General Uni and Equip maintenance

I have never experienced this… did you ever leave it outside/around salt water?
I would say only way to fix now is to relace with new spokes.

Check that things are tight. I like to replace all nuts with nylon lock nuts.

Corrosion advice

Do not ride your uni in salt water. I have ridden motorcycles in salt water. The aluminum rims (10x thicker then a uni rim) turn into pits of white powder, on the tube (inside) of the rim. Once the salt gets in, there is no easy way to get it out. Hosing off the bike- uni, is a good idea, but salt will remain trapped between the tube and rim.

Don’t blast soapy water at your bearings, use a pressure washer, or spray wd 40 at your bearings. This will cause crap to get past the seals into the bearings.

Corrosion is especially bad in my town, because it is so hot and humid here. If I was going to ride my uni up north in winter, on salted roads, I would keep it in an unheated garage. Heat accelerates corrosion. Sort of like keeping a fish in the fridge instead of on the counter. Refrigerate your uni and it will take longer for it to corrode.

Salt is a real bugger. Don’t think that aluminum and stainless are immune. Stainless develops crevice corrosion (which makes parts break) , and aluminum turns into a white powder, which sucks as bad as rust.

Wouldn’t WD40 also clean a lot of the grease out of the bearings, thus leaving you in a worse situation?

Personally I find the best form of maintenance is to ride often. That way you get a feel for what the uni should be like. You notice if the tyre starts to lose a little bit of pressure, and can pump it up when convenient. You notice pretty quickly if there is a clicking sound or a wobble that you’ve not had before, and can sort that out soon enough too.

Why would you worry about not moving your seat post often enough? If you go months on end without adjusting it, then it’s obviously at the right height, so doesn’t matter if it gets stuck.

If you ride in salt water often, then that’s going to cost you a set of bearings once in a while. But they’re not exactly dear or hard to change, so in the long run probably works out easier than cleaning them after every ride.

Tyre rotation can have its advantages, but if you’re riding enough to suffer from bald spots, then you’re probably also going to pick up the odd puncture here or there (thus have a random tyre rotate at the same time), or would be likely to change cranks from time to time, in which case I would always put them on differently. [gloat]Schlumps effectively have self rotating tyres[/gloat]

If you’ve had a bad crash, or the uni has been packed away for months, then yes, sure, there’s lots of stuff you can do to get it back in tip-top condition. But, day to day, just ride it and see if it feels like it needs anything doing to it.

STM

quick question on maintenance…When you tighten the bolts under your seat (all of them, the ones from the seat post and the bumper ones) how tight should they be?

This is an example of poor writing

“Don’t blast soapy water at your bearings, use a pressure washer, or spray wd 40 at your bearings.”

Not very clear. What I meant was don’t blast soapy water at your bearings. Don’t spray them with a pressure washer and don’t spray them with wd 40. This stuff will get past the seals and screw up the grease.

I agree that the fun of riding in and by the sea may be worth a set of bearings. I don’t see salt water as that much of a threat to bearings anyway, and some sizes can be bought online for as little as a dollar each (but not those 15 $ Torker bearings). I would worry more about the rim and hub.

A uni is much smaller and easier to work on than a motorcycle. Perhaps after a week at the beach, deflate and loose the tire on the rim. Take the seat post out, and then soak the whole uni in a pool of fresh water for an hour. That should get the salt out of the rim, spokes and hub. On a motorcycle, breaking the tire seal on the rim is more hassle, and soaking the whole thing in water is out of the question.

Riding near and on the beach just breaks up the monotony of all this flat land of sand called Florida. You, in the Keys, especially can understand.

Ok, sorry to bring one of my threads back from the dead…
But just thought i’d share…
My 661s had started to get a tad ripped on the front of the left one, so i went out today and got some Shoe Goo - when i got home i applied it over the few little torn bits… i’m waiting for it to dry (should be good for a ride tomorrow night) to see how it holds up… i shall let you know - just thought i’d let you know and thought any of you may share your ideas on fixing this if it has happened to you!
I will let you know how it goes!
Peace.

For rotating my tire, moving the cranks is a lot harder than spinning the tire for me. Just letting the air out usually isn’t enough, so when there is noticeable wear I remove one side from the rim and spin the tire 90 degrees. This makes the tire somewhat square shaped (once I waited a long time before rotating and it felt kind of lumpy over smooth pavement), so the next time I rotate it only 45 degrees.

I have a tendency to put more wear on the part of my tire when my left foot is down, so I sometimes rotate it so the least worn part is down, and also wear the left side more so I sometimes flip it.

Spokes loosen up after a while, esp. when the uni is new.

It’s not hard to learn to do a decent job of truing a rim. Tighten the nipples counter-clockwise. If you ask your LBS they will prob show you the basics. If you do big drops, I’d say this is a mandatory skill and bring a good spoke wrench w/ you on rides.

Except for the cranks, I check to make sure all bolts and the pedals are tight before each ride.

For the cranks 45 ft. lbs of torque w/ red Loctite should be enough to tighten them (my DX needs 65 lbs, the max for them and most others). So I didn’t have to pay my LBS $10 each time I got a torque wrench at my hardware store.

Wouldn’t soaking it for a long time get water in the bearings and then eventually rust?

George Peck doesn’t recomend riding in water above the bearings “w/o lots of maintenance”.

why soak it in the tub

This would be after a week at the beach, riding in salt water.

Just hosing it off won’t remove salt that has gotten deep into spoke threads and the hub.

Soaking it an hour may allow some fresh water into the bearings, but it may also dissolve some salt out.

Mostly, the idea is that bearings aren’t very expensive. Salt can rot your hub, rim and spokes and inside the frame, if you let it stay there. So in this case, a small risk to a cheap part, is taken to save these expensive parts from certain corrosion.

Personally, I just don’t ride in salt water, despite the miles of nearby beach. It’s not worth it to me. But if you do it anyway, remember that it will rot the inside of the rim the worst. It will take at least an hour soaking to get most of the salt out of all parts of the uni. Even that may not be enough to save steel spokes, which may lock solid if small amounts of salt remains.