Eco-friendly DIY Bicycle Maintenance

I've been riding a bicycle almost as long as I can remember. I've always loved the freedom I feel when cycling. And I've always done my best to keep my bike in good working order. Up until recently that meant keeping the tires inflated to "firm", dribbling some oil on the chain and gears when they got noisy or rough, and taking it to the shop if I got a punctured tire, chain, brake, or shifter problem.

Now that I'm a responsible adult I've been getting more responsible with my maintenance. Thanks to the PEP Tool Care badge I've taken a much closer look at some of the common problems that need addressing. It would be great to be able to do the jobs I had outsourced to the bike shop by myself. And do them properly! Unfortunately we don't have a friendly local bike shop... the nearest is a few towns over. I'm hoping that after I become more skilled and experienced I can start up a cycling commuter club to support and encourage cycling as a legitimate means of getting to work. I live in one of the prefectures of Japan with the highest rate of driving vs walking/cycling. Maybe I can help nudge that trend in a better direction.

I've also realized for the first time how many forever chemicals are in conventional bicycle maintenance products. So now I'm trying to become more environmentally responsible with my maintenance as well. The products are expensive, but hopefully my conscious will be lighter and let me ride more freely!

In this thread I will try to log my DIY (do it yourself) bicycle maintenance adventures and misadventures, and I invite others to do the same.

I've been slowly getting back into cycling over the past few months. I tried cycling to my university job once last week, it was 55 minutes one-way (vs about 25 by car), but doable. It wasn't as easy to make time for cycling when my kids were very small, but as they are getting older and my son is able to ride a bicycle now I have a lot more incentive to keep going.

My wife has also been talking about buying a new bike because she keeps having to get the inner tubes replaced. I wonder if that is something inherently problematic with the wheels she has, or just because she rarely rides it these days. If I can address the problem and save the cost of a new bike, all the better.

So far I bought a pump with an actual pressure gauge, got some padded cycling shorts and new cycling gloves. I love all of them. It's nice to use good gear. I think comfort is one of the big detractors of cycling for many people. I have also been watching the youtube instructional videos linked in the PEP Toolcare bicycle maintenance BBs. The mess of tension cables seem considerably less intimidating than before. I have also been hunting for biodegradable maintenance products and have probably settled on these: Bridgestone GD-2 Chain Lube and Muc-off Chain Cleaner.

Today I have a few maintenance tasks on my to-do list.
- Assess my wife's tires and order new inner tubes if necessary.
- Attempt to adjust my son's rear brakes so that they engage properly. They were completely frozen until I fiddled with them yesterday.
- Replace the batteries in my (and probably my wife's) front light.
- Check the presence or absence of reflectors on all bikes.
- Check the lubrication, rust, and gunk build-up on all of our drive-trains.

Hopefully I'll be posting back with links to my BB submissions and progress report. It is also possible I report back with a series of expletives and frustration venting!!! Here's hoping for the prior.

Great idea L. I'm lucky in that my town we have a program called ReCycle Bikes. The program accepts donated bikes from whoever has unneeded two wheelers. Then volunteer mechanics (I'm one) fix them up. Then the bikes are redistributed to those in need in the community. Not only is it a fantastic program in of itself, but it is where I've learned the majority of my bike fixing skills. I'll happily start taking photos of the process when I do routine or not so routine work on our bikes. This summer I have replaced a front derailleur, which involved proper height and alignment setting. I've replaced some shifter and brake cables, bled hydraulic brakes, replaced an inner tube, replaced a couple chains, and replaced disc brake pads. I love bike repair because it's relatively cheap if I mess it up, and ultimately very fulfilling because I get to ride the results of my handiwork to and from work every day

Cam Haslehurst wrote:Great idea L. I'm lucky in that my town we have a program called ReCycle Bikes. The program accepts donated bikes from whoever has unneeded two wheelers. Then volunteer mechanics (I'm one) fix them up. Then the bikes are redistributed to those in need in the community. Not only is it a fantastic program in of itself, but it is where I've learned the majority of my bike fixing skills. I'll happily start taking photos of the process when I do routine or not so routine work on our bikes. This summer I have replaced a front derailleur, which involved proper height and alignment setting. I've replaced some shifter and brake cables, bled hydraulic brakes, replaced an inner tube, replaced a couple chains, and replaced disc brake pads. I love bike repair because it's relatively cheap if I mess it up, and ultimately very fulfilling because I get to ride the results of my handiwork to and from work every day

That is awesome! Please share your pics or videos!

