How-To Guides about Mountain Biking

One of the big responsibilities when owning a car, bike, or anything is making sure that it is taken well care of. Bicycle's, just like cars, need their parts to be well taken care of using the right tools.

One of the most important pieces of a mountain bike, or any bike for that matter, is the bicycle chain. Without the chain, you can't move your bike and that's a problem.

If your mountain bike chain keeps falling off, there may be numerous problems that are going on. In this next video tutorial, you'll find out one solution for making sure that your gears are fine tuned and that your chain won't keep falling off. It's not too hard to perform and makes your bike ride more enjoyable. Good luck and enjoy!

If you need to replace the spokes on your rear wheel, change the gearing, replace certain parts, or just clean it, this video is going to show you how to do just that.

If you own a mountain bike that is equipped with v-brake or cantilever brakes, this tutorial might be useful. Don't pay an arm and a leg to get your biked fix, instead do it yourself.

In this tutorial, we learn how to bleed a Shimano break system. First make sure the reservoir is leveled and then take the cover off. Make sure you use mineral oil to clean the top, then rubber band a hose onto the bag. Now take a Shimano spacer and release the fluid by squeezing the lever. When the fluid level has dropped down, fill it back up. When you bleed remember to completely remove the pads, as recommended by Shimano. Replace the pads with the spacer when you are doing this, then you...

Switching stages during a triathlon can be a hectic and time-wasting experience for many racers. It need not be so. This video will teach you a couple of easy ways to save time during your transition from swim to bike, the first of the two in the race. By storing your equipment properly you can save yourself a lot of time and worry and have a more enjoyable, successful race.

Triathlons are a lot of work, and making sure that you have the proper clothing will keep you functioning properly throughout the race. This video offers tips for what to wear during each stage of the race, and how to get the gear ready before you race. The moral of the story is: the less you have to think about your gear the day of a race, the better off you are.

Riding your bike can be a great way to avoid traffic and parking hassles, but in the big city especially it can be very dangerous. This quick video will give you some tips for improving your visibility on the bike. Wear bight colors during the day and reflective clothing along with a headlight at night and you will be able to see and be seen wherever you are, and that will help keep you safe.

If you've ever installed a rear derailleur, you know how hard that is. You probably also know how relatively easy it is to install a front derailleur. If you don't, watch this video. It explains how to quickly and easily install a front derailleur on your bike, keeping your chain straight and ensuring good shifting performance for you bike.

The cog sets are the iconic pieces of the bike on the wheels with all their delicate layers of gears. This video features detailed instructions from a professional bike mechanic on how to install or remove a cog set on a mountain bike. This is useful if you want to clean your cog set or have purchased a new one that you would like to install.

Replacing the pads on your bike's brakes is a crucial and reasonably easy part of your bike's maintenance regimen. This video features detailed instructions on how to replace the pads on Avid caliper brakes, ensuring that even in a wet environment your bike will still stop when you want it to.

If you mountain bike, and are lucky enough to live somewhere that has enough water to support civilization without major civil engineering, then your brake pads are probably going to wear out a lot faster than your dry-climate comrades. Fortunately for you, this video features instructions for how to replace the pads of a Hayes caliper brake for a mountain bike.

Hayes sole brakes are a very popular type of bike brake. Then, you probably already know that if you are watching this video. It features a professional mountain bike mechanic explaining how to quickly and easily replace the pads on your beloved Hayes brakes, ensuring a lack of fade while braking and making sure that your bike will stop when it has to every time.

Using a tubeless tire system on your mountain bike is a great idea. It decreases the number of parts on your bike that can brake, which is good news for any rider. This video features a professional bike mechanic installing a Stan's Tubeless system on a standard set of bike tires. There are other systems that you can use, but you'll have to find another video to learn how to do the install if you don't use Stan's.

Being able to stop a mountain bike abruptly is crucial to your continued survival if you ride. SRAM Avid Juicy's are a popular type of high-performance mountain bike brakes. This video will teach you how to install and cut said brakes on your bike, as long as you have the proper tools. It features many safety tips for keeping your corrosive brake fluid from damaging all sorts of other things, from your bike's paint to your eyes.

Back in the day, all mountain bikes had square taper bottom brackets and cranks. Modern bike makers have moved away from this style, but some still prefer it. This video will teach you how to install a specialty square-taper bottom bracket and crank on your mountain bike.

Removing the spider from your mountain bike crank is an important part of the cleaning process, allowing you to get at areas on the crank that you never would be able to otherwise. This video features a demonstration of how to do this for XT or XTR chainring spiders. For those who refuse to compromise while cleaning their own bike, this video is a must.

Overhauling the wheel hubs on your bike is important to ensuring proper wheel spin. Proper wheel spin means you get more power out of your pedaling. This video features a professional bike mechanic explaining how to overhaul the free side of a Mavic wheel hub. Keeping the hub clean is vital to making your rides as fun and easy as possible, so don't skip it!

