What is a bicycle tune-up, and how should you go about doing one? In my experience, home mechanics typically fall into two camps – those that do the bare minimum to keep their bike working, and those who go completely overboard and virtually overhaul their entire bike every time they tune it up. Before working in a bike shop, I fell mostly into the later category – when I bought a bike, I would replace all of the cables, the brake pads and the chain without question, and also overhaul the hubs, headset, and bottom bracket… and sometimes even overhaul the pedals.
I still like to overhaul the bikes I buy for my own use, because that way I know that I am starting out with a good, solid bike, but the truth is that most of the time it’s better not to try to fix something that ain’t broke, and instead focus on making sure that everything is safe, well adjusted, in proper working condition, and that the consumables are being replaced as needed.
Although I did learn some mechanical skills from working in a bike shop, the more important things I learned were how to assess a bike and then how to work on it systematically in order to get it back to the best mechanical condition possible while considering the customer’s needs as well as the time and resources necessary to perform a tune-up on that specific bike. With that being said, here is how a professional bike shop will generally perform a basic tune-up:
1. Assess the bike. This is really to see if there is anything wrong with the bike which either goes well beyond a normal tune-up, cannot be repaired because the bike is permanently damaged, or is not economically viable to repair given the value of the bike. Starting with the bike on the ground, apply the brakes and rock the bike back and forth to check whether or not the headset is loose. Rock the wheels side to side to check the adjustment of the hubs, then give them a spin and apply the brakes to see how well they are working. Rock the cranks side to side to check whether or not the bottom bracket is loose, and finally give the bike a pedal, and shift through the gears to get an idea of the condition of the cables and derailleurs.
Examples of problems which should give you cause for concern would be frame damage or serious wheel damage such as a bent rim or broken axle. A loose or gritty bottom bracket is also a major red flag, especially on an inexpensive or dirty bike, because these are often seized into the frame, as is extreme dirt or corrosion. I also sometimes see stuck seatposts and stems as well as seized brake calipers, but it’s much more common to see less concerning problems such as misadjusted shifting, rusted cables, or slightly out of true wheels. Except for frame damage and seized parts all these issues can usually be fixed, but before attempting to tune up a bike in poor condition it’s worth at least asking yourself whether or not it is actually worth it considering the time and money it would take and the possibility that you will discover more significant problems as you get further into the project.
At this point it is also a good idea to assess the tires – cracked and bald tires should generally be replaced – as well as to measure the chain. I went years without a chain checker, but at $16 it is well worth buying one to avoid unnecessarily replacing a perfectly good chain – you only have to save one good chain for this tool to pay for itself.
2. Grease the seat post. The most effective way to do this is to remove the seatpost, dip an old piece of cable housing into a pot of grease, and then use that to distribute some grease inside of the seat tube. If you find that the seat post is seized, you can basically pay somebody with a specialist tool to try to extract it (at the risk of causing permanent frame damage), or live with the seatpost in its current position.
3. Remove the wheels and any other parts which are going to be replaced. If I’m replacing the chain I will remove it with a chain tool, and 99% of the time I will also be re-cabling the bike so I will cut the shift and brake cables and pull all of the housing off of the bike – but if you have a vintage bike it’s worth checking to see if the shifters use non-standard shift cables, which may not be available anymore (this is rare even on vintage bikes). If the bike has an internal hub gear it also may not be a good idea to cut the shift cable because it could be an expensive part or difficult to source. I also sometimes remove the brake pads at this point but I normally just remove them as I replace them, especially if I am dealing with cantilever brakes which fall apart when they don’t have brake pads installed.
4. Clean the bike. You can use something like super bike wash or, as I would recommend, soapy water, which is a lot cheaper and pretty much does the same thing. Simply dilute a little dish soap in water in a spray bottle, spray down the bike, and then clean it using a rag. If the bike is especially dirty you may want to remove the crankset or the derailleurs, but this type of cleaning is adequate in 90% of cases. Cleaning a bike like this is good practice just to keep the bike working as best as possible, but it is also another opportunity to inspect the bike, especially for frame damage. If you do find any major damage, stop and re-asses the situation and whether or not it is worth continuing with the tune-up.
5. Adjust the hubs & true the wheels. At this point you basically have two projects on our hands: the wheelset, and what I refer to as the frame of the bike, which is basically everything else. Whether you tackle the wheels or the frame first doesn’t really matter but I like to get the wheel truing out of the way because to me it is the most annoying part of a basic tune-up. No bike shop would include overhauling hub bearings with a basic tune-up, but I like giving the axles a spin to get an idea of how bad the hubs are – if they are particularly dry or gritty, I will consider rebuilding them at this point. This is also where you would consider the adjustment of the hubs – if they are a little loose, they should be tightened prior to truing the wheels. If they are very loose, check for a bent or broken axle… if you find this problem you may be able to replace the axle, but at that point it is actually pretty likely that your bearing cups are damaged which means that you will need to replace the wheel – again, before proceeding with this it is worth assessing whether or not it is even worth continuing on with the tune-up.
