Miele Man

Not a mechanical hint but where to put this hint?

Sometimes we want to mount extra bottles on our bikes but we already use the under the saddle location for a seat bag. I discovered tonight that my old dual water bottle seat mount also will fit between the seatstays above the brake bridge. That's a real out of the way place. It's the same place those old Plesher rear racks fastened to.

Cheers

james_v

Not sure if this has been posted or not.

Had an aha moment yesterday when working on the bike. Took my receiver mounted bike rack and clamped it to the work bench. Bike now off floor, no bending over, easier to work on, cleaned and oiled the chain, brakes adjusted, etc. and no additional expense of having to buy a work stand.

praivo

Contact lens solution bottles work well too. Find someone who wears cleanable (not one-day) lenses and ask him/her to give you the bottles after running out of the solution. Free bottles! Bonus: Different bottles have nozzles of different sizes.

Binky

Two things or 3 really.

First off, sometimes cone locking nuts are ridiculously tight. Cone wrenches are too thin to apply much pressure on without distorting them. If you have one bike, OK. But if you have 50 or more, or work on a lot of bikes, you need something better.
Park cone wrenches are stamped steel .075 thick.
Thats 75 one thousandths of an inch.
Pick up a couple of metric wrenches, the 13mm and 15mm to start with, and polish them on a grinder until they are the right thickness. Don't let them get too hot. You do not want to risk softening the steel by overheating it. Only grind for a few seconds and then cool. Repeat.
My 13mm wrench is .110" thick and my 15mm wrench is .120" thick. You may still find that there are some few cones with a narrow land that is too flat for the wrench but not very many. Raleigh 3-speeds, perhaps.



Secondly: Grease in a grease gun stays cleaner than grease in a tub. To make lubrication easier, get a nozzle on your grease gun - something that can squirt grease into bike axel bearings with the cone being backed off only so far that the balls can neither fall out or become misaligned. Something long enough to reach through the BB to lubricate the BB bearings behind the sprockets from the left side of the bike when the movable cup is removed .




Thirdly: Pineapples.
Aren't these lovely ??
Size 4 at Costco.



Pineapples have a lot of roughage and will keep you regular.

Binky

joejack951

If you need heavier duty thin wrenches than Park Tool's, these are pretty nice for the price: V8 Tools (V8 8109) 9 Piece Super Thin Wrench Set - Combination Wrenches - Amazon.com

They are quite useful for automotive work, too (the real reason I bought them).

For very tight cones, I'll put regular wrenches on either side of the hub and torque until one nut comes loose. That's all I need to disassemble the hub and make my adjustment so whichever comes loose is fine by me.

Bandrada

I rinse out my old reagent bottles from my pool test kits. They come in a couple different sizes. I keep a small one in my pack, and the larger ones I keep in the side panel of my truck and one for the work bench. It's nice because the tips are "drop-wise," except for the cyanuric acid is more of a stream. They come in handy for my nail guns, too. I also fill one with old damper fluid for drilling lube.

Binky

And another thing:

Penetrating oils....

WD-40 is OK

Kroil is good.

Liquid Wrench is good.

A mixture of 50% Acetone and 50% ATF (automatic transmission fluid) is BEST !!!

Binky

Miele Man

For cold setting a stel frame rear triangle I now use an old rear wheel nutted axle with just two large washers and a wheel nut on either side. I place the axle in the dropout with the washers next to the inside of the dropout and with the nuts inboard of the washers. I tighten each nut by the same amount until the proper spacing is reached. A string from a droput up around the head tube and back to the opposite dropout allows you to make sure each side is spreading the same amount.

To make too wide a dropout distance narrower put the washers on the outside of the dropout and the nut outside of the washers then tighten the nuts until the wanted distance is reached.

Cheers

Miele Man

Homemade Bicycle Headset Cup Removal Tool

I used an old MTB straight seatpost minus the detachable seatpost clamp to make a headset cup removal tool.

Seatpost 4 Headset Removal Tool 1 = Drilled by Miele Man, on Flickr

I driled two holes right through the seatpost a number of inches above the bottom and a right angles to each other.

Then I used a hacksaw to cut from the bottom of the seatpost to the drilled holes. Next I spread the pieces/prongs apart.

Seatpost 4 Headset Removal Tool 2 = Slots Cut to Drilled Holes by Miele Man, on Flickr

Seatpost 4 Headset Removal Tool 3 = Slots Being Spread by Miele Man, on Flickr

Seatpost 4 Headset Removal Tool 4 = Slots Spread by Miele Man, on Flickr

To use the tool you insert the top of the tool into the cup you want to remove and then pull the tool into the headtube until the 4 prongs snap into place behind the cup.

Tool Inserted Into Headtube by Miele Man, on Flickr

Tool Ready to Remove Lower Cup by Miele Man, on Flickr

Give the tool a good whack on the protruding end to remove the cup without damage to the cup.

Tool With Lower Cup Removed by Miele Man, on Flickr

Cheers

RubeRad

Miele Man, that's nice work. For completeness sake, I'll (re)link Dave Moulton's similar solution, using scrap copper pipe.

Here's a cool one I found today: need to remove a freewheel (standard shimano/sunrace 12-spline) but don't have the freewheel removal tool? Any 13/16" hex shape should fit well into 6 of the 12 splines, so if you can grip it with vise grips or a pipe wrench, you can try to torque it out. One common example of a 13/16" hex? The back of a spark plug socket!

