Let’s talk about your composite frame. Notice I didn’t say carbon frame but carbon is what I'm talking about. I’m a little precious with the terms I use because I don’t know what your "carbon" frame (or handlebar or wheel) is made out of. There are different kinds of carbon fiber, just as there are different kinds of fiberglass. There is 3k Twill, 12k Twill, decussate, unidirectional, there’s matte and glossy, and there’s prepreg, wet layup, vacuum molded, resin transfer molded. You’ve heard of Kevlar and you think this is a brand of carbon fiber but really it’s aramid fiber and has different properties than carbon. In fiberglass you have E glass and then the higher-strength S glass and I can’t swear there’s no S glass in your frameset.

By saying you have a frame made of composite material we’re saying that 2 or more very different materials join to make something better than the properties exhibited by the individual materials. So, yes, in that sense concrete is a “composite” material because it’s made of sand, gravel and portland cement, and reinforced concrete is another composite material because it’s made of concrete and steel (e.g., rebar).

The beauty of a bike made out of composites – and in this case we’re talking carbon fiber and resin – is that you can just keep stacking layers of carbon fabric to make a frame stiffer/stronger in a certain area, and the kind of weave and the direction of the weave in specific parts of the frame allow a frame designer to give the frame strength or stiffness where the frame needs it, and less or lighter material where strength is not needed. This placement scheme of carbon inside a frame’s mold is called the “layup.” The shape and diameter of the tubes, and the layup used, that’s the black art of composite bike design (and wheel design, handlebar design, anything complicated and technical made of carbon fiber).

But as good as the carbon whisperer is who designs your bike his or her products can still break and they do from time to time. Of course any frame material is fixable but carbon is in general more easily fixable than bikes when made of metal. There is one company that’ll fix your broken carbon frame (or part) and as with frame making frame fixing is also its own special art. This Tucson-based company is called Carbon Fix and Mike Piccini runs the place. He’s been in composites for 24 years, earlier on working on drones and UAVs all the way up to full-sized aircraft, mostly for government contractors. He started a composite shop in 2010, creating everything from race car body kits to carbon fiber guitars (one is pictured below) and just about everything in between.

Among the “everything in between” was a carbon fiber bicycle frame and that was 14 years and about 1000 frames ago. I asked for some before/after pictures and a list of typical charges. You see the images herein and charges would be like these:

– Surface gouges: $320-$400
– Single break or crack in seat or chain stay: $360-$460
– Single break or crack in main tube: $400-$500
– Multiple breaks add $150 for each additional break

Every repair will be painted either with a flat black to accent the bike or as close as possible to factory colors over the repair area. All repairs will conform to the factory body lines. All repairs have a lifetime guarantee.

Turnaround time is 2 weeks or less once they receive the frame. You do not need to disassemble the entire frame; only the wheels need come off to do the repair. (Neither Slowtwitch nor I have any connection, financial or otherwise, to Carbon Fix.)

It’s amazing to me how much the price of carbon bikes has come down, considering the ghastly price of materials. I just bought a 55 gallon drum of epoxy resin and a 5 gallon bucket of hardener for a project of mine and the price was staggering. (Epoxy, not the polyester or polyvinyl resins most often used in surfboards and boats – is the resin used in your frame and in your – if necessary – frame repair).

The post Relief for Your Broken Frame (And Your Wallet) first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

Dear Reader: This is, more or less, a podcast in writing. I state a thesis, Josh Poertner (Silca, Marginal Gains Podcast) replies; I reply; Josh finishes. We do this over email and did this recently on the topic of tubeless wheels with hookless beads. To be clear, neither I nor Slowtwitch have any current business relationship with Josh or Silca nor is one contemplated.

Dan writes: Josh, upon reflection this is what I’ve come up with: Bike lubrication is to me like shaving. I hate it, it’s a boring chore and I shave once or twice a week. The only thing I know for sure about bike lubrication is: I’ll almost always choose the quick and easy over the perfect.

What this means in practice is that I’m not often taking the chain off my bike. Certainly the sorts of connection links first deployed by Wippermann but now pretty ubiquitous are helpful and, yes, I own a set of chain pliers for the task. (A pic of my chain pliers is just below, you use these to unlock your chains master link during chain removal; you don’t use them to connect the chain.) Still, I just prefer to leave the chain right where it is until I’m ready to change it. Accordingly, the method for stripping a chain of its factory coating, and then cleaning and applying lube at proper intervals, without removing the chain is an imperative of mine. I don’t think it’s too much to ask a consumer to invest in a pressure washer and an air compressor because these devices are in sync with my hatred of banal chores.

One more stipulation: This is for everyday riding. Forget racing for now and I don’t mind spending a couple of bucks extra for an everyday performance lube. I want a performance product and process; I want that lube to be easy to renew at given intervals; and I want the lube to protect the drive train parts.

Can we start with preparing the chain for lubrication? We’ll talk about lubrication in a minute just, for now, I’ve got this bike, maybe it’s new and maybe I’ve just decided to get religion on the right way to lube. I want to start with the stripping of the factory chain prep because it’s pretty clear that this is critical and I want to know the products and the process. Is it reasonable to assume I can do this without taking the chain off the bike? I ask because it’s unlikely I’m going to take the chain off the bike.

Josh writes: First of all, this is a topic near and dear to my heart, and I also despise shaving, feels like such a waste of time and money just so I can look as average as I did yesterday! I've personally always struggled with this feeling that maintenance activities are stealing from more valuable things like training or more innovative endeavors, but a lifetime of being around aircraft, racecars, and cycling at the highest level has really helped shape me into a true believer that doing the right maintenance in the right way, can ultimately be a huge time and money saver in the long run.

So let's start with factory grease. Chains are lubricated at the factory via 2 means: first, bicycle chains are made at very high speeds with all of the components being sandwiched together and then the pin press fit between the two outer plates. It sounds like machine-gun fire as it happens so quickly, and one of the big challenges for the producers are heat and metal-on-metal galling during assembly, so the chain is sprayed with an assembly lubricant during this manufacturing to help reduce galling of metal surfaces and to keep temperatures under control. This assembly lubricant is generally a lighter weight oil flooded onto the parts as they move through the machine. At the end of the assembly most chains are then also dipped through a heavier grease-type lubricant which has been heated so that it has very low viscosity allowing it to penetrate and coat the entire chain, both mixing with and displacing the lighter assembly lube. There are a million types of greases and additives, and from what we see in our testing the ones chosen by the manufacturers for this final chain coating are biased toward anti-corrosion and metal protection properties than they are to low friction or reduced wear during use. This makes sense from the perspective of the manufacturer: A chain that looks a little rusty after 3-4 years sitting on a shelf is a problem, whereas a chain that runs at higher friction or maybe holds onto road grit when you ride it really isn't.

So we have our brand new chain full of this very sticky, viscous, grease, and a lot of the manufacturers say that it's the best lubricant the chain will ever see, which might have been true 10 years ago. Fortunately, we have an independent third-party test lab that looks at these things and he's proven that while factory grease isn't THAT bad, it can no longer be considered good either, and of course it doesn't last forever so we have to eventually put something over top of it.

We see on the ZFC test chart (below) that in Block 1, which is 1000km of clean/dry operating at 250w, factory grease shows 10.9% chain wear. If we are comparing to prior generation lubricants this is actually quite good. If we were in 2010 I'd say factory grease is about as good as it gets, but there are also a whole host of modern lubricants which can run at less than 2.5% wear in that same 1000km test block with a few of those running at a remarkable 0.0% wear in 1000km, and many of those run much cleaner, quieter, and faster than the factory lube.

So for those interested in moving into these more modern lubricants, we ideally need to strip the chain of 100% of that factory grease so we can replace it. Here are the three strategies for doing this (actually four), or maybe more 3 plus 1 for those who want to spend the absolute minimum amount of time on this!

