How To Maintain your Mountain Bike
Tearing up the woods with your mountain bike will always lead to severe punishment, especially when you have to go through water, grime, mud, or even sand. Climbing up the mountains and down the hills and also riding through the deep holes usually leads to wear and tear of your mountain bike.
Regular maintenance of your bike will keep your mountain bike working for a more extended period. You will also save the cost of labor and, most importantly, save your bike from all the possible mechanical threats that will ruin your bike.
Learning how to mountain bike is one of the hardest things you will have to encounter. However, finding the best mountain bike with the right bike tires will only make your adventures so enjoyable and fun. The right tires should be easy to install, durable, and able to resist troll.
For the best mountain bike tires, visit https://www.thrillappeal.com/best-mountain-bike-tires for the best experience of your lifetime. Below are some of the main ways you should maintain your mountain bike for a longer time.
- Keep your bike clean.
One of the things you should consider while maintaining your mountain bike is how often you wash it. It can be tiring, but you only need a bucket of water and soap, an old toothbrush to efficiently wash through the tires, and, most importantly, a sponge.
Avoid using a high-pressure washer but instead, lather your mountain bike for a perfect wash. Using high-pressure will only push out your lubricant and grease out of the moving parts, which will then reduce your bike’s life. Performing a thorough wash will make you inspect your bike and show you any damage to any components that need to be repaired.
- Inspect your bike often.
To ensure there are no loose components in your mountain bike, routine inspection is the right thing to do before any ride. This is essential since you will be able to identify any problem or damage before turning into more significant issues. You will need a simple mountain bike tool to perform these inspections regularly.
- Change the wheels.
To change your bike’s wheels, you need to regularly open the release lever that is on the front wheel and then take the wheel out. As you take the rear wheel out, make sure to open your bike’s quick release and then ease the cassette out. After changing, make sure each wheel turns freely while it rotates.
- Check the drivetrain.
The drive system mainly includes the pedals, where you will have to inspect them regularly. To do it, you will have to spin them and make sure they move freely. Most importantly, make sure no noise is produced from worn-out bearings. However, if there is any, you need to change the bottom bracket.
Also, check the first gear mechanism by turning the pedals and moving the chains up to improve your mountain bike’s life.
- Tighten loose brakes.
As soon as your brakes become loose mostly when you press the lever in the brakes and continually move more than it should towards the handlebars, it would help if you tightened them up to ensure they do not spoil. If you don’t know how to tighten the loose brakes, check some online platforms for more information.
- Check both tires.
To properly maintain your tires, you need to check them regularly and make sure they are properly inflated to avoid punctures. In addition to that, you will need a right standing pump that has a pressure gauge to inflate your tires properly.
There is always an indicator showing the amount of air that needs to be put in. This is one of the best ways to maintain your mountain bike properly.
- Inspect your brake pads.
You need to know that worn-out brakes are as meaningless as rubbish brakes. To know if the brake pads are worn out and meaningless, the grooves will be invisible and hard to see. Learning how to fix the pads is very easy and also very cheap.
The only thing you will need is patience and, most importantly, a set of Allen keys.
- Lubrication.
Make sure to buy some specific mountain bike’s lubricant and use it on your bike sparingly, mostly where metal touches another metal. Unless you have cleaned your chains thoroughly, do not oil them since you will only make matters worse.
Ensure to put a rag under your bike’s rear wheels to catch any oil that spills. Also, make sure that oil spreads evenly rotate the pedals in an anticlockwise manner to move the chains.
Conclusion.
The above information is the best way for you to maintain your mountain bike efficiently. However, you will need to visit some professional service providers once a year to ensure that the hard and complicated components are attended to.
Derailleurs, bearing surfaces, cables, and spokes will need experienced mechanics to be serviced and maintained for an extended time.