Stand

As you read the last time around, the bike build is finished, but there are a few things I've forgotten about that I'm going to go back over.

I've found that the fiddliest but most satisfying maintenance job to do is derailleur adjustment. You may have guessed this from the number of times it's figured in my posts here. I've found it to be an inexact science, and I've yet to get it right first time, but when you can change gear instantly and silently, with no clicking or grinding or chain rubbing, cycling becomes a thing of beauty.

It's also impossible to do it properly without a stand:

My bike in the stand, rather mucky after 40 miles in the rain this morning.

Adjusting your derailleurs means constantly changing up and down gears, front and back, up and down, until everything is in sync and running smoothly. It's just impossible to do that with your back wheel on the ground.

I went for a folding bike workstand from Halfords, which cost me a quid short of £100, but it's been worth every penny. It's a fairly heavy piece of kit, with three folding legs which open out and take the weight of the bike. As you can see from the photo, an arm with a clamp grips the bike - generally I clamp the top tube, but if I'm working on the rear brakes I have to clamp it on the down tube or the seat post, to avoid trapping the brake cable.

The top tube clamped in the stand, with the quick release lever visible.

It's a sturdy piece of equipment, ideal for the sort of frequency of use I get out of it. All the angle adjustments of the stand, and the clamping arm, use quick release levers. They're not the tightest when in the tight position, but they don't slide around too much. If I was working on bikes all day every day, I'd probably want something a bit higher-end, but it's ideal for me.

Let's Torque about it

OK, let's start with a quick bit of word association.

If I say "IKEA", what do you think of first?

• Self-assembly furniture.
• The letter Ø or Ö.
• Vikings.
• Meatballs.
• Queueing.
• Mitch Benn's fantastic song.
• The futility of life on Earth.

Personally, I think of these:

Aside from their furniture assembly uses, I was surprised to find that the Allen key is also a staple of bicycle building. In actual fact, some of the keys I used in assembling my bike were actually ones left over from furniture I've assembled in the past. They do the job perfectly.

Most of the time, anyway.

For tasks which aren't part of the standard cable-loosening-or-tightening maintenance routine, you sometimes have to take more care. Attaching your handlebars to the stem, for example - another occasion where I read my least favourite of all phrases, "catastrophic failure", a few times.

This was with reference to the over-tightening of the bolts on the clamp which grips the handlebars firmly in the stem:

As you can see from the picture, there are four of these on my stem, and from the manufacturer's instructions (Cinelli in this case), it arises that it's important these are tightened equally and, most importantly, not over-tightened, lest the bar become over-stressed and break. The equal tightening bit is easy, just give each bolt a turn or two, then move on to the next one, turn it the same number of times, wash, rinse, repeat. Simple.

But what about not over-tightening them? Other than just guessing based on how tight the bolt "feels" when you turn it (which on my scale ranges from "single finger whee" through "twiddle" to "whole body nggggghhhh"), how do you actually adhere to the manufacturer's tightening instructions?

The answer is with a torque wrench, my new favourite piece of kit:

It consists of a long "body" (the handle end is the black rubber bit), and a number of Allen key heads of different sizes. Simplistically, just attach the right size of key to the body, and it works just like a standard Allen key, but crucially prevents you from over-tightening bolts.

Through some combination of magic and engineering, you can twist the handle of the body to set a "maximum torque" (measured in Newton metres, abbreviated to Nm). Manufacturers are usually kind enough to mark on the things to be bolted together the maximum torque which should be used. Alternatively, you'll find it in the manual that came with the parts in question.

When you're tightening the relevant bolts, the wrench will make a little "click" sound to indicate that you've reached the tightening limit. It really is that simple.

The thing about torque wrenches, though, is that they're precision equipment (mine came with a calibration certificate and everything), and consequently not cheap. Mine cost me £48, and so far I've used it to tighten a grand total of 4 bolts - £12 per bolt, if you look at it that way. But hopefully my handlebars won't fall off, and I value that as worth much, much more.

Handy Things: A correction

Well, I've been writing this blog for just over a week now, and it's already time to issue a correction.

When I said that tyre levers were the handiest bike tool you could possibly buy, I wasn't so much putting the cart before the horse, or the egg before the chicken, or the chicken before the egg, as putting the Spicy Family Megabucket Meal before the egg and the chicken.

How so?

I completely forgot about pumps.

Even if you manage to spend your whole life cycling and never ever ever get a puncture, your tyres will still go flat at some point. It's as inevitable as the universe ending in megagalactic heat death, but slightly easier to recover from.

To my knowledge, there are two main types of pump you can buy - hand pumps and track pumps.

You'll almost certainly need a hand pump. These are the cylindrical ones that fit easily in a backpack or which can be fixed to the frame of your bike. If you're smart, you'll carry one of these with you any time you're doing a ride of any distance. (I don't, but this is another instance of "do what I say, not what I do".) If it's raining, you're still a distance from home, and you get a slow puncture, you may be able to get enough air back in your tyre to nurse your bike back home.

I got by absolutely fine for years just with one of these, but I treated myself to a little toy a year or so back ... a track pump. These are bigger jobs, with a footplate either side of a large barrel, and a handle on top which you push up and down. It's absolutely no bother to get your tyres up to exactly the right pressure in next to no time.

One word of warning when buying a pump ... make sure you get a good one. In my experience, cheap and nasty ones tend not to fit tightly onto tyre valves, and a lot of the air you're pumping in comes out again pretty rapidly.

Knowing the difference between shiny things and handy things, #1

Hello again!

If you know me at all, you'll know that I can be rather easily distracted. I drift off somewhere else in the middle of a conversation. I go to a rugby match, and forget the score before I've left the stadium. I interrupt a meeting with "ooh, look ... a squirrel". It then follows fairly naturally that I'm distracted by shiny things too, including bike maintenance shiny things.

Over time, I've collected one or two bits and bobs which should have helped with maintenance, but I haven't actually used that much. Tonight (and for the next couple of months, provided I don't get distracted), I'm here to help stop you doing the same with my own thoughts on the absolutely most invaluable, useful things you can buy if you're starting from nothing.

There's no better place to start than tyre levers. As far as I'm concerned, you should be compelled by law to buy a set of these when you take ownership of a bike. Everyone gets punctures, and there is no other way to remove a tyre.

Well ... that's not quite true. In the misty past of my youth, I somehow managed to change a couple of tyres using only screwdrivers (and, I presume, an immense amount of perseverence), but I do also remember gouging a chunk out of my hand when one of them slipped. I've also heard people claim you can do it with a couple of spoons, but I suspect they're probably just a bit confused, and stir their tea and eat cornflakes with tyre levers.

I have two sets of tyre levers, which you can see in the photo here:

They both work, but my personal preference is for the red ones. Because they're a bit wider at the non-hook end (aren't I great with technical terms - I'll do a post on that some other time), they give a bit more purchase, which is especially useful if you're struggling to get a tyre back on. (Despite everything you read to the contrary, if you're anything like me, you probably will.)

I'll be back soon with my #2 in the list of handy things to have around. And don't think I've completely forgotten about shiny things, either.