Option 1 (Effectiveness: 75-80% / Time: 2-5 minutes every 50-100km for 1000km). You CAN use oil-based wet lubes over top of factory grease and it will eventually displace the grease. The key here is to add the lube frequently, wiping the chain both before and after adding the lube with a microfiber towel. The wiping before will remove surface contamination that the wet lube might otherwise carry down into the chain, and wiping afterwards helps wipe away any contamination that the new lube might flush out, while also reducing the excess lube on outer surfaces that dirst will want to stick to. Adam at ZFC has shown that applying a wet lube like SILCA Synergetic, NFS, or Rex Black Diamond over top of factory grease will result in roughly the performance of the factory grease for the first ~1000km and then more or less match the performance of the wet lube after that. The key here is to apply the new lube every 50-100km or so for those first 1000km to help speed the transition inside the chain from factory grease to the wet lube. After that, service intervals should be every 250-300km and after every rainy ride.

Option 2 (Effectiveness: 90-95% / Time: ~30-45min one time). You can try to strip the factory grease from the chain while it's on the bicycle and then move directly to a wet lube or drip wax lube. This one is hard because that factory grease is SO tenacious, and we really don't want to use super harsh solvents around the other parts of the bike like hubs, bottom brackets, or any electronic components or connectors. The two best products on the market for doing this are the SILCA chain Stripper, and the Ceramicspeed UFO clean. Both are biodegradeable, surfactant based cleaners that are strong enough to attack the factory grease, but won't damage rubber seals, plastic dust covers, paint, or electronic bits. Both of these can be dripped onto the chain and rinsed off, and both require some time to do the job well, so we recommend 10-20 minutes of contact time between the cleaner and the chain with occasional agitation by backpedaling. You can also use one of those plastic chain cleaning devices with both of these cleaners, again, you just want to make sure to give time for the cleaner to attack the grease. After the cleaner has done its job, you want to rinse well with water to help flush out the residue, if you have a compressor, I'd also blow out the chain to speed the drying process and reduce the likelihood of any corrosion forming inside the chain. You can get about 95% of the factory grease out of a chain by this method if you do it well, but I'd plan on 30-40 minutes to really get it right.

Most important if you choose to strip the chain on the bicycle is to avoid any of the common chemicals you find recommended for stripping a chain on the internet. These include mineral spirits, paint thinner, toluene, acetone, and denatured alcohol. Mainly, all of these chemicals pose some risk to rubber seals and o-rings commonly used in sealed bearings and brake systems, and some of them can be very damaging to wire insulation and grommet seals common to electronic shifting systems. All of these chemicals are also of low enough viscosity that they tend to wick their way inside of areas where you really don't want them like hubs and bottom brackets, under SRAM batteries, etc where they can cause a lot of damage. We actually quadrupled the viscosity of our chain stripper during the testing phase to help ensure that it stays in the chain and also that it doesn't wick its way into places you don't want it, but… it's such a fine line as we still want it to wick into the chain itself!

Option 3 (Effectiveness: 100% / Time: 15min-1 day, one time). Removing the chain to strip it. While everybody feels like this is the most painful way of doing things when they first hear it, I have to say that I've come to believe that it's actually faster and easier, as well as safer to the rest of the bicycle the more that I've done it. The main benefit here is that you do not have to worry about any chemical interactions between what you are using to strip the chain and any other component of the bike. All of the harsh solvents mentioned above work well here if used properly, and while the off-bike method can take up to a few hours of total time depending on how you do it, the actual working time/human involvement is really quite small. If you are starting from a new in box chain, it's even easier, I just drop the chain straight from the package into the solvent and let soak. The key to this method is following a proven recipe. The original recipe was to soak a chain for ~3 hours in mineral spirits, paint thinner, toluene, gasoline, kerosene or similar agitating it frequently, and then shift that chain to a second more polar and water miscible solvent like acetone or denatured alcohol for 10-20 minutes of agitation before allowing the chain to hang to dry. Maybe takes a day in total, but you are actually hands on for less than 20 minutes total including the removal and reinstallation of the chain. Having the chain off of the bike also allows you to use an immersive lubricant like hot wax which is proven to be the best of the best in terms of friction and wear.

Notes and risks with this option: SILCA chain stripper was designed to do this whole process in 10 minutes, and we think it works great but clearly I'm biased! We've also seen good results with Ceramicspeed UFO Clean as an immersive chain stripper. Beware immersive soaking in mineral spirits or the like on a used chain as it can trap any moisture on the chain surface causing corrosion. Also beware water based degreasers especially Simple Green as they can cause hydrogen embrittlement which can lead to micro-crack formation in the metal, I know this sounds crazy, but a number of these water based cleaners are banned from use in aircraft and military due to documented failures. It is never a bad idea to final rinse any chain in acetone or denatured alcohol to help it dry and remove any residues or moisture.

Option 4: (Effectiveness: 100% / Time: 1 minute online plus shipping) Buy a pre-waxed or race prepped chain. This is by far the most expensive option, but certainly the fastest and easiest! There are numerous companies offering this as a service and it's a great option if you are looking to move your entire drivetrain to wax. All of the common pre-waxed chains on the market are hot-waxed, but can be maintained using drip wax lubricants.

Dan writes: For a moment can we limit this to lubrication on bikes during training? Because, those are 99 percent of my rides and my goals during those rides are performance and efficiency on the one hand, and protection and longevity on the other. I want my drivetrain parts to go faster and last longer. I guess as I’ve researched this I’ve come to view the stripping & prep as the less appreciated and more important part of this process. Consequently, I just bought a bottle of Silca Chain Stripper and shall eagerly await its arrival. My plan is, when I wash my bike, I’ll begin with chain stripper sprayed on the chain, and I’ve always previously used generic biodegradable degreaser but I’ll move to the Silca product on the assumption that this is a product more focused to the problem. I’ll use it on my cassette and chain ring teeth as well. Wait 10 or 15min for it to do its thing; the rest of the bike I’ll wash with regular soapy water; I’ll rinse the entire bike with a pressure washer and straight water; dry it with compressed air; then lube the chain and any other parts that need to be lubed.

Let’s say you wanted to lube your pedals. In actual practice do you use something different or, if you’re being lazy like me, will you just use the same lube you put on your chain? The thinking being: I want to lube the pedals with something that doesn’t attract dirt, same as with the chain. But if chain lube is just that specific then maybe you don’t use it on pedals. What say you?

For sure, taking the chain off the bike isn’t as big a deal as it used to be. For the typical consumer, I’m pretty violently against taking the chain off if that chain must be replaced using a press pin. Thankfully today’s master links are pretty universally used and there’s much less chance of user error. But unless I’m mistaken both SRAM and Shimano consider their master links to be single use. Unless upgrading to a Wippermann Connex link this really limits the real-world likelihood that those who’re reading here will take the chain off the bike. So, I do think there is – pardon the pun – a disconnect in the stated best practice in chain prep and the likely practice. This is why I’m being a curmudgeon on the issue of chain removal. Who reading this, right now, has extra sets of master links in their garage?

Racing, okay, if you’re going to do one race a year that’s your A race, then what makes the most sense to me is just buying a prepared chain and then using that chain throughout the rest of the year for training. In this case I suppose the chain stripping step might not be necessary, but I don’t know, you tell me. If I’m using Squirt or Silca lube, for example, if it’s already a wax-based emolument over a chain waxed from the factory, how would you clean that chain now that you’re just using the bike for training?

