Foldable Bikes Party: 10-point maintenance check for your road bike

Saturday, 20 August 2016

10-point maintenance check for your road bike

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Despite road bikes being a relatively simple mechanical device, many cyclists focus on just one or two areas when it comes to maintenance. They might be fastidious about keeping their bike clean and well lubed, or making sure their gears and brakes work properly, but many other maintenance tasks are often abandoned until something breaks or fails.

This article looks at the mostly commonly ignored areas of road bike maintenance and offers some tips on how to carry out this maintenance and stop it from becoming a repair.

Headset

Even seemingly well-maintained bikes often hide spoiled headset bearings. They sit inside your head tube and are likely to suffer the torture test of your sweat dripping with every hot day of riding, and are likely to corrode.

To prevent this, remove your stem and drop the fork out of the frame. This is easiest with the bike on the ground. Newer frames will have sealed bearings, which just need a thin coat of grease on the surfaces. Put it all back together and torque to spec.

If you've let it go too far and the bearings feel rough, you must now try to source the right replacement headset bearing (that's a whole different article).