Learning to Do Your Own Bicycle Repairs

By Stan Purdum

In this space last week, I responded to a question from a rider who declared himself to be “not mechanically inclined.” He had moved to a new location, where he found no bike shop and none nearby, and he wondered how to get his bike serviced. I made some suggestions including one about how to begin gaining enough confidence to attempt to work on his bike himself. You can read that Q & A here.

Answering that rider’s question and reading the helpful comments that some readers added in the response section below the article led me to think that describing my own learning curve regarding bicycle maintenance might be useful to some readers. I’m going to do that here, but with this caveat: I am strictly an amateur when it comes to bike repairs. Jim Langley, who also writes a regular column for RBR, is this site’s Technical Editor & Tech Talk columnist. He is a true professional bike mechanic. (See Jim’s credentials here.) So I don’t give specific advice on accomplishing bike repairs. But I can tell you how I’ve learned enough to not be intimidated by bike repairs and enough to keep my own bikes operating and in decent shape — and also enough to know when I do need to take my ride to a bike shop and let them do the repairs.

My first learnings about bike repairs occurred not so much because I was mechanically inclined but because my father was not. He was supportive, but as a young teen riding my bike, if I had a flat tire, it fell to me to figure out what to do about it. So out of necessity, I learned to patch inner tubes, though I no longer remember how I learned that, but my best guess is that buddy showed me. 

What I do remember, however, is learning some stuff the hard way. When I was about 14, I pedaled my bike to a lake with a public beach some 10 miles from home, where a couple of my friends and I rode from time to time to swim. One day, neither of my buddies was available, so I made the trip alone. The ride there went fine, but as I began the return trip, my front tire went flat. I had a patch kit along, and there was a gas station at hand with an air pump. But though I located and patched the puncture quickly, the tube would not hold air. When I stuck the tube into the garage’s pail of water, the escaping bubbles seemed to indicate that the patch was not holding. Three times I tore it off and glued on a new one, but without success. Finally, defeated, I rode the whole trip home on the flat, ruining the tire. 

At home, I examined the tube once more. This time, I noticed that whatever object had penetrated the tube had gone completely through, making an entrance hole on the bottom face, which I’d fixed, and an exit hole on the top face, which I’d failed to observe. There had been nothing wrong with my patch job as far as it went, but I needed to apply a second patch. From that experience, I learned the importance of studying a problem before simply repeating a repair that hasn’t worked. (Occasionally, I’ve even remembered to apply that bit of wisdom to other difficulties of my life, and I usually have been well-served when I did.)

As an adult, I went through a few bikes but eventually purchased a Schwinn 10-speed, which I rode a lot, so much so that I wore out some parts, and began tinkering, and I started carrying a few tools with me on the bike. 

At one point, while on a multi-day bike tour with my brother, his bike started emanating loud noises from his bottom bracket. We didn’t know what to do about that and didn’t have the specialized tools needed to open it up even if we had known what to do. But we were able to continue riding until we found a bike shop. There the mechanic installed new bearings.

We both watched him work and learned a lot, including what tools were needed. In fact, I gained enough confidence from watching him that I later was able to switch the double crank-ring assembly on my Schwinn for a triple, converting my bike from a 10-speed to a 15-speed, and with the third ring being a 24-tooth “granny” ring, I gained some lower gears. I later got even lower gears by trading out my five-cog freewheel for a six-cog one, making my bike now an 18-speed two-wheeler. (I asked at the local bike shop what tools I would need for the job, and when selling me a chain whip, they also explained how to use it when removing the freewheel.)

That rejiggered Schwinn is the bike I eventually rode across America, a ride that is the subject of my book Roll Around Heaven All Day. But that trip taught me an important lesson — as usual, one I gained in the school of hard knocks by having a problem on the road. In Oregon, I experienced intermittent problems with the shifting of the chain on my front chainrings. The chain moved down to the granny without problem, but when I attempted to shift back up, the chain just skittered across the teeth of the middle and large rings. Eventually the big ring picked it up, and then I could shift from the big ring to the middle one, but by that time I’d lost most of my momentum. From the work I’d done converting the bike’s drive chain, I knew something about adjusting the derailleur, but I couldn’t seem to adjust this problem away. 

I eventually ended up in a bike shop in Baker City, where the owner first tried adjusting the existing parts but quickly determined that wasn’t going to solve the problem. Then, by changing one component at a time and testing as he went, he eventually sorted it out. In the end, he had to replace the chain, the middle chainring, two rings on the back gear cluster and the front derailleur (These days, a mechanic would probably simply replace the whole assembly, but this man took the time to figure out what actually needed to be changed.) Again, I learned a lot by watching, but the most important lesson I learned is that it’s not wise to begin a long trip with parts that have a lot of wear already on them. 

There were plenty of other lessons I learned by dealing with bike problems on the side of the road, where sometimes the thing that served me best was the fact that the bike remained rideable enough to get me home. (For example, even with a broken shift cable, I could hand lift my chain onto a middle gear and ride the bike home as a single-speed steed.) 

But the source of much of my bike repair education came from volunteering in a nonprofit shop that rebuilt used bikes. There, I worked beside other volunteers, some of whom had more repair experience than I, and we shared knowledge. But even on the occasions when I was alone in the shop, the fact that I was working on old bikes freed me from the worry that I might ruin a valuable one by a mistake. I never did, but there were a couple that I had to put aside until a more experienced volunteer could guide me through the repair.

Steve Weeks, one of the readers who commented on my column last week, mentioned how much he’d learned from Sheldon Brown, a man who contributed to my bike-repair education as well. Brown worked for Harris Cyclery in West Newton, Massachusetts, and was a prolific writer who shared bike information online (https://sheldonbrown.com/) and contributed articles to several bike magazines. He wrote the “Mechanical Advantage” column for Adventure Cyclist from 1997 through 2007. He was a good explainer, and his bicycle knowledge has been described as “encyclopedic.” He died in 2008, but a friend and Brown’s wife continue to update the site. It’s a useful place to start when seeking to understand how bike parts function.

One print source that contributed to my repair knowledge was The Haynes Bicycle Book, which gives step-by-step instructions for repair and maintenance of bikes. Mine is a 1995 edition, which I still find useful, but I understand that there are several revised editions available, with the latest being in 2014.

A print book I like even better is Zinn & the Art of Road Bike Maintenance, with the sixth edition published in 2024. Mine is the third edition, which still serves me well. 

As to video to help with repairs, Jim Langley commented on my article last week, and included this link to Park Tools Channel, and a reader identified only as Bill told us about Park Tools online repair articles (some of which also link to videos). Both of those are good sources, but don’t limit yourself to Park Tools videos alone. Google the repair you want to make, and you will likely find other sources as well.

To sum up, if you have any inkling that you want to learn how to do at least some of your own bike maintenance, there’s lots of help available, much of it free. And don’t miss the suggestion I made in last week’s Q & A to pick up an old used bike to practice on.

Bike maintenance: You can do this.

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Stan Purdum has ridden several long-distance bike trips, including an across-America ride recounted in his book Roll Around Heaven All Day, and a trek on U.S. 62, from Niagara Falls, New York, to El Paso, Texas, the subject of his book Playing in Traffic. Stan, a freelance writer and editor, lives in Ohio. See more at www.StanPurdum.com.