Most of you who frequent the site may have noticed that I am almost never involved in the “How to� sections of mtnbikeriders.com. That’s because I have no “how to� knowledge at all. I actually am quite helpless when it comes to working on my bike so much so that when I bought my bike I considered the “one year of tune-ups� a MAJOR selling point. I’d just need to keep buying a new bike every year afterwards…
Redline Mono 9 running Avid Juicy 7. Front: 7″, Rear 6″
RL, the great guy that he is, has been highly recommending the Mountain Bike Repair DVD. And me, being the uncoordinated skeptic, finally succumbed to RL’s suggestions and borrowed his copy of the DVD. I watched it and I’m proud to say that I installed hydraulic brakes on my bike… by myself. BY MYSELF!
Mountain Bike Repair DVD. Watch it and you’ll save yourself lots of money.
OK, so installing hydraulic brakes was not that hard to do but I didn’t know that. I’ve had this set of Juicy 7’s sitting in my garage for the last 6 months because I’ve been too chicken to try installing it on my own. But after watching the Mountain Bike Repair DVD I realized how easy it was to install and the next night I set to work installing it on my bike. After a minor problem with stripping the rotor bolts (hehe… I thought it was using a T25 Torx wrench) I finished installing it in just a couple of nights. And it only took so long because I stripped 5 of the bolts that held the rotor to the wheel.
Yeah, I put those on myself!
The moral of the story: buy Mountain Bike Repair DVD. Their website seems to be down, but you can purchase it through here. Watch it and be amazed at how your abilities to repair your bike increase. About the only thing I still won’t try is building/truing a wheel. Although I understand the concept there are just too many special tools that you need for that.
Also, if you don’t have a set of tools, consider buying a cheap set. Since you’re probably only working on the bikes in your stable you don’t really need anything extremely expensive, yet. The cheap set should last quite a while with light use.