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So far from my task list above and inspection:
- I got everyone's tires inflated to the recommended pressure. I'm now waiting for my wife to do a test ride to see how much pressure we lose and how fast. I need to order some valve caps. Two or three are broken.
- Took very old batteries out of my light, cleaned the corroded terminals with vinegar and cotton swabs, and put in new batteries. Yay, no new light required.
- As I expected, my son's bike only has wheel reflectors, so I will probably be getting some front/rear reflectors in case we're out at dusk. He also doesn't have a light, hopefully he won't be riding at dark for a while yet, but I do have a spare light I may install. It is illegal to ride at dark without a light here.
- The littlest gears on my sprocket are pretty badly gunked-up. Everyone else's are in good shape. Looking at this photo I noticed I'm missing a tooth on my 4th gear. That is a little bit of a surprise.

- I also realized the way I had been wrapping my bike lock while I ride sometimes interfered with the rear brake cable. It also bumped against my legs sometimes. So I figured out a better way to wrap it while riding.
Before:


After:


- Lastly, I'm struggling with troubleshooting the problem for my son's brakes.

This video has helped some:


Originally his brake lever was completely stuck. I fiddled with everything until that started moving. Then I worked on figuring out how to get good tension and action between the brake pads and the rim, and I'm still not satisfied with the braking action, but it is working somewhat now. When I tighten the cable the lever action seems to decrease as well, which is counter intuitive.

Joy!

While cycling to work today I discovered that my front gear set, derailleur, or most likely gear cable is out of order. I couldn't shift from 2 to 3, then when I shifted down to 1 I couldn't get back to 2! So I had to bike about 20k in 1-6, the only reasonable ratio that kept the gear out of friction.

When I get some time I'll be investigating the situation in more detail, but for now I've been studying how all this stuff works so I know what I'm looking at when I get to it. I found this amazingly well done video series by Park Tools. I've never seen videos this clear and well put together for bicycle maintenance. I'll probably be watching the whole series just for the educational value: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGCTGpvdT04Q5OLMUo0yzTOjLtv7yT47O

Here's short example:

I had to figure out if my cables were standard before ordering new ones. This was my first time taking off the shifters.

This is likely the problem. My shifter cable housing or outer cable is disintegrating.


4mm housing (outer cable) shifter cables. The inner wire cables measure about 1.2mm which is the standard. Great. I also took the length measurements to make sure I got enough wire to cover it. And ordered some cable cutters, because apparently the outer cable housing doesn't cut well with regular wire cutters. A bit of an investment, I'll have to make up for it in gasoline savings (about 6 round trips to work).


First I took off the handle grips.


Then I unscrewed the hex bolt holding the shifter onto the handlebars.


Now the shifter slides free.


It took me a while to figure out how the cable is housed because there were no more screws. It seems that the rubber grip shifter itself peels back to reveal the cable end.


Great! Now I've got to build a maintenance stand and wait until I get my new cables and cutters in the mail.

Well! That was fun.

First I built a maintenance stand out of round wood. I had a nice curved mulberry branch that dried out since last year. I had been thinking about making a guitar hanger out of it, but I made a different type of guitar hanger, so that opened this for a new project. I believe it was perfect for this one. The curve of the mulberry was nice and it let me put the hanger arm directly over the center of gravity of the stand. This thing is held together by friction and gravity, and I can pop out any of the pieces for traveling or storage. I need to add another support arm to make it easier to do some adjustments, but it worked well today as is.





Once I finished the stand, I changed my front shifter cable and housing. That's a new skill for me. I'll be posting the video I took for the PEP badge bit after I get it edited together. I have thoughts and reflections.

