Just start doing it! Almost everything on a bicycle is about tension, one way or another. For the guys that haven't tackled truing, I encourage you do do so, spend 18 bucks and get a red, black and green wrench right out of the gate so you can do other bikes without question. Once you figure out truing, you'll realize that it's easier to true a wheel than it is to get your handlebars straight! I like using quality tools, park, campy, or other non bike specific hand tools. One the iBob list, there was a long discussion about work stands. I love my WrenchForce (old Trek brand) stand and think it's a better design than the park stuff. It looks like Feedback sports picked up where Trek left off: http://feedbacksports.com/shop/default.aspx Very good design IMO. I agree that youtube would be a good place to check on how to perform different tasks on your bike. One thing that I've described many times over the years and I've seen a lot of people have Ahhhh Ha moments is adjusting the derailleurs. The screws are simply limit screws for how high or low the derailleur will travel. If your derailleur goes in to the highest and lowest gear you're good and these screws rarely ever need adjustment if you aren't changing parts on your bike or making adjustments to you bottom bracket spindle adjustment, like you can with a Phil BB. Anyhow, a quick tutorial on derailleurs. Drop it all the way down in the back to the smallest gear, shift up one (I'm making the assumption it's indexed shifting but the concept is the same with friction) and see how it shift. Does it shift quickly, does it not go at all? Then shift back down and see how it shifts in comparison to going up. If it fell down in to the smaller gear easier than it climbed up one gear, there isn't enough tension on the rear derailleur cable. So, give a quarter turn on the rear derailleurs barrel adjusted OUT to increase the tension. Then go through the process again. I like to do this mostly in the middle of the cassette and then check across them all and you're good to go!
On Thursday, December 4, 2014 11:35:01 PM UTC-6, Peter M wrote: > > youtube is your friend at first, its easier to see visually what people > are doing than to read about it. Then just go for it, if you break > something expensive, you wont break it again most likely! I learned mostly > on my own, internet, youtube, a lot of trial and error. > > On Fri, Dec 5, 2014 at 12:25 AM, lungimsam <john1...@gmail.com > <javascript:>> wrote: > >> I can do some stuff on my bikes. Setting up cockpits and saddle/seatpost, >> brake lever/caliper/housing/cable installation and adjustment, pedals, >> shifter lever installation and adjustment, fender/rack installations, >> cassette/chain swapping, etc. The more basic stuff. >> >> But I haven't dared to do anything with bb's, cranksets, wheel >> building/truing, headset adjustment, derailer installation. Just don't >> wanna mess anything up. >> But I want to learn to do this stuff so I don't have to depend on the LBS >> for things. >> >> What's a good way to go about doing these more difficult things without >> damaging anything? Books and websites are helpful, but I still don't have >> the confidence to mess with the aforementioned stuff. >> >> Buy a beater and wrench away on it? But a lot of old road bike beaters >> don't match the type of components and frame of the RBW bikes and wheels, >> so I don't know how helpful that would be to break down and rebuild a >> Peugeot (for instance) to help me learn how to do maintenance on my >> Rivbikes. >> >> Any ideas? How'd you learn? >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "RBW Owners Bunch" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to rbw-owners-bun...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>. >> To post to this group, send email to rbw-owne...@googlegroups.com >> <javascript:>. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
