My bikes are getting a real pounding from the combination of salt water, potholes and bad weather. The essential thing is to keep your chain and rear cassette well oiled during this salty season. Even one ride in salty water can change your chain and cassette to a nice shade of orange; it is very [...]

On Tuesday, I wrote a post about bad luck with punctures.. As I said in the post, I was rather proud to have only 1 puncture in the past two years since using Armadillo tyres. Of course, after writing such a post and singing the praises of Armadillo’s, you have to expect the inevitable puncture, [...]

Readers Question: hi there my partner has a kraken carrera mountain bike and has over five punctures in last three weeks and is ready to throw it out, he went to two different bike shops in south lanarkshire scotland uk and they fitted new tubing, new tire etc and still no joy and had puncture [...]

I’ve been using some simple clip on mudguards for quite a few years. But, was intrigued to see the design of these crud Road racer mudguards which have a much more extensive coverage around the wheel. Important if you are on a club run with lots of riding close to other riders. In theory, fitting [...]

This is my collection of tools, spare parts, random clothes and other things that are vaguely to do with bikes and have been lying around for years. You can tell how long someone has been cycling for the amount of cycling junk they have accumulated. Amongst here are so many nuts and bolts I’ve completely [...]

After three quick punctures in succession, my mountain bike was hanging around the garage, looking pretty sorry for itself, my lodger lost all inspiration in putting another inner tube in. After a puncture rate of about 1 per 5 miles, he’d resorted to using the bus and running home. I had repaired the punctures so [...]

There are some things worth buying in your local bike shop – like bikes!, but inner tubes are not one of them. I am up in Yorkshire for two weeks. I always like to have two spare inner tubes on the bike for any long ride and for  bad luck with punctures. After one puncture [...]

I don’t treat chain length as an exact science. The simplest way to find best chain length is to use the largest sprocket technique. Simply take a new chain and put it in the largest front chainring (e.g the 50 or 52 tooth outer chain ring. Then put it on the largest cassette sprocket at [...]

Just out of interest, I went along a bike rack in Oxford to get a random sample on the average tyre pressure of commuting bikes. This highly unscientific study went no further than a surreptitious pinch of the tyre to see if the tyre was very soft. Obviously, I had to pretend I wasn’t really [...]