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Bike Improvements/Restoration - What Order? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 months ago by BananaCoffee@lemmy.world to c/bicycles@lemmy.ca

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I recently bought a junk bike. I want to slowly fix it up myself for two reasons: 1. To have a nicer bike. 2. To learn about bike maintenance. I'd like to improve it slowly (weeks or months) while keeping it functional. What order should I consider improvements?

I'll elaborate. When I first bought the bike, I tuned the brakes (linear pull). I struggled. I realized brake tuning was difficult because my wheel wasn't aligned. In retrospect, I should have straightened/replaced the wheel before tuning the brakes. I'm wondering if there are any insights you could provide about the order I should tackle this project (e.g., wheel alightment before brakes).

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[–] Doombot1@lemmy.one 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

The absolute best thing I ever did in regards to figuring out bike maintenance was to buy a really crappy bike and just try to fix it, similar to what you’ve done. I went into it with the attitude of “if I break stuff, that’s fine, it was super cheap and old anyways” and wasn’t imagining I’d actually get a sound bike out of it. I used park tool YouTube videos mostly, and from that bike (and a few others) I learned how to do pretty much everything maintenance-related short of redoing the seals in a mountain bike fork (and that’s likely coming up soon). Wheel truing is tough but absolutely doable - again, but a really cheap bike (marketplace special), take the wheels off and apart, and just try to get them back together - that’ll force you to true them. Park tool again was an awesome resource for that.

[–] BananaCoffee@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You've hit the nail on the head. This describes my mindset. Thanks for the encouragement.

[–] Doombot1@lemmy.one 2 points 2 months ago

For sure! I’m not always the best at responding immediately, but if you’ve got any other questions, feel free to chat me.