The Bicycling Guide to Complete Bicycle Maintenance & Repair: For Road & Mountain Bikes

I've been a Cyclist (notice I didn't say biker) for more than 40 years. And there are many types nowadays. I am a rough rider. I also consider myself a decent Bike Wrench (mechanic) and can trouble shoot most problems. This being said, who can't learn more? Every enthusiast should have books on their favorite subjects, reference guides of some sort. Well, here it is! Whether you are an old pro or a newbee, this is the book you want. Read it cover to cover or just look through it when you need it. It will help you maintain that Iron Pony or Thorobred between your legs and when it's sick, you can bring it back to health. You can save some money by doing it yourself or maybe you just want an idea of what's wrong before you take it to the bike doc. Whatever your reason, you won't go wrong here. It's informative, has excellent pictures and illustrations and covers lots of info you should know. Todd has experience due to years of mastering what he does and shares his vast knowledge with you. From road to mountain bikes and those in between you're covered because the book is up to date. Thank You Todd!

This is a great book. Lot of images, great explanation, easy to follow instructions. It is more than need it for any cyclist. This book is a most have on any cyclist library, great resource. It went beyond simple repairs, and how to tune your bike. Easy to follow instructions in how to built wheel sets, change cranksets, derraileurs, brakes, ect.

Decided to go print instead of digital because I would be using it in garage to do repair work, and print makes it easier to see, read, and flip pages with dirty fingers. Bought it used from Jenson Books for a reasonable price and it arrived in new condition. What a bargain for $8, which included the shipping charge! From a quick glance through pages, I am happy with the illustrations, content and organization. Just what I needed. Addition after use: Lots of good information but after trying to adjust rear derailluer discovered that instructions seem to assume you have rebuilt the derailluer from scratch and understand the vocabulary. Ended up taking the bike to local bike shop after I managed to make my shifting problem worse. Might not be the best guide for those who only want to do minor adjustments to maintain bike. Still, it is very detailed. Changed from 5 to 4 stars.

This book is GREAT!! My husband has recently gotten into refurbishing vintage bikes and/or taking various parts from this bike and that bike and making hybrids. He has found this book to be insanely helpful - there are pix and clear directions to follow. It turns out that I'd mistakenly bought two of these books - the exact same one - so my husband sent the extra copy to the guy whose been mentoring him on this bike hobby... this man has been doing bikes for YEARS and said that this a wonderful book and even HE picked up a few pointers and some information and instruction. I don't honestly do the "bike thing", but these two guys, novice and expert, both say this is a wonderful book.

It covers every bike part in detail. It tells you how every bike part works and how to service it, its history, the tools you need to service any part of the bike, it even gives you time intervals to do bike maintainance and to service some bike parts. I only wish that it had more pictures when explaining procedures to service the bike. But even then the book deserves five stars for being so informative.

Clearly explains various aspects of maintenance, including lots of clear photos of the different types of construction (like the difference between a freewheel and a freehub, and how each is assembled and repaired). I was very familiar with bikes 30 years ago, but a lot has changed since then. This book explains all the tools and terminology, so even if you decide not to attempt the repair yourself, you can still talk intelligently to the bike mechanic about it. (And you will understand why it costs what it does).

The Bicycling Guide to Complete Bicycle Maintenance & Repair for Road & Mountain Bikes [Kindle Edition] by Todd Downs is the best bicycle maintenance book or manual I have found and purchased. I own several bicycles and want to do my own maintenance and if one does, this is in my view the book to own. I also own a Motorcycle and much of the information and knowledge based skills utilized in this book are also good for a thorough maintenance approach to the mechanical maintenancre of a motorcycle. From the basic introduction of the book to the tool recommendations you read at the first of the book, you know you are getting a book that avoids the fluff and gets right to solid information about bicycle maintenance. I love this book and recommend it to the person needing some guidance to working on their bikes and optimization of the setup of your ride.

This is much more up-to-date than my Clymer "Fix Your Bicycle" manual, but that was written in the '70s, and the technology has advanced some since then... though not a lot. Be that as it may, the proofreading for this Kindle edition (maybe even the printed ed.) is far inferior. I started to make "notes" to try to explain (to myself & others) that 181/4" actually means 18x1/4" or eighteen 1/4 inch ball bearings, rather than 181/4", which would be about 45.25". Sloppiness like that may be forgivable in a romance paperback, but it makes life difficult when trying to understand a repair manual. Yes, I can make allowances for missing "spaces", and I have... but, I don't like it, especially when they happen as often as they do in this manual. I gave up "making notes". As I suggested, this is just sloppy editing. I'm pretty sure that there is "NO EDITING" in this day and age, as we all fall into the morass of "blogging", "texting", and "Instant Messaging" with their attendant shortened (mis)spellings and general lack of grammar and punctuation. That's all cool, especially the entertaining abbreviations like IMHO, ROTFLMAO, etc., but it does not belong in a repair manual. But, I digress. Standard Disclaimers Apply; I haven't read the whole manual, but I am, so far, disappointed in its lack of professionalism. The author may know how to wrench on a bike (He seems to "know his stuff"), but he ain't no Shakespeare (bad analogy... I can't understand Shakespeare, either). You need to know that this is a poorly edited manual with many "typos" and other problems. Is it worth $10? We-e-l-l-l... I kinda' agree with the reviewer that said you can get better info online... for free... but be careful... you can get much worse info online, too. I like Sheldon Brown's website [...], too, though it's a bit difficult to find what you want there. Wha-a-a-t? Vietnamese women? WTF? Lor'nce (aka Buellist, aka Konservativ Anarkist)