First of all... I'm glad I watched three different videos on the topic beforehand. It helped me get an idea of what I might run into.

Second, I'm really really glad I took pictures of the cable routing and every place it connects to the bike before I removed the old cable. I ended up checking those photos about 4 times while installing the new cable.

Third, this is really not a hard thing to do if you know where the problem spots are likely to pop up.

The biggest problem I had was feeding the cable through the shifter itself. It kept getting stuck. I finally found an access cap that popped off when pried with a tiny screw driver. That let me feed the cable through the barrel adjuster without it jamming.

The second biggest problem I had was keeping track of all the tiny things while doing my maintenance outside... In the future I will prepare a parts container to store everything so it doesn't fall out and get lost in the grass.

The bike now shifts, but it definitely needs adjustment. I ran out of time to get that done today, but I think it shouldn't be too hard, especially with youtube sensei at my back.

Here's my video record of changing the cable.



Trying to take a video while doing a maintenance job you've never done before is an exercise in frustration!

I fixed most of the video problems in post-production though.

I recommend turning the audio off or down and turning the subtitles on. I added commentary as to what I'm doing in the subtitles.

Good luck with your project. I've been daily commuting by ebike since 2020, and doing all my own repair work. The Park Tool videos are my go-to educational resource a well.

Re shifter issues - I spent ages initially messing with this. It turned out that there was hidden corrosion on the cable inside the plastic sheath. It was fixed by a simple replacement.

Chains and gears need to be considered consumable items. I get about 1000 miles from a chain and gear set - using it in all weather, and with a powerful middrive motor. So many shifting problems are simply fixed by replacing the parts, where wear means the tolerances have gone out of spec.

Do you have a chain stretch testing tool?

Michael Cox wrote:Good luck with your project. I've been daily commuting by ebike since 2020, and doing all my own repair work. The Park Tool videos are my go-to educational resource a well.

Re shifter issues - I spent ages initially messing with this. It turned out that there was hidden corrosion on the cable inside the plastic sheath. It was fixed by a simple replacement.

Chains and gears need to be considered consumable items. I get about 1000 miles from a chain and gear set - using it in all weather, and with a powerful middrive motor. So many shifting problems are simply fixed by replacing the parts, where wear means the tolerances have gone out of spec.

Do you have a chain stretch testing tool?

Great to hear that you've been successfully commuting by bike successfully for 2 years!

Yes, replacing the cables got me shifting action, but I definitely need to adjust the cable. Possibly just the cable tension, possibly the limit screws. I think the derailleur is aligned correctly. The rear gear cables are going bad too, I will replace them as well, as the cable replacement kit I bought came with enough to do both.

Good to know. I'm happy to buy replacements as the parts go bad. Hopefully learning to keep them in good order will extend their life as much as possible. I'll have to find the cycling parts recycling depository here. It's probably part of the metals recycling process.

I do not have a chain stretch testing tool. I'm sure I'll have to replace my chain and gear cassette at some point, but they're not that badly worn yet.
Edit: I looked into this briefly. I see that it may be difficult to judge how worn the chain actually is, and thus the point of the tool you suggested.

The brake cables are probably the next thing that's going to go bad after the shifter cables. My front brake pads might also be very worn down...

Good to know. I'm happy to buy replacements as the parts go bad. Hopefully learning to keep them in good order will extend their life as much as possible. I'll have to find the cycling parts recycling depository here. It's probably part of the metals recycling process.

I do not have a chain stretch testing tool. I'm sure I'll have to replace my chain and gear cassette at some point, but they're not that badly worn yet.

This caught me out initially.

Chain wear is invisible.

The chain is made up of pins which rotate in a metal sheath. The tolerances on these are pretty tight.

As the chain is used fine grit from the road ends up between the pin and the sheath, and erodes both. The end result is that the pin is loose in the sheath. In practice this lengthens the entire chain, and the links end up not seating well on the gear teeth.

The gear teeth then get worn to match the existing worn out chain.

But all of that wear is near invisible.

The chain stretch tool gives you a reliable and easy way to check the extent of the wear.