Josh writes: Once you get the chain stripped and converted to a wax type lubricant, you'll find that training and racing setups are essentially the same. The biggest advantage is possibly the reduced time required to clean the bike, so the little bit of extra work up-front makes race-day cleanup and prep go significantly faster as you have nothing to clean off of your cassette, rings, or jockey wheels. My standard advice for training is to think in 1000km blocks (similar to the ZFC friction test blocks) where you reset the chain every 1000km with a deep clean and a hot wax bath or a deep clean with a layering up of a top drip wax, and then use a top drip wax lubricant every 250km to help keep the chain topped off through the training block. This will get you minimum wear with maximum efficiency and really isn't hardly any work. Then, as race day approaches, wash the bike and reset the chain and lube up for your event.

If you are resetting the chain on the bike, I recommend using a product like chain stripper AFTER washing everything else with soap. One of the key learnings we've had during our 2-year development of stripper as well as our soaps and cleaning products is that the key to it all lies in the residues of the chemicals involved. If you think about the original chain stripping recipe, it was using mineral spirits to soften and dissolve the factory grease, and then moving to a water based degreaser to remove the soften greases and mineral spirits, and then to acetone or an alcohol to remove the residue left by the mineral spirit and water based degreaser. With our chain stripper, we started with a list of degreasing agents that left residues favorable to wax and then tested about 120 of those to find 3 that were very efficient at attacking the common types of base oils, thickeners and additives common to factory grease.

Why it's important to strip the chain last is that most common soaps and other degreaser/cleaners will often leave their own non-favorable residues. We've developed our own residue-free soap that plays well with wax, but it's expensive and might not just be lying about the workshop already. I'd say most commonly we see even top pro mechanics using Dawn or similar dishwashing soap, but if you look at the ingredient list (and MSDS) you will see that Dawn has all sorts of ingredients that can be problematic if left as residue inside the chain, including sulfuric acid, sodium hydroxide (which dissolves aluminum), salt, and in many variants, a skin lotions or oils to keep your hands from being destroyed by those other things. As a result, we recommend cleaning the bike as you normally would, degrease the drivetrain, brush, etc and then finish with a Chain Stripper or UFO clean drip on the chain, rinse, blow dry, and then add the drip wax or other top lubricant. If you are removing the chain, you can just throw it into the stripper while you're doing the rest of the bike washing, so from my experience it generally saves a bit of time to remove the chain and reset it, but as you state, there are possible risks associated with master links, etc, and I agree 1000% that if your chain is fully riveted without a master link, leave it on the bike!

On the master link topic. We've tested the heck out of this and I have personal master links that are 10 uses into their lives without issue and pretty much every SILCA test rider and pro athlete has similar stories (though we do recommend discarding them after 6-8 uses). So on the one hand I'm obligated to say that you need to follow the manufacturer's instructions, but on the other hand I've never met anybody who's broken a master link that was installed multiple times, and we've never had a WorldTour team or pro Triathlete have an issue here either, and that's hundreds of athletes and thousands of races. Having said all of that, I always carry a spare link with me (SILCA multi-tools all have little magnetic holders for them, as do tools from Lezyne, WolfTooth, and I'm sure others). I also always keep a few about in my shop. SRAM and Shimano both sell them in multi-packs, so when I buy a new bike, I get a 4 or 6 pack of them and I generally have 1 or 2 of them left over when I sell the bike a few years later. One way to look at the expense here is that you are potentially increasing life of the chain and cassette by 5-10x by using one of these advanced lubrication regimes, so figuring the new SRAM Eagle cassette is $600 and the chain is $150, the 4 pack of masterlinks for $18.00 looks like quite a bargain!

Pedals. Any of the top drip waxes will also work well on cleat/pedal interface surfaces, so SILCA, CeramicSpeed, TruTension are all great options as they dry clean and hard, our pro mechanics seem to love painting it on with a little brush, but dripping from the bottle works well also. I prefer these to the classic dry lubricants that many of the pedal brands recommend, such as Speedplay, as those dry lubricants tend to be very environmentally harmful and contain PFAS ingredients which you are then tracking about when you walk, especially on Speedplay where it's really the cleat that needs the lube more than the pedal. Many 'dry' lubricants are simply PTFE or other PFAS substances in a strong, thin, fast evaporating solvents like pentane or heptane to help them wick into all the nooks and crannies, so you also need to be careful applying them to the pedals themselves as stray drops on say the spindle can result in the strong solvent wicking its way behind bearing seals where it will begin to break down bearing greases.

Race Day. As you mention, buying a race prepped chain is probably the fastest way to get there, albeit also the most expensive. One thing to consider also is that many of the race chains aren't just pre-waxed, but are run-in for 50km or so first to help debur and remove any excess metal particles that are left from the chain manufacturing, and then stripped and waxed. SILCA, CeramicSpeed, and MoltenSpeedWax all offer similar variants of this concept. However, you can get 98% of the same effect with a hot wax at home, or with a 2-3 layer drip wax application right before race day. We have a great video explaining what this 'Layering Up' is with drip wax and why you want to do it for your key events, but essentially, these top drip waxes are 30-40% water as a carrier, so once they dry, the chain has space in it to add more lube, this makes it both faster and longer lasting and the technique works with all of the top drip waxes already mentioned:

Once you are working with a fully waxed chain and drivetrain, you should never have to strip it again, and in fact, the waxes are so resistant to standard chemicals, that the common stripping methods won't do much to remove wax from the chain. Your best bet to 'reset' a waxed chain is boiling water, I remove the chain, toss in boiling water for 5 minutes and then go straight to hot melt wax. If you are not removing the chain from the bike, you can reset it on the bike with boiling water from a kettle poured onto the chain at roughly the 3 o'clock position of the chainring, all the old wax and grit just fall out of the chain, and you can then go straight to re-lubricating after you blow the chain out with compressed air (or bounce the bike a dozen times or so to de-water it as much as possible).

Lastly, you mention using Squirt or SILCA over a hot waxed or factory pre-waxed chain. The short answer is yes, as mentioned above, you can use a good drip wax is a great way to extend the performance of a pre-waxed or hot waxed chain. However, it should be noted that there are different types of drip waxes out there and not all of them work the same way or will be compatible. First, you have wax-based dry lubes: Finish Line, White Lightning, MucOff and others make these. These are just dry lubes with 80-90% solvent and some manner of wax particles. These generally do not work well over top of other wax lubricants and will soften the base wax if mixed, resulting in the need for much more frequent re-lubrication. They will work in a pinch but I wouldn't build this into a lubrication strategy. Second, you have first generation wax emulsions, which are Squirt and Smoove. These products are a paraffin wax and paraffin/oil mix and both of them are too viscous to penetrate fully to the pins of the chain. Also, both of them remain quite tacky as they do not dry due to the high oil content (which also makes them quite dirty). Both of these products will soften and degrade hot wax, and will only be able to reset the chain to near original efficiency if you use a hair dryer or the like to soften them to the point that they can fully penetrate to the pins. Adam at ZeroFriction has quite a lot to say about this in his report on those products so if you're interested in the details check those reports out. Third, you have the newest generation of products which are largely based on the emulsion/suspension technology that we developed which allows for a high percentage of wax solids to be emulsified into and suspended in a low viscosity water or alcohol (or both) carrier which can have wax percentage of 60-70% AND still penetrate the chain fully. These are the best 'top-off' lubricants for hot waxed or race prepped chains as they all contain paraffin or paraffin compatible waxes in wax safe carriers that allow them to dry to equivalent hardness of the base wax. SuperSecret, UFO 2.0, TruTension All weather, and Effetto Mariposa Flower Power are the products that currently occupy this third and most advanced category.

As I finish typing all this it always feels crazy just how many words can be written about chain lubrication and cleaning. And we're still learning! I feel like we know 1000x more than we knew 5 years ago, but every month we discover something new, or a new technique to improve longevity or reduce friction. The chain lube category right now feels very reminiscent to me of the massive advancement period in aerodynamics in the late 90's and early 2000's where you have a couple of really solid players pushing each technologically, but also conceptually. The same is happening right now with this thing that seems so simple, like something we should have figured out 100 years ago yet is still full of so many unknown variables and questions, which is my way of saying that this is the best of my knowledge today, but I'll bet you that 2 years from now a lot of this will be different.

