Fixing flats isn’t entirely straightforward. Neither is changing tires. So I made a checklist to help me avoid some of the more obvious pitfalls.
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by Tamia Nelson | September 30, 2014

I don’t get many flats, so about the only time I have to change tubes is when I swap my utility bike’s Conti Town & Country rubber for my Innova Tundra Wolf studded tires. And because I get so little practice, I neglect two fundamental steps in the process almost every time I do the job: (1) I forget to deflate the front tire before starting work, and (2) I fail to release the cable on the linear brake. The result? I can’t get the wheel off. It doesn’t take me long to put things right, of course, but I reached a point where I didn’t want to continue repeating these two blunders. So I made a checklist to guide me in future. Here it is:

Size Matters  All inner tube are not created equal, and I recently discoverd that, although I’d been carrying a correctly … Continue reading »

Are you planning on mounting a one-legged kickstand on your bike? Then read this first.
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by Tamia Nelson | August 19, 2014

I like my bikes to have kickstands, and when it comes to choosing a bike support, my preference is for basic Greenfield one-legged stands. I tried the Pletscher two-legged stand for a year, but just could not love it. So I swapped it out for a basic model:

Most cyclists will be familiar with this simple accessory. The clamp consists of a knobby bottom plate and a level, smooth top plate, and a bolt which squeezes the two plates together over the chainstays.

It isn’t elegant, but this clamp grips the LHT’s stays securely (better than the Pletscher’s beveled clamp).

To mount the stand on the bike, I wrapped old inner tube around the stays and secured them with strips of electrical tape, then aligned the folded leg with the stay so that it wouldn’t rub against the wheel or be struck by the pedal.

The Greenfield’s leg was too long to allow my … Continue reading »

Are your tires letting you down more often than you think they should? Then you’ll want to read this.
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by Tamia Nelson | August 17, 2013

The bicycle started out as a rich man’s toy. Before too many years had passed, however, it evolved into efficient and economical transport for the working man. The pneumatic tire was one of the innovations that made this transformation possible. A very good thing, in other words. (Then again, it also helped to pave the way for the automobile. The jury’s still out on that.) Of course, everything comes at price. The pneumatic tire gave us low rolling resistance and an easier, less jarring ride on broken pavement. But it also gave us flats. And that problem is still with us today, more than a century after Michelin began selling the first practical pneumatic bicycle tires. Despite the recent proliferation of sealants, puncture guards, and tire liners, the diminuendo PPPFFFFFTTTT of a rapidly deflating tire remains a recurring coda in the music of the road.

Sometimes, however, a … Continue reading »