Intro to Bike Maintenance

Webskills Bike Maintenance

Introduction
Welcome to the Webskills bicycle maintenance course. This course is designed to support the learning of skills taught in the Outdoor Adventure "face to face" bike maintenance clinics. If you have taken one of those courses, most of what you'll find here will be familiar to you. If you haven't taken one of our courses, this recourse should still be of value to you, so please utilize it.

If you have never taken any sort of bike maintenance course, I recommend you consider finding a class in your area. They are fun, a great way to learn and good way to meet other folks with similar interests. Most recreation programs offer some sort of bike maintenance course. Many bike shops also offer courses.

Succeeding
There are a few factors that will directly impact your success, satisfaction and fun when it comes to mechanical things like working on bikes. Here are a few things to think about as you progress through the different activities included in this course:
—If you can, find a partner, it's more fun for most of us to work together and it helps to have someone to bounce ideas off of.

—Realize that these projects, even the "easiest" ones, are not simple. There are lots of steps to most repairs and adjustments, so take your time.

—Don't be discouraged if your first attempts to fix something makes things worse - sometimes it takes several attempts to get it just right. Embrace the strategy of trial and error, everyone uses it from time to time.

—When you take something apart, lay the parts down in the same sequence they came apart. This will help you avoid getting confused when you go to put things back together.

Limitations:
This course uses modern mountain bikes and mountain bike parts for all illustrations. There are differences between mountain bike and road bike parts. There are even many different kinds of mountain bike parts. Your bike will certainly have different brands and models of parts on it so keep your eye out for differences as well as similarities. This course is designed to cover broad concepts of repair and maintenance. Brand and model specific issues are not addressed within this course. The manufacturer of your bike or your favorite bike shop can help you with problems you might have related to your particular bike or part.

Course structure and features:
This course is divided into four main topic areas: Lubrication, Adjustments, Parts Replacement and Field Repairs. Within each of these areas you'll find additional divisions based on difficulty and/or function of the component or part of the bike. There are also areas dedicated to Tools, Terms, Bicycle Basics and Resources. Take a moment to brows these pages to get familiar with what they offer.

Click the tools icon to open a page with a list of tools specifically tailored to that job:

Projects are separated into three difficulty categories. Look for the following symbols to determine a projects difficulty:

There are also warnings when a safety concern is associated with a project. When you see the:
symbol, look for a safety warning. Adjusting brakes would be one example of when we would use this warning.

Printing
Each topic is "packaged" so that it is easy to print! If you prefer, you may print the project you are going to work on and take it with you.

Finally,
Most biking enthusiasts enjoy working on their bikes, taking pride in keeping their equipment running just right. Utilizing this course will hopefully help you to enjoy working on your bike. It might even save you money.

I sincerely hope you enjoy the course! Tell your friends about it and please e-mail us with suggestions on improving and expanding the content.

Thank you!