Bike service book ?

wilkies80

Can anyone recommend a good bike service book, for general tips and advice on how to do keep my bike and gears etc... in good order ? Is the Haynes manual any good ?

gkerr4

the haynes manual is ok...

it's quite simplistic though and if you are handy with the spanners you will want a more in-depth manual qute quickly.

ideal for a novice mechanic though or someone who just wants to so the minor stuff.


I'm sure someone will be along with alternatives.

shazzz

The park tools website has everything you need for routine tasks.

wilkies80

thanks guys. i need to look at something as i was out on a bit of a climb this mornin and the rear mech was all over the place.already had it back to the shop where i bought it, they said it was a stretched cable but i don't know .

star_rover

Zinn and the art of road bike maintenance would be my recommendation. There is a Park Tools book as well, but it's badly laid out. The Zinn book is clear with good diagrams.
The Complete bike book by Mel Allwood is pretty good as well, but as a more general text.

wilkies80

thanks STAR_ROVER

Gussio

+1 for the Haynes manual. It is good for basics while, as mentioned above, plenty of more specific information is available online (Shimano tech pages, Sheldon Brown, etc.)

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/glossary.html

shazzz

For things like adjusting mechs, there are also some good vids on Youtube. I don't have any links, but they should be easy to find.

wilkies80

superb shazzz.will start lookin

itsaghostcar

Haynes is good to begin with. From the sounds of it, it will suit your purposes. I borrowed mine from the library to help when changing my cassette and chain for the first time and it was perfect.

I ended up buying the Zinn road bike book because it is very detailed and had a lot of clear exploded diagrams. It is the one manual that always gets mentioned in thiis type of query. Haven't begun my project to build up a bike yet, but I feel a lot more confident with Zinn by my side.

Park and SheldonBrown websites are great, but I don't fix the bike anywhere near my PC and don't want to get grease or anything else on it. Given the time it takes for my PC to boot, plus dropped connections and other problems (it's a very old PC), the book is just more practical for me.

wilkies80

thanks all.problem sorted(so far) with the aid of a zinn video on youtube.may need a new cable soon tho

star_rover

I think there are Zinn instructional videos on velonews.com - he writes a tech Q&A there as well.
I like to have a couple of text to refer to, be it book or website. Sometimes one has a better explanation than the other. The park tools book has an horrendous mistake in the section about setting up the front mech. If that was my only point of reference I wouldn't be able to go anywhere without unshipping my chain every time I shifted to the bottom ring.

Gerry Attrick

I bought a copy of "Illustrated Bicycle Mainatenance" by Todd Downs, ISBN 1-4050-8788-9 published by Rodale. I got it from Dublin but it is easily available through a bookshop. The layout is excellent with loads of photos. Best book I've found.