The post Dan & Josh: A Lubrication Discussion first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

As in childbirth, all are ushered into the cold light of a new reality with hydraulic disc brakes on bicycles. It does not matter whether you’re eager to break out or prefer to stay put. Ready or not, welcome to your new life.

When you got your new bike you might’ve gotten a little baggie with plastic pieces and among them might be a half-inch thick block of plastic and that’s not what we’re going to talk about now. That thicker piece is what you use to put in your brake calipers when you bleed your brakes. (You take your brake pads out, and you put that “bleed block” in during the bleed process.) You may never need this for your own use, as you are unlikely to ever bleed your own hydraulic brakes (but you could, if you wanted, and it’s a pretty helpful skill.)

In this case, it’s these thinner pieces I’m writing about and they are meaningful and necessary even if you do zero mechanical work on your bike. What is this piece called? Good question. The name of the product if you buy it online from Walmart is “Bicycle Oil Disc Piston Stopper Oil Brake Caliper Plastic Protective Film Clamp,” and you get 10 of them for 6.99. They’re just fifty cents each on AliExpress where the same product is called a Hydraulic Disc Brake Piston Retainer. But it’s more commonly a pad spreader.

So pad spreader it is. But note that the metal tools made to spread the brake pads are also called pad spreaders. I don’t know how many one person needs but here you can buy 24 of then for ten bucks. Why do you need this?

Any time you take your wheel out – front or rear – and transport your bike or do anything with it where the wheel remains out, you put one of these in (per brake caliper). Hydraulic disc brakes do not like to be activated, or invoked (no pressing the brake lever) when the wheel is not in the bike. If you find that your brakes are all of a sudden rubbing, did you take your wheel out and put it back in? Perhaps when it was out the brake lever was depressed. If so, there’s a good chance the pistons did not retract.

I’m writing this to you now because it’s winter and there’s a particular use case for these: stationary training. If you have a bike with hydraulic disc brakes that you put on a smart trainer, you have to take the wheel out. In the case of the set up I’m riding now, both wheels are out (Wahoo KICKR and Wahoo KICKR Climb). I’ve got pad spreaders in both brake calipers.

The other time I need these is when I travel. I don’t have a roof rack but if I did that would be a case. More likely it’s when I take a bike on a plane and then I for sure install pad spreaders. You’ll note the small slotted hole in your pad spreaders. Your brake pads are fixed into your brake assembly with a “pad pin” and you remove this to take your pads out, for either replacement or for brake bleeding. That slotted hole in your plastic pad spreader clips onto this pad pin. If you don’t hear and feel a click when you insert the pad spreader it’s not in there right.

And that’s it! Don’t throw these away, or wonder what they are. Keep these around. Probably best to just put them on your bike, wherever it is you store tubes or inflators or tools.

The post What Is This Little DoWhacker? first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

The tires that Hume rode to such great success were, in manner and function, nearly identical to the tubular tires that would dominate high-level cycling events for the century-plus to follow.

It turns out that a woven casing with a rubber tube inside it and a rubber tread strip on the outside is a pretty great way to make a tire, and it’s not a coincidence that Dunlop winds up being (largely) credited with the invention of the pneumatic tire as a result of this design. He wasn’t the first, though. Robert William Thomson beat Dunlop to the punch (and the patent office) by a few months with his tires, which were different in some important ways.

The Thomson tire design featured a leather outer carcass with a rubber tube inside, which was bolted rather than glued on to a proprietary carriage wheel. While this design wasn’t successful for some very obvious reasons – leather casing, lack of rubber tread – it did have one really interesting and useful feature; the tire was easily removeable.

In short order, Dunlop himself was back at the patent office with designs for a more easily removeable tire

…which looks one heck of a lot like the tires/rims on the bleeding edge of development today.

The Dunlop company eventually wound up acquiring the patents of another inventor, Charles Kingston Welch, who invented the wire-bead clincher tire. Welch also held a patent for “certain new and useful Improvements in Pneumatic Tires”, US612981A.

In the language of the patent, “This invention relates to improvements in pneumatic tires, and is equally applicable to double-tube, single-tube, and the socalled (sic) tubeless tires.”

Yes, Tubeless tires. In 1898.

There ain’t nothing new under the sun, especially when it comes to bicycles, and looking at some of the early developments in cycling technology can provide some really interesting insight into the products of today.

The Welch patent, for example, goes into detail explaining just how important a flexible tire sidewall is for maximum performance –

"In Dunlop racingtires (sic) or tires used on bicycles for riding at a
high speed it is usual not to cover with vulcanized rubber the whole
of the outer surface of the fabric or inexpansible jacket serving to
inclose and retain the air-tube, but to cover only the tread portion,
leaving the fabric at the sides of the tire bare, so as to preserve the
flexibility thereof, whereby these sides offer very slight resistance to
the continuous deformation or lateral expansion of the tire at the
point where it bears upon the ground."

In 1898 Welch understood the importance of tire carcass deformation characteristics in the performance of the tire. While this may seem like common sense to anyone likely to click on an article like this today, it’s worth noting just how much this basic piece of tire construction wisdom has really only penetrated into the general consciousness of bike racers – and even industry professionals – very recently. Roll back a few years and you were more likely to find people prioritizing weight then factors like compliance and hysteresis when attempting to maximize tire performance.
While light weight may sometimes correlate with light construction, they aren’t the same thing, and Welch was well aware of this…

"The chief object of my invention is to produce a pneumatic tire for
bicycle that will permit approximately the same speed to be
obtained as with the light racing-tires at present constructed and will
at the same time be suitable for use on ordinary roads and in wet
weather."

His solution to a light construction tire that was sufficiently robust for ordinary use? He proposed covering the fabric portion of the tire with a thin sheet “or membrane” of rubber. This rubber coating would protect the fragile sidewall while still allowing for the deformation necessary for high performance. But there’s more.

"I cover those portions of the tire that are adjacent to the wheel-rim
with a strip or ring or strips or rings of vulcanized india-rubber or
other suitable material, so as to form both a resilient and efficient
closure between the tire and the rim and also a protection against
chafing or wear that might arise from friction on the rim. These
strips or rings of indiarubber instead-of forming part of. the tire may
form part of or be attached to the wheelrun."

In other words, rim strips that provide for a seal between the rubber coated tire and the rim it is attached to. Something that looks an awful lot like this…

…a modern tubeless tire system.

When we dissect a current generation tubeless tire system, we wind up with three essential components, all more or less replicating areas of Moore’s concern. These are a rim, whether hooked or hookless, typically fitted with a rim strip to provide a “resilient and efficient closure”, a tire – essentially always of woven construction, with a rubber tread bonded on to it, and – and this is the interesting part – the sealant inside the tire.

Tubeless tires aren’t all the same, and the functions performed by the sealant vary accordingly. In a “true” tubeless tire, the tire, when inflated on a compatible rim, will hold air without any sealant. In this use case, the sealant is present simply to “seal” any punctures that may occur during operation.

With what is commonly called a “tubeless ready” tire, however, the tire/rim system will not hold air without sealant. The sealant not only acts to repair system failures due to puncture, it also “seals” the tire carcass itself, forming a (largely) impermeable layer on the inside of the tire. In essence, the sealant acts as a surrogate tube.

It’s worth noting that with almost all current sealants this surrogate tube is a *latex* tube. It really doesn’t matter if your latex tube has been deposited on the inside of your tire via sealant injection, or if it’s an actual discrete tube product, what matters is that it’s latex, and latex tubes are fast. They’re definitely faster than a butyl tube, and if you’re running a “true” tubeless tire, you’re very likely running with the functional equivalent of a butyl tube bonded to the tire sidewall.

