necessarily every single time,
but it's good idea to keep an eye on it.
Take a look at the chain, the jockey wheels,
the cassette, make sure the gears are trimmed in,
look at the brakes and also look at the tires.
Now, if you do that regularly,
you hopefully won't need to replace the components
quite as much.
And hopefully won't be needing to replace them
every single time.
And in fact, you may be able to scoot over
some of those areas quite quickly,
because they need very little maintenance.
But I hope that has been helpful for you today,
and you've learned a little something.
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