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Comment by twic | Hacker News Reader

I built my bike (as in assembled it - i didn't build the frame or the wheels). It cost something like £2000, or would have cost about that if i'd bought it ready-made. I chose all the parts to fit my needs as closely as possible - nice frame, nice but off-brand wheels, cheap bottom bracket because that's all you need, handlebar and stem reused from an old bike, decent headset, wide gear ratio, etc.

Because it's built from a random assortment of parts, all of which are now filthy and scratched, it looks horrific. I do lock it carefully, but i don't worry about it. Nigel the junkie won't get through the lock. Nor will Rupert, and he won't see anything he can sell on (except maybe the saddle). Percy knows perfectly well it's not worth his time.

Having said that, of course, it will get nicked next week.

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Any resources good for learning bicycle assembly and maintenance that you could recommend by chance? There’re so many available, but if you have started doing this more or less recently perhaps you remember which would help a beginner the most?

Sheldon Brown for theory stuff. Youtube for hands on. But of course practice to gain experience is really all there is for learning mechanical sympathy.

I'd also recommend trying top make friends with someone who is already doing it (at a level high enough beyond you that you'll learn useful stuff from them).

Car/motorcycle/bike maintenance - it's always better to have someone who has a fair bit more experience than you sitting in your shed drinking your beer and eating your pizza while you do your own work.

I learned how to adjust caliper brakes watching a bike mechanic swap out my front cable in about 90 seconds. I saw it was entirely a matter of feel and visualization.

> I saw it was entirely a matter of feel

Depends, I guess, on where you're starting from. Some people know how hard you should/shouldn't push on a 10mm spanner or a 6mm allen key. That kind of "matter of feel" comes from someone who's already got it showing you and letting you feel it, or from a trail of stripped bolts and/or crashes where your brakes failed or fell off 'cause you didn't torque them up tight enough...

In person expertise is not essential, but I do think launching into repairing your own brakes is perhaps the _worst_ example of something you should learn from Youtube... (Although adjusting bicycle brake cables is not nearly as bad an example as, say, removing callipers and swapping out brake pads on a motorcycle...)

If you can find someone to help teach you, it's well worth the pizza and beer it usually costs...

I suspect you haven't replaced CV joints using a Chilton's Manual. Bicycles are easy. They don't require force or working overhead in a tight space next to a hot shop light, and don't leak fluids into puddles with your face in between. They're not scary except in the sense that someone doesn't have expertise. There's nothing there that can't be done right by trial and error and mechanical reasoning. It just takes putting it together wrong and taking it apart a few times until its right. Anyone can overhaul a bike in four days.

Uhhh, yeah I have. More often using Haines Manual. But I've done CVs on 69 and 72 Beetles, a bunch of early 70s Leyland Mini race cars, two different late 80s Suzuki Swifts, late 90s Ford Laser, and Alfa Romeo Sud and a Sprint, and a 2005-ish RAV4.

I've also totally stripped and rebuilt several VW Beetle motors (and a Kombi one), a 13B Mazda rotary (which ended up in the 72 Beetle eventually), and my Ducati Monster 900 (engine/gearbox). I own one motorcycle that needs a new top end rebuild every 10,000km (A Cagiva Mito 125cc two stroke). I've done the desmo valve clearances on that Ducati every 20,000km since 1999 (it's got over 320,000km on it now.)

So I'm not particularly scared of most mechanical things (I'm more put off by the pains of a 50year old body crouching down next to a motorcycle in the cold these days than worried about working on the mechanical stuff...)

But I _am_ acutely aware that many (most?) people didn't have fathers who taught them how to work on cars/lawnmowers when they were 7 or 8 years old, and have no clue at all how tight fasteners should be or much force you can put on them before starting to worry about whether you need to start checking if you've missed the lock nut or split pin. People who have no feel for whats "About right" for a 10mm fastener compared to a 17mm or 32mm one. People who don't read a torque spec of 10Nm for an M6 fastener and realise "Oooh, that's not very tight, must be a stainless fastener into a soft-ish allow..."

I _strongly_ stand by my advice of making a more experienced friend and having them oversee things and be there for when you're not sure if you're doing things right.

But did you win the Putnam?

I am now unfortunately in a location where it is non-trivial to befriend a person to shadow like that (language barrier etc.), but thanks for thoughtful advice. Pizza/beer point noted!

Ahhh, Covidtown? Yeah, I have that problem too...

yeah I have.