Butyl rubber is extremely robust stuff, very chemically inert and impermeable to gases. This makes it an excellent product for application to a tire sidewall, and it is used as the inner lining in the vast majority of automobile tires. Unfortunately, when we’re dealing with the fractional horsepower output of a human being on a bike, the small rolling resistance penalty of a butyl tube (or tube surrogate) actually matters. When we look at the rolling resistance rankings of tubeless tires, the vast majority of them are of the “tubeless ready” variety, and this is a big part of the reason why.

Here's another reason.

The construction of a “tubeless tire” can be much “lighter” than that of a true tubeless one.

If a tire looks like this when you install sealant, what you’re seeing is the sealant seeping through the light, porous construction of the tire. Eventually, the sealant will fill the tiny voids in the tire carcass, the weeping will stop, and you wind up with not just a surrogate latex tube on the inside of the tire, but a tire that is suffused with latex sealant, and in the words of Charles Kingston Welch, a “membrane” that acts “to efficiently protect the said jacket from moisture or other deleterious influences without detriment to its flexibility”.

The post Tubeless Was Bike Tech First first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

Likewise today, because I have my own liturgy on when to oil, or when to grease. I build up most of my own bikes; that is, I start with the bare frame and end up with the complete bike. I don’t really like building bikes unless it's my bike or a bike for someone I care about, in which case it's kind of a peaceful process (I'm quick and lazy after the bike is built; but I'm slow and thorough when I build it). I'm a preparer, and when preparers build bikes they don't fail in the field and I don’t mean just the bike, but all the parts on the bike. The electronics don’t fail, the parts don’t come unscrewed and fall off, the seat post doesn’t slip. I like to think that’s because I’m picky about the frames and wheels I choose, the parts I choose; how I build the bikes up; and how I maintain them. This includes how I use fluids and substances…

Oil: I oil all exposed moving parts. Chains are the most obvious, but anything that articulates, like the hinges in a derailleur, as long as the oil isn’t in danger of fouling a necessary function. On that point, in my zeal to lubricate I make sure I don’t get oil on a brake pad or rotor. As to the “oil” I use, I have hanging around oils of different viscosities, and I use light viscosity, non-sticky oil most of the time. I don’t (perhaps because of where I live) use a heavy oil like Phil’s Tenacious; while oil like that works great as bar & chain oil on my chainsaw, it’s a dirt magnet on my bike’s chain. Terrific handwringing arose from my declaration (during my bike washing video) that I often use WD40 for some non-race preparation. I find it is a not-ideal degreaser; a not-ideal protectant; and a not-ideal lubricant. But it is somehow all those things. That said, one of our readers recommended Squirt Long Lasting Dry Lube for lazy folks like me. Yes, I've been at this for a third of century, but I’m still teachable. I will give Squirt a go.

Grease: I’m not picky about the grease I use as long as it’s bicycle grease, except in specialty situations (a very light grease on ceramic bearings). I grease threaded parts that aren’t in danger of unthreading on their own, but which I might frequently thread and unthread, such as the rear derailleur (which I take out of the frame when I pack my bike in a bike case); stem bolts (all 6 of them); headset and top cap bolts; seat post binder bolts; and on the threads of lock rings; both cassette and disc brake; pedal spindles. Lighter weight grease is also good for moving parts where oil is too light, such as ball-and-cage bearings, but most of these kinds of bearings are sealed nowadays, so you don’t have to worry about greasing them. I think perhaps derailleur pulleys are the most obvious example of unsealed bearings, but sealed bearings are showing up in derailleur pulleys more and more these days.

Carbon or Friction Paste: I put this on any non-threaded surface where carbon meets carbon or aluminum, where tightened bolts fix a sliding part in place, like a seat post. Likewise the new kind of seat-post-like front end risers we see in bikes like the Cervelo P3X. I also use friction paste to resist rotation, when a part is subject to torque (such as where the handlebar meets the stem). See more on this below, because I have more to say on this.

Blue Threadlocker: We used to say Loctite, but that’s a brand name, and now others who make this refer to it by its generic name threadlocker. This is basically grease that fairly quickly dries and hardens. I put this on any threaded bolts that are in danger of backing out, such as all aerobar bolts, aerobar pads or anything else. Water bottle cage bolts. The bolts that fix the brake calipers to the fork and frame; chain ring bolts; certainly direct mount crank bolts. Threadlocker comes in different colors, and if you use red that means you’re basically gluing your bolt permanently into the frame. If you use blue, that means you can still back that bolt out, but it’s very hard for that bolt to back out on its own. I find I’m using blue threadlocker on more and more threaded parts, and a lot of these bolts nowadays come pre-treated with threadlocker, as you can see on the bolts above.

Anti-seize: It’s probably not necessary for you and I to own, but I own it, and I use anti-seize for the mating of dissimilar metals; high pressure joints; and joints that aren’t revisited for long periods of time. A great example is the threaded bottom bracket because the BB will sit in there for years without my removing it; there’s lots of pressure on that joint. I also like anti-seize on every threaded or interference fit surface of a titanium frame that mates another part. It seems to me that anti-seize is also a pretty good choice for the surfaces of the bottom bracket you intend to press into the frame (pressfit = interference fit). Or, just put the anti-seize on the frame, inside the hole where the BB goes, but also on the side of those holes, where the BB cups meet the frame (where we used to “face” the metal frames before we threaded the BBs into them). That said, if you don’t own any anti-seize I wouldn’t let that stop what you’re working on. You can put grease anywhere where you would put anti-seize.

So that’s it (I'm omitting from this discussion fluids like tubeless sealant and hydraulic fluid). But there’s one more substance that goes – or should or will go, when I figure it out – on some of my problematic mated surfaces:

My One Elusive Compound: There’s something I need, but that I lack, and I’m experimenting with this now. In some cases, a significant amount of torque is applied to something on fixed on the bike (by one or more bolts, for example), such as a handlebar fixed onto the stem. But that is not the only such case. Certain seat posts operate that way; that is, the guts of the seat post topper rotate about a semi- or completely circular opening in the post, in order to allow the saddle to tilt. In cases like this, I sometimes find that I need more than just the strength of the fixing bolt, and of course we see this with carbon seat posts, hence carbon paste discussed above. But when the fit between two parts is not absolutely prescribed (as with a seat post and seat tube) I wish I had a really thin grit tape (much thinner than skateboard tape), or a grit spray paint, that I could apply to the part before fixing it in its usual bolted way.

Carbon paste is inaptly named, and is more often now referred to as friction paste (such as these above), because it works well between any two surfaces, even if neither is carbon. But friction paste is impermanent. If you look on the road handlebars you’re buying these days you’ll see that many of the center sections of these bars are already treated with either a friction tape or a spray, but danged if I can find out what it is. Yes, you can go right down to Home Depot and buy several brands of grit spray paint (from Krylon or Rustoleum). But I want to make sure I get the grit right, hence my asking around, but I haven’t found my answer yet.

Above is what I do; not necessarily what you should do. Some of your parts call for specialized lubrication (like pre-Wahoo Speedplay pedals, or Ceramic Speed bearings). I would take their specific recommendation over my general counsel. But I do have one observation, as a "preparer," which has caused me to increase over the years my use of blue threadlocker. It seems to me that smaller screws which are not placed in great tension – fewer than 5Nm perhaps – are often the victims of vibration-related “auto-loosening.” Prime among these are the screws and bolts that affix your aerobar pads; water bottle bolts; any bolts used to affix storage of any kind, whether behind-the-seat-post storage; top tube storage (aka Bento Box); under-the-down-tube nacelles; front hydration systems; anything that bolts onto these integrated framesets. Nowawadays I almost always err on the side of threadlock here. However, when I unthread a bolt with threadlocker I've compromised its threadlocking when I re-tighten it, so, grease still rules for these smaller sizes bolts when I'm loosening and tightening them often (e.g., seat post binders).