RubeRad

Hey two in a row from me, here's a clever way to DIY a air/pressure reservoir for inflating tubeless tires if you don't have an air compressor:

.be
Those plastic bottles are very strong, I occasionally make home made hard cider, and "after" fermentation when I seal the cider up in the original plastic bottle, the remaining CO2 pressure thrown off by the yeast expands the rectangular bottle you're used to with indents and such, into a taut cylinder! I've never had one explode, but you gotta be careful opening them up

Fandangus

+1 I use one for chain lube and 1 for general lube, they work a treat and one drop per link is easy and clean and they get into tight places without wasting or spreading lube where you dont want it, using for months now and vape shops sell them dirt cheap

Fandangus

+1 I use one for chain lube and 1 for general lube, they work a treat and one drop per link is easy and clean and they get into tight places without wasting or spreading lube where you dont want it, using for months now and vape shops sell them dirt cheap

trecker

I'm new and I want to say that I'm glad I joined this sight. Great reading great ideas in bike mechanics

capnjonny 

For what it's worth I bought a plastic wall mount repair stand

https://www.amazon.com/BIKEHAND-Bicyc...ilpage_o05_s00

When I bought it a few months ago it was $40.

I have it mounted to a 4x4 support post in the middle of the garage.

I have found it works very well . One of the complaints I found on the amazon Web page was that the all plastic rotating holder strips out the teeth holding it in position. I can see this happening if you handle the tool carelessly . When the bike is clamped in the stand If you loosen the screw that holds the rotating clamp and the bike is not balanced it could cause the teeth on the rotation mechanism to shear or be ground off. If you balance the bike in the desired position by clamping the top tube and sliding the tube till you balance the bike and THEN clamp the rotating mechanism you will avoid putting shear stress on the mating teeth. A feature I especially like is the ability to rotate the bike from side to side through about 90 deg or more (with the mount attached to a post). This lets me swing the bike out of the way when necessary. in my crowded garage. The only thing I miss is the ability to raise or lower the clamp head. Generally Balancing the bike and rotating the clamp so that one end or the other is down is sufficient for most work.

sjanzeir

I don't know if this is too silly to be in here, but here goes anyway...

When I installed a pair of Bontrager metal fenders on my Shift, it turned out that the rear fender would bump violently into the frame, and the noise was especially annoying on coarse or rough surfaces. So I stuck a pair of felt tabs - the kind that goes on the tips of chair and table legs and the like - between the two to keep it all nice and quiet:



Problem solved.

ThermionicScott 

Not too silly at all, @sjanzeir. Fender rattle is a serious annoyance. I've used thin pieces of cork sheet secured by electrical tape for the same job.

JohnDThompson 

Velo-Orange has leather washers that serve this purpose:



Leather Washers for Mounting Fenders - Accessories and Hardware - Fenders, Accessories, Hardware - Accessories

cmcanulty

The always available old tube small piece and rubber cement works great too

woodcraft

Denatured alcohol in a standard spray bottle

for all purpose cleaning, degreasing, & hand cleaning.

Spray a little on a rag.

Available in gallons- much less expensive than rubbing alcohol.

Less toxic than OMS, etc..

Greggster

You can save yourself a lot expense and trouble fixing a noisy bottom bracket by just attaching new pedals. You'd be surprised how often the pedals go bad, especially when you ride in the rain. And you can't always tell just by spinning them. If that doesn't stop the noise, well then you might need to do that bottom bracket after-all.

Greggster

If you don't mind working on your bike outside, you make a bike stand cheap. Find a nice spot under a shade tree and sink a 4X4 post into the ground. Add some water while tamping the dirt around in the hole to make a wobble-free installment. Screw a $6 bike storage rack to the post and presto – a great place to wash and wrench your bike. Unlike a real bike stand, there's no clamp to deal with, so it's quick to use. If you need, spread a large square of outdoor carpet or something similar on the ground underneath to catch parts and prevent making a mud pie.

praivo

Pedals too tight? https://i.imgur.com/IWk1ZcB.jpg ;-)

ArmChairRider

How to form a 90 degree bend in a WD-40 spray tube.
Take the tube off of the WD-40 nozzle.
Clear the tube of any remaining WD-40 and wipe with a towel
Straighten a small paper clip and leave a bend to help manipulate it with your fingers.
Insert 2 inches of the paper clip inside the tube.
Bend the tube and the paper clip 90 degrees at one inch from the
tip of the tube.
Use a flame from a lighter and wave the flame back and forth lightly under the
90 degree bend for 10 seconds. (the tube should be just warm to the touch)
Let the tube cool for a couple of minutes.
Pull the paperclip out with pliers.
Place the long end of the tube back in the WD-40 nozzle.
Now you can turn the tube at the bend to the desired angle while spraying with
the can of WD-40 in the upright position.
Helps save on propellant as well.

ArmChairRider

A tire tread depth gauge is handy for checking freeplay of a chain. Goes up to one inch and has metrics.
Camel Tru-Flate Tread depth gauge 40-395
by Camel
Link: https://amzn.com/B000BYM4VS
Also good for measuring other things.
If you don't know your own strength when flexing a chain by hand then here is a good reference.
Get a big paperclip and make a hook on one end that will hook a roller on your chain. Tie a string on the other end of the paperclip and dangle it down and make a loop and hang a plastic bottle with one pint of water in it. Hook the paperclip in the mid section of the chain.
Now you will always have a reference of 1.04 pounds of pull.