- We love decent hack or bodge at GMBN,
especially if they're trailside-based.
And of course, everyone knows that the ultimate thing to fix
anything on your bike with is a cable tie.
So here are 10 of the very best hacks and bodges
you can do using cable ties.
♫ Hacks and bodges, hacks and bodges, hacks and bodges
First up, you've been off this massive drop,
You land a bit squarely, you break your saddle,
and then it's flapping around like a flip-flop.
How do you fix it?
Easy, cable-tie.
Make no mistake, these are not genuine fixtures,
these are hacks and bodges to get yourself
off the trails and get home.
You're going to need to replace the saddle
when you get home.
But you don't want to ride it like this
because it's going to flap around and ultimately come off.
So you want to line it up as best as you can on the bike
and then simply use cable ties just to hold it in place.
Run a couple around the top here.
It's not going to be the most comfortable thing to ride,
but it's going to stay in one piece with any luck.
All right, so it looks a bit like Gonzo's nose,
but it's going to get you home.
Bodge number one.
So now you're at number two.
Hammering down a bit of singletrack, hit a tree,
break your brake lever clamp.
How do you fix it?
Easy, cable ties.
So in this case the bolt was broken,
so I'm just going to run a cable tie through here,
and a whole bunch of them around just to keep it in place.
So I'm just going to run a couple around here
just to make it as-- make sure it's fairly secure.
I want to run another one around it just to be safe.
Cable tie is king once more.
Good to go and hit the trails, get down to the bottom.
Bodge number two.
So you're hammering along some alpine singletrack,
you clout your pedal on a real big lump of rock,
you massively rip the thing off,
but your axle's still exposed.
How do you fix it?
Easy, cable ties.
Okay, so the common thing on most saw pedals,
there will be a retaining nut holding the pedal
onto the axle itself.
And if you hit your pedal hard enough,
it's really easy to sheer that nut straight off.
Now I saw this happen to someone a while ago,
they massively ripped their whole pedal off the axle
and they were left with just the spindle.
They massively continued their ride to the top of the climb.
Obviously it's pretty dangerous to descend like that.
So he put the pedal back on the top, and using cable ties,
bodged it onto the crank so he had a static platform.
It meant he couldn't pedal, but it did mean he had a nice,
safe platform to get down to the bottom and enjoy his ride.
Of course, he had to fix it when he got to the bottom.
In his case, it was just a little stripped nut.
There's a little eight mil nut in the end there.
Replaced it, it was good to go.
Bodge number three, done!
So transmission puts up with a lot of stress
when you're out on a trail.
And the rear harbour itself relies on the pull system,
so things are-- it's a one-way ratchet.
And every now and then if your hub's a bit old or tired,
they're going to give way, and it will just spin around,
which means you got no more gears.
How do you fix it?
Easy, cable ties.
So we're just going to imagine here
that this spins both ways, so the simple hack for this
is cable tying the back of the set to the spoke
so it stops it moving.
If you got all the tools in your riding bag,
you probably want to take your disc off to do this,
but I'm just going to try
and give it a bit of a bodge while I'm here.
So I just want to carefully thread the back of the cable tie
around the cassette here, pull that nice and tight.
You want to repeat this process all the way around the wheel
until you've effectively locked your cassette
to the rear spokes.
Of course it is really fiddly to do this but it does mean
you're going to be able to lightly pedal your way back
to a bike shop or someone that's going
to be able to help you.
Your other option, of course, is walk.
Nothing wrong with walking if you like that sort of thing.
Of course, bodging a cassette like this with a bunch
of cable ties means it's not going to move,
so you can't freewheel.
So whatever you do is literally a bodge so you can ride home
really mellow on the pedals,
but it's got the added advantage you're turning
your bike into a fixey.
Maybe you've always wanted one.
I know I haven't.
Given the nature of mountain biking, you're going
to be riding on some pretty rough terrain,
and it's your wheels that contact the ground
and put up with all the abuse that you're going to dish out.
So it's not surprising, here and now,
you're going to break a spoke.
What does that mean?
Well, if you've got normal spoked wheels and you got
a lot of spokes, say 32, it's not going
to effect things too much because you can balance out
the spoke tension with a spoke key.
But if you're lucky enough to own a really posh,
lightweight set of wheels, you can have as few spokes as 20,
and if you missed one of those, you can have quite effect
on how the wheel works.
So, how do you fix that?
Easy, with a cable tie.
Now I've seen someone do this bodge recently,
and I couldn't believe how well it worked.
So this is a pretty lightweight wheel, as you can see
the spokes are pretty spaced out.
So I've got a broken spoke here, so what that means
is the two spokes on the opposite side of that spoke
and pulling the wheel over quite significantly,
enough, in fact, with this particular one
to make the tyre buzz on the frame.
Now I could sort of play around with the tension,
but you're going to put some hop in the rim,
and it's just going to mess things up completely.
First up, you want to get rid of the bit of the spoke
that just attaches to the hub.
So in this case, it's got to whittle out.
There we go, so we won't be needing that,
put that in your riding pack for later.
Now the section that's attached to the nipple here,
we need this, and what we're going to need to do
is, taking a multi-tool with a pair of pliers on,
or if you got a pair of pliers, use those,
is bend this around into a hook.
So that is the first step.
So I've made the hook, now what I'm going to do
is hold this in place with cable ties,
then, using cable ties, going from this hook,
going to meet that with the hub.
And then I'm going to use some cable ties on the hub
to make sure our effective new spoke is dished over
as far as I can to make it pull
from the correct side of the hub.