The post When To Oil, Grease, Friction Paste, Anti-Seize, or Threadlock first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

Washing my bike takes me 15 minutes, start to finish. May I stipulate there that there is another, probably better, process that's already explained on Slowtwitch by the able folks from Ceramic Speed, and if you end up with some sort of hybrid approach between their process and mine, all well and good.

Let me start with the tools I use, in order to make this easy for the lazy man.

First is an air compressor. I’ve written about these. A pancake compressor will set you back about $150, and if you don’t have one, you ought to get one, not just for this, but for filling up your bike’s tires; your car’s tires; the tires on anything else you own with pneumatic wheels; and all kinds of reasons to use it that you can’t imagine unless you have it. I have a larger compressor as well (which I'm using in the video), and the larger the better for jobs that use a lot of air (CFM) as opposed to jobs that need a lot of pressure (PSI), and this is a CFM job. But these relatively inexpensive pancake compressors will do fine.

Then I have a pressure washer. You don’t need one of these, but if you’ve got one then it makes the job easier. Mostly it’s getting the grease off, and I mean the black stuff that brands you a Fred on the group rides, when you sashay in with a chain ring tattoo on your calf. That’s not easy to get off your chain, chain rings, and cassette cogs… unless you have a pressure washer! I put some degreaser on the chain and the gears a few minutes before I pressure wash them but, honestly, most of that black stuff comes off fine just with the water pressure. These pressure washers cost maybe $150 for a pretty cheap one, and mine is a 2000psi model. You don’t want too much more than that, or you risk washing the paint right off your frame (or peeling the decals, if they’re top-mount decals).

Only thing about the pressure washer: don’t get one that’s really cheap. I have bad luck with cheap pressure washers, as in, they tend to break after 2 or 3 uses. You’ll grow to rely on your pressure washer. You may use it to wash your car. I’m painting my house now, and the best way to prep your surfaces – get off all the dirt and loose paint – is to pressure wash it (though you may want a beefier pressure washer when tackling a big job like that one).

Then I’ve got a pneumatic hose, of course, and a presta valve adapter. I use that adapter for blowing the water off the bike, but you may need a separate adapter just for blowing compressed air, depending on the presta valve adapter you own. Just, for sure, if you have a compressor, you need a presta valve adapter. No more floor pump for you! (Except when you’re traveling.) These accessories, like the presta valve adapter, pneumatic hose and fittings, a compressed air adapter, will cost you total between $40 or $70 total, if you get them all.

In the video above, as you see, if you have water and power you have all the utilities you need for this. A little mild degreaser on the drive train, then soapy water via the pressure washer, then a rinse, then drying with compressed air. Then a shoot a little water out the nozzle onto a rag and go around the bike to catch up any dirt you missed.

Soap? Anything. Dish soap. Car wash soap. I'm not picky. There are plenty of degreasers around, from WD40, Simple Green, ProGold, Muc-Off, and you can get bike-specific stuff or something more generic from Home Depot or Walmart. Just, the heavy duty engine degreasers, I stay away from these.

Do I apply wax to the newly washed frame? Frame protectant? Do I take the chain off to clean it? Soak it? Get in there with a toothbrush to get out all the sand particles? Do I wax my chain, or resort to a Friction Facts or Ceramic Speed lube process? No, no, no, hell no, and no. Except on that last question, if it’s an important race taking place right after washing my bike I might change the chain, and I’m pretty picky about the sorts of chain I put on my bike, depending on the groupset (SRAM Force AXS Flat Top, SRAM Eagle X01, Wippermann, PremierBike Ultra Optimization).

Or I'll just run what I brung, but I might use a more friction-friendly lube than WD40. If I’m between races, which is what I am for 97 percent of my rides, I just squirt some WD40 on the chain and any other unsealed moving or sliding part and I’m done. Yes, that makes me a faithless bohemian. Guilty as charged. But my bike is clean.

And that’s it! You’ll spend more time dragging this stuff out of the garage and putting it back than actually washing the bike. Which is the point. For me, it’s a binary choice: wash it the lazy way, or don’t wash it at all. Hence my process.

Notes Post Publication: I like the comment below on the use of Squirt Long Lasting Dry Lube. This appeals to my particular lazy man's needs, I haven't used Squirt as of yet, I'll test this and it may change my chain care behavior. The article above describes bike wash habits. For more on my habits, here is when and where I oil, grease, anti-seize, threadlock and friction paste.

The post Bike Washing For the Lazy Person first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

If so, we might just have a solution for you.

We’re going to focus on flat mount brakes, as that format has become essentially ubiquitous on the tri/road/gravel frames of this current generation, but the general principles we will talk about apply to all disc brakes.

In order to function properly, a disc brake needs to be set up so that the pads are at the correct height for the rotor size chosen, are laterally aligned with the rotor, and move in the same plane as the rotor, which should be perpendicular to the hub axle.

We use adapters to adjust for the different rotor sizes/heights, and – thankfully – this doesn’t have to be perfect. When it isn’t you might notice a little bit of material at the top of your brake pads that doesn’t wear away as the rest of your pad does.

If your pads look like the one in the pic, it means your brake is mounted high relative to the rotor. The amount shown in the pic is pretty typical. Any more than that, and you should do something about it. That “something” is… complicated. More on that in a bit.

Lateral alignment is fairly simple, until it’s not. There is a certain degree of adjustability built in to the brake mounting hardware so that you can vary the lateral offset of the brake, and match the angle of the brake mechanism to the rotor.

In the rear, the brake mounts on the frame are elongated ovals.

The brake bolts slide from side to side inside these slots, and you clamp the whole thing down when everything is positioned correctly.
In the front, the slots are in the brake itself, the bolts are fixed in place in the frame, and the brake moves around them, once again being clamped in place once alignment has been achieved.

There’s limit to the adjustability this system affords, as It’s bound by the length of those slots. As limited as this range is, it should be plenty. If it isn’t, either your frame is out of spec or (perhaps more likely) your wheel/rotor is. For the nerdiest of us, an excellent breakdown of the technical specifications can be found here.

That covers vertical and horizontal alignment, and we’re left with angular alignment.

In theory, your brake rotor is mounted perpendicular to the axle of your hub. The plane of the rotor path is at a perfect 90 degree angle to the hub center. Your brakes need to operate in that same plane.

With old-style post mount brakes, there is a little bit of wiggle room to adjust the brakes so that alignment in this plane is correct. There is a little spherical washer set that goes between the post and the brake, and the brake pivots ever so slightly upon this until you tighten things down. You get maybe a couple of millimeters of adjustability out of this system, and that’s generally just enough to square things up.

Flat mount brakes don’t have any such adjustability. They rely entirely upon the (nominally) flat surface they bolt to being put in exactly the correct alignment by the frame manufacturer.

Perfection is a very rare thing. Even very high-end framesets from well regarded manufacturers can be found with brake mounts that are out of spec.

If your brake pads look like this…

…with the pad wearing asymmetrically or at an angle, or if you simply cannot get your brakes to set up without rubbing or squealing, or – and this is the big tipoff – if every time you try to adjust your brakes, just when you think things are perfect and ready to go, you apply that final bit of torque to the bolts to snug things down to spec only to find that the darn rotors are suddenly rubbing… if any of this sounds familiar, odds are your brake mounts are out of alignment.

Fortunately, there is a solution. You can grind those recalcitrant mounts into submission using a disc brake mount facing tool.