So it’s possible to perform a new mechanical operation without a personal guide present?

For VW’s Haines is definitely better. I had both for my 64. No CV joints on that one. Swing axel.

And static timing. Which is an example of trial and error and eyeballing. That’s essentially how the Haines described it.

> So it’s possible to perform a new mechanical operation without a personal guide present?

Oh sure.

But I reckon learning the 4th, 5th, 100th new thing is _way_ less learning curve than learning the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd things. It's that early steep learning curve of all the assumed knowledge that Haines/Chilton/Ducati workshop manuals where a workshop buddy is hugely beneficial.

Happy to disagree on this. But I also will continue to recommend finding a more experienced person to help out when you're starting out, and will regularly offer to be "that guy" for people who show interest.

(Also, didn't the '64 still have inboard CV joints? My '69 had the "two joint rear end" with CVs up against the transaxle but none at the wheel hubs and the bendy trailing arms (according to most info that means it was probably a '68, but it had a 1969 Australian compliance plate of it :shrug:). The '72 had the four joint rear end.

I don’t disagree that having someone to hold hands is a good idea. That doesn’t make YouTube the worst way to learn. It’s better than a Haynes manual because there is an experienced person showing how it’s done. In the case of brakes, it might even be a Park Tool factory mechanic.

For VW’s I think model years and features vary by region.

> That doesn’t make YouTube the worst way to learn

Oh no, I agree there too. It's probably the second best way to learn. (Though for me, I have more of a "read the words and look at the pictures" kind of brain, I'd choose a decently written blog post or manual over video content every time...)

But I _think_ the part of my comment you're pushing back against didn't suggest that Youtube was the worst way to learn - but rather that brakes were that _last_ thing I'd recommend someone starting out learns by themselves on Youtube. (It's entirely possible I didn't write that clearly enough though...)

Start out learning (whether by Youtube or with an experienced person) how to replace light bulbs and fill you windscreen washer fluid and upgrade your stereo, then move on to more safety-critical but low risk things like oil changes, ignition timing, carb/fuel injection service - the sort of things that if you get it wrong make you stop. Leave the things that if you get it wrong you _don't_ stop until you're totally confident you know you are going to get it right.

Brakes are one of the few things I say no to helping friends out with. If they start to work on them while I'm around, that's OK, but if they invite me round to show them how to do it I'll tell them "No, take your brakes to a licensed/insured mechanic."

My concern with trial and error is that from lack of experience I might ruin the expensive parts (perhaps over time) or make the bike unsafe to ride.

Don’t be afraid. It’s only a bicycle. Parts can be replaced. The whole bike can be.

Perhaps you can easily replace hundreds of dollars in parts but I’d rather avoid that. Besides, as I wrote, if my bike fails during an aggressive ride, replacing its parts might be the least of my problems.

Genuinely curious how frequently the bike is ridden aggressively, who maintains it, and how frequently they do so. For my own safety, I try not to ride aggressively, but I do ride frequently and maintain my own bike so I don't have an intuition about your experience.

By trial and error, I mean small scale and safely. Like truing a wheel. Spin, adjust, spin, adjust, spin, adjust...and eventually the wheel is true. That's when it's ok to ride on it.

Brakes and bearings are spin, adjust, spin, adjust too. The difference experience makes is fewer spin, adjust loops to get it right enough to ride on.

I often ride a little (or a lot) faster than the situation calls for in urban context and rely on emergency braking.

The bike I bought at a dealership is just a couple months old and no maintenance work had been done so far.

I am feeling it’s about time for some adjustments (rim brakes are accumulating some leeway now), and thought I could as well replace some parts while at it and start to learn how to put together a fully custom ride (to use the skill in future after I move to a more permanent location).

Part of the reason replacing parts is attractive is because shopping is easier than maintenance...and in practice it's easier than riding because it can be done sitting at a computer eating a sandwich.

But if that's your plan, then you'll need tools. Not many. Mostly basic bicycle tools. Not specialized tools for most situations, that's why those tools are specialized.