And then that is going to enable me to get back to base
and replace the spoke when I get home.
Next up is to go around the hub itself,
I'm just going to pull one through to where I want
the spoke to be and pull from.
And then I've got to join this up to here, basically.
So using the cable tie like this,
you make a bit of a chain of them
and it's surprisingly strong.
Okay so that's a basic principle of course,
you can reinforce this with a number of cable ties
and get this as stiff as you'd like.
But you'll actually find that this is a pretty helpful bodge
because you're going to be able to get a tyre back
through the frame without having to mess
with the rest of the cable tension on the bike,
which means when you get home, pretty much snip it off,
pop in a new spoke, and you're good to go.
As far as bodges go, that's got to be a super bodge, surely.
There's nothing in the world more annoying
when you're out there biking and getting a puncture.
It's still the problem that still plagues a good ride.
Okay, so picture this scenario.
You're miles from anywhere, you're on your own,
so you've got no more inner tubes left,
you've got a puncture, you've totally destroyed the tyre,
it's got a big slash in it, which means your stuck
with one of three options.
One of them, it's a long walk.
Second option, not very good,
it's going to cost you a bit of money, ride home on the rim.
Third option, boom, cable ties.
Obviously in this case, this is a brand new tyre,
so don't need to replace this,
but what we're talking about here is you've just torn
a big old hole in the tyre, so it's completely destroyed.
So you can be able to ride home on the tyre
by holding it onto the rim using the cable ties.
If you don't do that, your tyre, at some point,
is going to come off the rim.
So it's just a way of keeping it on the rim,
protecting your rim is going to get you
to the nearest bike shop we can pick up a tyre.
Boom, bodge-tastic.
Now of course this isn't the ideal solution.
This is a bodge.
It's called a bodge because it is a bodge.
It's just to get you home.
It's nothing more than that.
So you're out shredding the trails,
and you're unlucky enough to snag your shorts,
and suddenly you've got this massive,
gaping hole in your shorts.
How do you fix it?
Easy, cable ties.
So this one does involve being a bit sensible,
you should probably take your shorts off to do this,
but I'm going to take a chance here, and I'm just going
to make a few nicks on either side,
run some cable ties through like stitches,
and then hopefully my shorts will be complete again,
and I'll be able to just go and ride home
without flapping all over the place.
I just wanted to snip them off
so they're not flapping around in the breeze.
I'll use these cable cutters here but use whatever you can.
If you're using a knife, obviously, be careful.
There we go, good to go.
I reckon I got at least another half for the ride, you know?
You've been shredding the trails, your shoelace is undone,
you snag it in the chainset, the whole thing rips and tears.
You're left with a shoe flapping around in the wind.
What do you do about that?
Boom, cable ties.
There's no need to waste loads of cable ties,
you don't need to go every hole.
Every other hole will suffice.
Just pull them through, pull them as tight
as you feel comfortable in your shoe.
Snip off the ends.
Yes, again, the cable tie proves its worth
by replacing good, old-fashioned shoelaces.
Again, this is just a get-you-home hack,
but it's a pretty good one.
You're out shredding a singletrack,
but you manage to catch your peak on a low branch,
and the worst thing that can possibly happen, happens.
You break your peak.
So what do you do about that?
You're stuck with three choices, surely.
One is you walk home, you do a Rob Warner,
can't possibly ride your bike with a broken peak.
Two, take the peak off, go bullet top.
It's aero anyway.
Number three, cable ties.
So, nice and simple, it's the same principle as the clothes,
just make a few slots very carefully
using your trailside knife or your multi-tool.
And then you want to run
the cable ties through like stitches.
Budged a few holes in here,
going to run some cable ties through,
join it back together.
Simple bit of fiddling,
you just got to whittle these through.
Depending on what peak you use and the different materials,
some are easier to go through, and some crack really easily.
Obviously this one didn't, this is just a demonstration,
this is a really old helmet.
So we're just using this one for our example.
And there you go, peak back in working order,
keeping the sun and the rain and bushes
and stuff out of your eyes.
Nicely hacked back together there using cable ties.
Although my bike has got direct mount chainring,
most bikes these days have got regular chainrings
that bolt on with chainring belts,
just like this crankset here.
As you can see in this particular one,
a couple of bolts have rattled loose.
What do you do about that?
Simple, cable ties.
So typically if you do manage to lose a chainring,
but with tense, it'd just be the one as it rattled loose.
But what normally happens on a basis of that
is that the other one is in turn going to rattle loose.
So the sooner you spot it, the better.
Of course if you've got spare ones in your riding pack,
chuck a new one straight in, crank it up tight
and make sure they're all tight, you're good to go.
If not, cable ties is a really good solution.
If you lose more than one bolt, what you want to do
is take out the remaining chainring belt
and put them sort of opposite leaving opposite holes.
So it just distributes the force of it better.
And then simply run cable ties through the holes,
crank them up tight.
So there you go, that simple, just replace a couple
of chainring bolts using cable ties.
Ofcourse the two remaining chainring bolts
will take the bulk of the strain.
Cable ties are there just to keep the chainring in place.
Hopefully some of my cable tie-related hacks and bodges
have been useful to you.
But of course bear in mind they are just hacks and bodges,
they're not permanent solutions for fixing your bike.
If you've got any great cable tie-related hacks and bodges,
I'd love to know, or if you've got any better solutions,
let us know in the comments below.
In the meantime, if you want some hacks
to make you faster, click down there.
And if you want some hacks to get you home, click up here.
And of course, don't forget to click
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