While it seems very clear that most people (even many bike mechanics) have never heard of these tools, they have been around for just about as long as disc brakes have been on bikes. This is the Magura Gnann-O-Matt Disc Optimizer, and being 20+ years old, it pre-dates both flat mount and post mount brakes, and is designed to “optimize” I.S. mounts on bikes with quick release dropouts.

You almost certainly have none of those things on your bike, so we’re going to have to use something a bit more modern. We’re going to use the Park Tool DT-5.2. The “.2” part of that name is important. If you’re going to buy one of these, you definitely want the 5.2. The DT-5 won’t work with flat mount brakes, it’s post mount only.

In theory, the operation of the DT-5.2 is fairly simple. An adjustable rod is placed in the dropouts of your frame/fork, where the hub would ordinarily sit. A vertical rod bolts on to this surrogate hub, and an articulated arm slides up and down on the vertical rod. At the end of the articulated arm is a rotary cutter head.

To index the cutters, you push two little plugs into the brake mount holes and drop the arms of the cutter head down on to the posts.

You hold the cutter head in place with your hand, then fix the vertical rod in place.

Now that you’re aligned, you remove the plugs, place the nub on the end of the cutter head inside the brake mount hole, and tighten down the articulated arm.

There is only one cutter head, so you need to move it between the two mounting holes, relying on a (non-indexed) collar that bolts to the vertical rod to keep the depth of cut consistent. Before cutting anything, you will want to figure out which of the two mounting slots is lower by measuring the gap on the vertical post.

You should first cut the lower of the two mounts, as both mounts will need to wind up at the same depth.

To cut, simply turn the blue knob. You’ll want to cut until enough of the surface is level to ensure stable contact when the mounting bolts are tightened down. I “blued” the surface of this mount with a paint pen so you can see what it looked like after the first few passes of the cutter…

…and when level. Ish.

This is the point at which I stopped. Why?

There are two mounting points. This was the higher of the two, and at this point I had reached the level at which the first mounting point was faced level and true. If I went any farther on this one, I would need to go back and re-cut the other. This is also sufficient surface area to be stable. Barely, but enough.

Most importantly, though, remember this picture?

This is what it looks like when the brake is sitting higher than the rotor. The solution to this problem is face/cut the mount deeper so that the brake sits lower.

With the one that I’m working on here, though, I’m approaching the opposite end of the spectrum. If I go much lower, I’m going to need to shim the brake up in order for it to contact the brake rotor correctly. So, good enough is good enough.

It should be pretty obvious from that first picture why it was more or less impossible to adjust the brakes on this bike. The mounting hole to the right was lower than the one on the left, and the brake was only making contact from about 9-12:00 on the left hand mounting surface. Every time this brake was tightened down, the brake would slide ever so slightly counterclockwise and down, taking the brake out of plane with the rotor. As a result, the brakes always rubbed ever so slightly, they pinged with most rotors, and they squealed if there was even a hint of moisture in the air.

After I completed this process, I bolted everything back in place and it’s like it’s a different bike. Brake adjustment takes seconds, the brakes don’t squeal anymore, and a (frankly) unpleasant setup has become one that is a pleasure to work on and to ride.

Based on personal experience and an informal survey of working bike mechanics, very few bikes have their brake mounts properly faced at the factory or at point of purchase, and a huge percentage of the problems that people commonly encounter with their disc brakes can be at least in part addressed via this process.

This isn’t rocket surgery, but it is a bit much for the average home mechanic. You want to have the process down pat before you even think about mounting a cutting tool on an expensive frame, and the list price of the Park DT-5.2 is $469.95. Those two things combine to put this pretty squarely in “contact your local professional bike mechanic” territory.

I’ll go one step farther than that. Not only should you probably contact your local bike mechanic if you think you might need this service, if this isn’t a service your bike mechanic offers you might just want to find yourself a new one that does.

The post Saving Face, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love My Brakes first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

First up: the Park Tool PP-1 piston press.

Park is selling version 1.2 of this now, but I haven’t got the new version, so I can’t talk about it. What I can talk about is how long I put off buying a piston press, figuring that a plastic tire lever was good enough.

It wasn’t.

You simply push this thing in between your brake pads, and it spreads them apart. Evenly. No wiggling back and forth, as you’re forced to do with a makeshift solution like a tire lever. No scarring of the pads, which is absolutely going to happen at some point if you just use a screwdriver.

If you work on disc brakes, you should have a piston press. This is a good one.

Now that you have the right tool to push your pads into position, it’s time for the Birzman Clam.

This is a wonderfully simple piece of kit. It’s literally just a folded sheet of aluminum. To use it, first press the pistons to their fully open position using the piston press we just talked about. After you’re done that, loosen the bolts that hold your brake caliper to your bike frame and place the clam on top of the brake rotor.

Rotate the wheel until the rotor/clam sandwich is between the brake pads, inside the brake caliper. Now, squeeze the brake lever, and tighten the fixing bolts back up while continuing to apply pressure to the brake lever. Once you’ve snugged up those bolts, simply rotate the caliper forward, remove the clam, and you should be good to go.

Good to go! That is, if your brake mounts are faced correctly, your pistons are retracting evenly, your system doesn’t need to be bled, and your disc rotor is true. It’s just that simple.

Rarely. It’s rarely just that simple.

In reality, your brakes may well need to be bled, your pistons might not be retracting properly, your rotors probably aren’t true, and your mounts do need to be faced.

We won’t cover all of those today, but the Abbey Bike Tools Stu Stick will at least help you with the bent rotors.

Once again, this is a simple yet elegant tool. It’s a 4mm x 25mm bar of anodized aluminum with a slot (and a bottle opener) machined into it. Newer versions of the tool have two slots, but yes; I own an older, first generation example.

How does thing work? Just spin the wheel while it’s still on your bike, and observe the brake rotor/brake pad interface.

If the rotor wobbles significantly from side to side, you can now fix that. Slide the slot in the tool over the part of the rotor that is wobbling, and use it as a lever to crank the rotor over to the side opposite the wobble. Be gentle. Repeat as necessary until you have a rotor that is flat/true enough to allow you to depress the brake lever without the pads making intermittent contact with the rotor for the majority of their travel.

Try to avoid the temptation to make the rotor perfectly flat. That way lies madness. You’re just looking to make it true enough that it doesn’t “pulse” as you apply the brakes.

Lots of companies are making a tool like this these days, but Abbey was one of the first – if not the first to make a lightweight aluminum version. You will find these in a lot of traveling race mechanic’s tool kits (including mine) for just that reason. Bonus points for being named after Stu Thorne, for being only $22, and for including a bottle opener.

Last item today is from Prometheus lights.

This is the Beta flashlight and Flex Arm combo. Combining a AAA flashlight with an articulated mount that terminates in a magnet, this gives you a portable light source that will mount to any magnetically attractive surface. My eyesight isn’t what it used to be, and I find myself reaching for this more and more these days. It readily attaches itself to any steel bike frame, or steel part on a non-ferrous frame. When I’m working in an area without a convenient piece of metal to attach the unit to, I simply wrap this Magnogrip wristband around the frame and stick the light to that.

It turns out that it’s a heck of a lot easier to work on something like disc brakes when you can actually see what you’re doing.

The post The Wrenegade Wrench: Disc Brake Bits first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

This is the first installment in a new column devoted to working on bikes. As time goes by, we’re going to talk about tools, parts, and processes, and share tips and tricks that make working on bikes a little bit easier, a little bit less mysterious, and – hopefully – a lot less frustrating. Future installments will include solutions to common problems, favorite tricks from some of our favorite mechanics, tool tips and reviews and more, always with an eye towards the world of the DIY Slowtwitch home mechanic.

We’re kicking things off with full-tilt DIY, the Wrenegade Wrench homebrew cable guide kit.