The tools I'd recommend starting with to keep your bike safe -- these handle everything that occurs day to day. They focus on the wheels.

  hex wrenches. so nothing that's loose stays loose.
  cheap ones are fine.
  I mostly use a set of tee handles bought
  from Harbor Freight for about $12. Sometimes
  L-shaped hex wrenches for tight spaces.
  
  track pump, it just makes keeping tires properly
  inflated easy. Inflation makes a huge difference.
  Tires lose significant air in a week.

  tire levers.

  a patch kit that uses rubber cement.

  truing stand - a cheap one from china is more than good
  enough. Without a trued wheel, brakes cannot be optimally
  adjusted. Trued wheels create a huge ride difference.
  Anyone can true a wheel, it just takes time and patience.

  spoke wrench. not just for truing wheels but for
  insuring spokes are not loose. not-loose is not quite
  the same as tight. spokes need the right amount of tension.
  the right amount is loose enough to for the wheel not
  to run to that side and tight enough for it to stay true

  chain lube. 

  screw driver for adjusting derailleurs if the chain
  rubs AND you're not riding cross chained.

Second level tools for bearings. Wheel bearings don't require much attention but can need periodic service. If the wheel moves laterally when the brakes are applied or doesn't spin freely and isn't rubbing, adjust the bearings.

  magnetic parts cup. when something comes off the bike
  that's where it goes. even if it's not magnetic.
  especially if its small. It will also find ball bearings
  when they are lost.

  cone wrenches to adjust wheel bearings. these are just
  flat wrenches.

  white lithium grease for wheel bearings. don't put it on
  your seat post

Everything else is pretty rare - modern cartridge bottom brackets have removed a lot of maintenance and the associated tools. Pick them up when you need them. You need them when a job with the tools you have seems to require a lot of force or not be possible.

Lastly, not doing maintenance doesn't make your bike safer. If something requires maintenance and you break it and can't ride, that's safer than not doing required maintenance and going for a ride.

If you're really worried about over-torquing something, you can throw money at it. There are torque-wrench versions of bicycle tools that are used for torque sensitive operations.

Good luck.

Thank you! When I asked the original question I didn’t imagine I’d get the help I needed right here in the thread. I didn’t quite realize it myself but knowing what’s the minimum set of tools I need to have had indeed been among the biggest obstacles.

I'm glad if you find it helpful. The most expensive bit is the pump. I have a Lezyne floor pump that was $60 from Amazon. Truing stands are about $40 on eBay. Spoke wrenches are available for around $5-10. Tire levers all about equal. The Park Tool patch kit is small and comes with rubber cement.

The Park Tool youtube channel is good at explaining things in a lots of detail without being convoluted. It should cover 95% of what you'd need to learn. The hardest part is trying to figure out what components are compatible with what. There are more standards for bottom brackets than there are for character encoding.

The Park Tool videos are phenomenal.

I particularly like the Tech Tuesday videos, partly because Calvin Jones is so fun to watch (although he's not just a pretty face [2]), but also because, for example, this is the first explanation i ever heard of how hydraulic brakes self-centre that actually makes sense:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQXFFgRButo&vl=fr

[2] https://www.probma.org/blog/calvin-jones-more-neednt-be-said

get an old bike. take it apart and put it back together.

i built my own bike without help when i was a teenager.

there aren't that many parts and your main struggle will be to decide what from the different options for each part to choose.

there are different gear and brake systems to choose from, and if you don't know what's better for you, your bikeshop can advise you.

for my bike i used mostly standard parts, that is the common stuff found on every other bike and available in every shop. the only thing where i splurged is a good leather sattle from brooks.

Check if there is a community bicycle workshop where you live. They’re usually run by volunteers in universities where they have all the tools, you come with your bike, tell them what you want to fix or adjust, they show you how to do it, and then you do it yourself. They usually let you bring your own parts or have a stash of used parts. That’s how I learned almost everything I know on the subject and it didn’t even take that long to learn. And the park tools videos are very well done.

Personally, i grew up cycling, learned a lot from my dad, and have learned a lot from trial and error (mostly the latter) over a couple of decades. Continuing education comes from the Park Tool Videos, bicycles.stackexchange.com, and reading threads on random forums started by people with the same problem as me.

I suspect an organised person could learn much more efficiently than this.

One pitfall to watch out for is that in cycling, everyone has their opinions, which they will proclaim as absolute truth. If you're just following one person, it can be hard to distinguish universally agreed common sense from opinion.

People who want to steal a bike to feed a fix don’t care about your groupset, they care that you have 20 pounds or so of good scrappable metal. Anything is fair game. Any lock can be cut. Crackheads have battery powered angle grinders too, and they are emboldened because law enforcement doesn’t go after bike theft in the US at least. The best lock is a renters or homeowners insurance policy that can cover your bike when it’s inevitably stolen.

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