Setting Up Shop: Repairing Your Bike at Home

In This Chapter

^ Finding out about basic and specialized bike tools ^ Getting clear on lubricants, degreasers, and cleaners ^ Setting up a workshop for your bike at home ^ Finding a bike stand that suits your needs

ШЛУ orking on your bike can be fun. In fact, you don’t know what fun is WW until you’re covered in more dirt and grime than your local auto mechanic and your significant other puts on gloves and changes clothes just to kiss you. Actually in most cases, the average bike-repair and — maintenance job won’t leave you looking like a grease monkey — and even if it does, there’s nothing quite like the satisfaction gained from fixing your own bike.

Even if the part-time role of bike mechanic isn’t your dream job, there are many benefits to doing your own work:

✓ You’ll be amazed at how much you’ll learn about how your bike works — things you never would have known just from riding it.

✓ You’ll discover tricks for maintaining your bike so that repairs are kept to a minimum.

✓ You’ll become so in tune with your bike that you’ll figure out ways to tweak it to give yourself a better ride.

✓ When you break down, you’ll be able to diagnose the problem quicker than Lance Armstrong can put on a yellow jersey.

Even if your goals for maintaining and repairing your bike are slightly less ambitious, you’ll always have one of the best excuses for getting out of household chores — you’re busy working on the family’s bikes.

In this chapter, we fill you in on the tools you need to get started — and tell you about a few more tools useful for some advanced procedures. If you’re looking to take it to the next level, we explain how to set up your own bike workshop, which will be the envy of your neighbors — at least those who know that the Tour de France isn’t a trip through Bordeaux to sample the year’s Beaujolais.