If you work on your own bikes it’s pretty much inevitable that you have – or will, eventually – be forced to reckon with the task of running cables/housing/hoses through the labyrinthian interior of a bicycle frame.

There are a fair number of products available on the market to help make this task at least a wee bit easier. Over the years, I’ve used most of them, and some of them are pretty darn good. Slowman wrote a piece on internal cable management a while back that featured the de facto industry standard solution from Park Tools.

The Park Tools kit is the standard for a reason; it’s a really good system. For those who haven’t used one, the basic concept is fairly simple: a magnet is attached to a long line, and the other end of the line has something on it that connects to whatever you need to route through your bike frame. You stick the magnet on the end of the line into the entry port on the frame, and you pull it through the frame with another magnet on the outside of the frame.

Oddly enough, I’ve had a nearly identical puller kit in my tool box for a couple of decades now. It was originally used to pull wiring harness components into place when I was working on hollow body electric guitars, back in my previous life in the luthiery business.

25-30 years or so ago if you wanted something like this you absolutely had to make it yourself. Today, even though you can buy one for 65 bucks or so, there’s still something to be said for a home-brew kit that you can tailor to your own particular needs.

The homebrew alternative is also pretty darn inexpensive. I put my kit together from things I had lying around the shop and about $20 worth of bits ordered from Amazon. If you had to purchase everything needed to put these together, you’d probably be looking at around fifty bucks, but you’d also wind up with a lifetime’s supply of kits for yourself and a couple of friends, plus some extra bits that are nice to have around the shop anyways.

Here's the parts list:

– Cylinder magnets, 4 (or 3)mm x 10 mm.
The standard nominal OD of bicycle brake cable housing is 5mm,
and once assembled a 4mm magnet will mic out at around
4.37mm. That’s a wee bit larger than the 4.25 that I just measured
a nominally 4mm shift housing at. What this means is that 4mm
magnets will work for the vast majority of applications, but you
might want to use 3mm diameter magnets just to be sure.
– Loop-end floating fly fishing line
I’m using fly fishing line for these because, well, it works great.
Very strong, very light and thin, and glue sticks to it. It’s worth
spending the $8-10 it costs to get some if you don’t happen to
have some lying around.
– 1/8” OD x 1/16 ID latex tubing
– Heat shrink tubing in various sizes
– A hydraulic hose barb
– Medium or thick cyanoacrylate adhesive (superglue, not the water
thin kind)

Now let’s look at how these go together.

Step One
Cut your fishing line to length. You’ll want something that’s long enough to go the distance of the internal routing channel in any frame that you may conceivably work on. The penalty for going too long is pretty much nonexistent, so add a foot or two to whatever you think is reasonable. 250cm or so is a pretty safe bet.

Step Two
Thread some heat shrink tubing over the line. Don’t forget to do this before you get everything glued together, or you’ll be starting over! You’re going to want to use two sections of tubing, one that is just big enough to slide over your magnet (or whatever is going to be on the other end of the line), and one that is just barely big enough to slide over the line itself.

Step Three
Tie a knot in the end of the line. This doesn’t have to be anything fancy, you’re just looking to increase the surface area of the line at the point that it makes contact with the magnet.

Step 4
Glue the magnet to the line.

I’m using medium thickness super glue for this, but there are other adhesives that will work fine. You may want to use something to hold everything together while it dries.

Step Five
Slide the heat shrink tubing up so that the smaller piece is right against the knot in the line, and the larger piece is lapped over the magnet, then apply heat.

That takes care of the magnet end. On the other end of the line, you’re going to want/need a couple of different things.

For the simplest variant, I just use the loop that came formed into the fishing line. This works pretty darn well with, for example, DI2 connectors.

This works surprisingly well with brake/derailleur housing and brake tubing as well. Just add a little bit of scotch tape.

It’s more than solid enough to pull through a frame if the guides aren’t super tight.

Another variant adds a latex tube at the end of the line.

Once again, slide your heat shrink tubing onto the line, but then follow up by sliding about an inch of latex tube on as well. Knot the line after it has been slid through the tube, then pull the knot back through until it’s just about to pop out the other end. Drip some glue down over the end that the line comes out of, let dry, and finish up by repeating the heat shrink process described earlier.

I’m using a 1/8” OD x 1/16” ID tube, and it’s pretty multi-functional. It’ll slide over a brake cable (it’s a wee bit too big for a derailleur cable, but a wrap of scotch tape over the cable fixes that) over the contact of an eTap blip connector, and it’s just the right size to slip inside a DI2 connector and over the male contact inside. Pretty slick.

I do typically add a wrap of tape over the junction between the tube and whatever it’s attached to before I pull it through the bike, just in case. If you want to use a larger ID tube that will fit over the DI2 connector have at it, but this has been working pretty well for me.

If you’ve used the commercially available version of this setup – or read the piece I linked to above – you know that the tubes on these things tend to break down over time. It’s worth making the tube a wee bit long so you can cut it down as it deteriorates. It’s no big deal to replace one when it does, but these things do tend to happen at the worst possible time, generally when you really, really need to get the darn cables in NOW!

The third thing I would recommend putting on the end of one of these is a hydraulic hose barb.

It’s pretty obvious why you might want this, eh? To pull hydraulic hose through! That’s not all, though. This will work really well with both derailleur and brake housing.

Same basic build process as we used for the latex tube. Pull the knot back through the barb, drip glue in, heat shrink over the top, voila!

To use, just push the barb into the hose/housing far enough to get a grip, but not so far that it’s going to be a pain to remove. The outer diameter of this winds up being pretty much identical to your housing/tubing, so it’ll fit through just about any molded-in guides you might come across. You can make this OD even smaller by grinding down the flange in the barb a wee bit (but leave some of it in place to ease removal from whatever you’re sticking it in).

Oh! One last thing! You’re going to need something to pull these through your frame. To be honest, I mostly just use a bare magnet, but I also glued another magnet on to the end of section of brake hose.

This winds up being pretty useful to reach inside the frame to scoop up the end of the line when it approaches the “out” of a frame.

So maybe put one together if you’ve got magnets left over.

The post The Wrenegade Wrench Series: Homebrew Cable Guide Kit first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

More recently bike companies have moved to “top mount” decals like on this bike here.

American Bicycle Group – makers of Litespeed, Quintana Roo and (now called) OBED – use a top mount decal. For reasons that attach to the (in my opinion welcome) cultural moment in which we find ourselves, ABG chose to rename its carbon gravel and offroad brand. (Here's the story behind the name OBED). I started hanging parts onto an OCOEE frame and by the time I get the brakes bled it’ll be an OBED.

Because you may think this is a dicey operation I made a 3-minute video showing you what changing a decal looks like.

Highest above ABG has a decal placement guide. You don’t really need it, because you just put the new decals where the old decals were. Nevertheless, they give it to you and here’s the page with instructions, and the downloadable decal guide. Because ABG paints its own frames in Chattanooga, and makes its own decals in-house, it could presumably send you a new set of decals for any of your ABG bikes. I find this is especially handy for titanium bikes, like ABG's Litespeed brand, because the decals on my ti bikes take a special beating for some reason.

If you mess up, well, bummer. It’s just a decal. There’s more where these came from. But if you take any sort of care you should have no trouble. The whole thing’s a 30 minute job, whether this brand or any other. Call your bike brand’s customer service and order up a new set of decals.

The tools for this were a hair dryer (I used a heat gun, such as what you'd use for moldable cycling shoes). That's it. ABG recommends a credit card for smoothing out bubbles, but i found that unnecessary.

If you're an OCOEE owner, and you wish to become an OBED owner, ABG will send you a new decal set for your bike. If they don't contact you first, you'll use info@obedbikes.com.

The post How to Redecal a Bike Frame first appeared on Slowtwitch News.