New bike ordered - what to check?

Uber_Pod

Hi,

Just getting back into riding a bike again. The (really!) old bike works, just, but having read the forum for a bit, I've ordered a new Calibre TwoTwo. 8)

First ever new bike. :shock:
[technically I did get a new bike from a shop many, many years ago but that came ready to go and was nicked within a couple of days anyway]

Presumably everything will be fairly straightforward - anything I should look out for?
I've found the article on this site for setting up the bars, so I'll follow that.

As far as actual riding, I'm doing local roads and bridleway/canal paths at the moment, but I'd love to try out trails/actual off road at some stage. Fitness is getting better every time and it's only been a few weeks really so far.

robertpb

It's where you place your cheeks should be your first consideration, then bar set up.

The Rookie

Saddle, then bars, then saddle again and then bars again to get the right posture and angle of the bars (back and upsweep) to suite you noting that adjusting bat position may include moving spacers above/below the stem.

Then set the controls, brakes first, the usual advice is to stretch fingers straight inline with your forearms and then adjust the brakes until they are just underneath, some rotate them down a little more as it brings your weight forward onto the front wheel slightly. After that get the shifters in the right position for comfy actuation with minimal finger/thumb movement away from your regular grip position.

Most people have the brakes mounted the other side of the shifters from the grip as this is comfiest for 1/2finger operation, but it's all personal.

LimitedGarry

Tire pressure. It will take you a while to find your sweetspot. Putting less pressure into the front is a good start. For as long as you're not riding aggressively, it's not extremely important and you'll be mostly concerned with avoiding too low pressure. But once you start pushing your setup to it's limits, pressure is something you want to have nailed down.

If you're not used to doing any maintenance at all, any time is a good time to start. Adjusting brake calipers is an almost mandatory skill. If you ever end up taking out your wheel, you need to readjust the caliper.
Adjusting derailleurs seems like a chore and a major pain in the ass at first, but knowing how to do it yourself is greatly beneficial. Plus, once you're good at it, it's a two minute job at most.

cooldad

LimitedGarry wrote:

If you ever end up taking out your wheel, you need to readjust the caliper.

Nonsense.

JBA

LimitedGarry wrote:

Adjusting brake calipers is an almost mandatory skill. If you ever end up taking out your wheel, you need to readjust the caliper.

Really?
Care explain why?

I have taken both wheels off my bike several times in just the last couple of weeks and no caliper adjustments have been required.

LimitedGarry

Well you can prick around with the QR, but it's IMHO easier to align the caliper directly.

cooldad

Who 'pricks' around with a QR? Put the wheel in, job done.

Uber_Pod

Thanks for the advice everyone. Lots of useful things in there to look at.
Disc brakes will be new to me as well, so I'll figure out how to adjust those.

Just counting down the days till the bike arrives!

LimitedGarry

cooldad wrote:

Who 'pricks' around with a QR? Put the wheel in, job done.

Whenever I put the wheel back in, it doesn't 100% align as before. It usually seems fine in the shop, but once I start riding, the slight misalignment becomes apparent. Audibly so.
Maybe it's down to equipment but it's the way it is for me and I've seen a bunch of topics about this online. It's easier to lock the QR and readjust the caliper than fiddle with the QR, getting the wheel position spot on as it was before. And even then it probably won't be spot on.

JBA

That's rubbish!
When you tighten the qr or axle it forces the inner faces of the drop outs to butt up against the hub flanges. Since the caliper is attached to the fork leg and the disc is attached to the hub they will be in the same position relative to each other.
This can only change if the qr is not done up properly and there is a gap between the inner faces of the drop outs and the hub flanges.
You need to learn how to do up a qr and stop faffing about with your calipers.

robertpb

I can honestly say that since switching to discs 9 years ago I have never had to readjust anything with the brakes after taking the wheels off, which by now must be hundreds of times.

The Rookie

Most likely he's not making sure the wheel is properly in the dropout before doing up the QR.

Never had to align the calliper either after refitting a wheel.

Jonesinamilion

I had a bike delivered from decathlon and the forks were the wrong way around!

larkim

Are you sure you didn't have Manitou forks which have the brace on the reverse, not on the front? Surely its not possible to have the forks on the wrong way round as the brake caliper would be on the wrong side, facing the wrong way etc?!? Horrendous mistake if that's true.

Without leaping to Garry's defence here, is it possible that what LG is saying is that he's had experience of bikes arriving with the calipers aligned to the way that the shop have fitted the QR, and that the first time he removed and refitted the wheel (properly) it then didn't align with the calipers? I've had bikes with mechanical discs that were very fussy about the QR being in just the right spot, but otherwise I'd agree with others - the caliper position should be fit and forget (and there should be no reason to adjust the shop setup in 99.9999% of cases).

One minor point on a new bike, just check over all of the cable routing and make sure all the clips are in place. Easy to miss, but I've had at least one bike that when I got it back it was missing a stock clip (easy enough to put right with a neat cable tie) but it did irk me ever so slightly that one was missing.