The wheel hub is the center of great wheel performance for your mountain bike. This video features a professional bicycle mechanic explaining the process for overhauling a Mavic wheel hub, installing a new bearing and cleaning all of the parts, ensuring clean spinning for your wheels and a smooth ride.

The p knuckle of the rear derailleur is a small part that regulates the tension of the chain running over the derailleur. This video features a professional bike mechanic installing the p knuckle into a rear derailleur during an overhaul of the derailleur. This is an important piece of maintenance even for new equipment, so take note!

Most rear derailleurs (read: not Shimano) are high-normal, which means that they shift into the highest gear on the bike by default. This video features a professional bike mechanic walking you through the process of adjusting the rear derailleur and its cables into a high-normal setting, ensuring crisp shifting and a more successful ride.

The cable that connects your rear derailleur to the shifters on your bike may seem too long, delicate, and complex to fix yourself. You may be right, but if you have some bike maintenance experience and want to try then this video is for you. It walks you through the whole process of replacing the cable in your rear derailleur. It is a long process, and elaborate, but will dramatically improve your shifting performance if your cable is old and worn.

Adjusting the rear derailleur on a bike is an important way to fine-tune your bike's shifting performance, but is complicated and can vary in method and effectiveness depending on the brand of derailleur. This video features instructions on how to adjust a low-normal rear derailleur using the adjustment screws.

The derailleur is an important, albeit French, part of most modern bikes. This video features a professional mountain bike mechanic demonstrating the installation of a rear derailleur on a mountain bike. It is a short video, but detailed enough that any DIY bike mechanic should be able to do it themselves.

Cleaning your bike chain is an arduous but necessary part of regular bike maintenance. The Cyclone chain cleaner, or any of its competitors, make the process a lot easier to do without taking the chain off the bike. This video features a professional bike mechanic demonstrating how to use one such product effectively, saving you time.

Having a clean bike chain is vital to the proper performance of you bike, mountain, road, or BMX. This video features a professional bike mechanic walking you through the process of cleaning your chain when you have it taken off of the bike. He recommends a modern biodegreaser, but if you want to give your work some old-school flair you can use diesel fuel like the old European pro teams. The environment will hate you for it, but it works.

Does the chain on your bike skip? One common reason for this to happen is stiff link chains. This video features a professional mountain bike mechanic demonstrating how to illuminate, or make loose, stiff link chains if you get caught with them out on the trail. If you don't do this, and your chain skips enough, it's going to come off and you are going to stack, so make sure your bike is maintained properly!

If you are unlucky enough to have a bike whose setup does not features a self-extracting crank, then this video is for you! It shoes you how to remove a non-self extracting crank properly as part of you normal bike maintenance. Never envy the self extracting crank kids again after you learn how to take off you non-self extracting crank yourself easily.

If you have a more old-fashioned mountain bike, you may be familiar with the loose bearing square taper system of bearings. This video features a professional mountain bike mechanic demonstrating the process of overhauling a loose bearing square taper, giving new life to that old bike that made you fall in love with mountain biking in the first place.

Rear suspension bikes are the bikes of choice for most hardcore mountain bikers. This video features a professional mountain bike rider offering a quick tip on how to set the rear suspension of your bike properly to give it the right amount of travel and maximize its effectiveness.

In this clip, learn how to make a fast, cheap and super easy mount for your your bicycle to display safety lights. Wearing bike lights at night will help you stay safe in the dark and if you want to avoid the cost of getting lights custom fitted, this hack is perfect for you. All you will need is some PVC pipe and some grip tape (like the kind used for tennis rackets). Follow along and get started. This mount is flexible and fits most standard lights or flashlights.

This video will help you perform a rather elaborate piece of bicycle maintenance, overhauling and fixing a loose bearing in a Shimano Octolink pipe spindle bottom bracket. It is a long, complicated process that requires some specialized bike maintenance tools, but if you have these and are ready to increase the amount of maintenance that you are performing on your bike yourself, this video will walk you through the process in great detail and at a manageable pace.

In the old days, you needed a crank puller to get the crank off of your bike. This video demonstrates how to remove modern self-extracting cranks, that do not require a crank puller to remove, from a square tapered bracket. This is a fairly complicated piece of maintenance, so if you're new to biking you may want to leave this to the professionals.

Cleaning and overhauling each bike company's pedals is different. This video focuses on how to overhaul, clean, and and replace the bearing on Crank Bros bicycle brakes. It features step-by-step instructions and a demonstration, allowing you to spend less money having your bike fixed at the shop!

Cleaning your pedals is an important part of regular bike maintenance, but annoyingly enough there is no one way to overhaul a pedal. Every bike maker builds their pedals differently. This video demonstrates how to disassemble, overhaul, and clean Shimano pedals so that they will be free-spinning and functional as the day that you got them.