After adjusting the hubs you can go ahead and true the wheels using your preferred method – using a truing stand is the easiest way, but there are many hacks out there for how to do this without a truing stand. My favorite way is to reinstall the wheel, put the bike upside down on the ground, and attach a zip tie to the frame to act as a pointer. Before you start make sure to deflate the tires and lubricate the spoke nipples using dri-slide or any sort of chain oil, and use some soapy water to clean the rims and the hubs when you’re done. And if the wheels are badly out of true or there is any question about their centering within the bike frame it is also worth checking the dishing of the wheel, which is the side-to-side centering of the rim about the hub. This is easiest with a dishing gage, but you can also do this using a couple of two by fours set on a flat floor along with some coins under the hub to act as an indicator. Finally, if the tires are going to be replaced I will replace them before pumping them up to the correct air pressure.
6. Perform any necessary major repairs on the rest of the bike. At this point I will replace the bottom bracket and headset if needed, lubricate the stem if it’s a quill stem the same way I lubricated the seatpost, and just tighten any loose nuts and bolts, especially if the bike has fenders or a rack. If I have removed the chain I’ll also remove and re-install the pedals now, making sure to use a little grease or anti-seize compound on the threads (if the bike has a chain on it I’ll wait until the rear wheel is reinstalled so the chain doesn’t rub on the chainstay). Finally, I’ll make sure the crank bolts are torqued correctly – 44 Newton-Meters if the bike has a square-taper bottom bracket.
7. Reinstall the wheels. At this point I also like to double-check how centered the wheels are in the frame – if a wheel is off-center, I’ll first check whether or not the wheel is sitting in the dropout correctly, then check the dishing of the wheel, and finally check the alignment of the frame, which you can do using a piece of string. However it is actually pretty rare that the frame is bent and much more likely that the wheel simply isn’t installed correctly. Once everything looks good I will install a chain if I am replacing it, and if I haven’t re-installed the pedals yet I will pull them and grease the threads.
8. Adjust the brakes. On 99% of tune-ups I end up replacing the cables, and instead of cutting the new housing based on the length of the old I like to start from scratch and make sure that I am happy with the length of each housing and the way it is routed. I’ll also replace the brake pads at this point, and if needed I’ll replace the brake noodle on V-brakes or the straddle cable on cantilever brakes. After replacing the cables and brake pads it’s simply a matter of doing a normal brake adjust, making sure that everything is centered, nothing is rubbing and that the pads are toed in slightly.
Of course this only applies to rim brakes – cable operated disc brakes are treated similarly in that I typically replace the cable, but the pads really only need to be replaced if they are worn out. On the other hand hydraulic disc brakes shouldn’t need much in terms of adjustment, but if they rub you may need to reposition the calipers by loosening the mounting screws and moving them until they’re centered around the rotors. A spongy lever feel or brakes which don’t work at all is a completely separate issue which requires a brake bleed to fix, but this is very uncommon – hydraulic disc brakes typically require very little maintenance aside from replacing the pads as needed.
9. Adjust the shifting. This is the home stretch – simply replace the shift cables and then adjust the shifting until it makes each shift correctly. Most bikes use derailleurs so this will entail setting the cable tension and adjusting the limit screws – if everything is set correctly but the bike doesn’t shift through each gear properly, it’s most likely that you have a bent derailleur hanger, which can be fixed using a derailleur hanger alignment tool. Some mechanics will always align a derailleur hanger preemptively, but I tend to hook up the derailleur and see how well the bike shifts, only straightening the hanger if it’s obviously not shifting correctly. If your derailleur hanger is straight and the bike still isn’t shifting correctly some possible reasons are incorrect cable tension, incorrect cable routing, or a shifter which is not compatible with the derailleur. Usually this is when somebody has installed an indexed Sram shifter on a bike with a Shimano derailleur or vice-versa. The rule here, at least for any bike up to 8 speed, is that a shifter marked Sram MRX is compatible with a Shimano derailleur, a Sram shifter not marked MRX is not compatible with Shimano, and Shimano shifters are never compatible with Sram derailleurs.
There are different types of shifters and it is definitely easier to replace the cable in some types than others. Old-school thumb shifters, bar-end shifters, downtube shifters or stem shifters are very straight forward – the new cable should just slot into place through an exposed groove. Trigger shifters are also generally fairly straight forward – there is often a hole through which you can thread the new cable, but with some models you need to remove the cover plate to replace the cable. Brifters are a little more complicated – they also usually have a hole through which you can pass the new shift cable, but sometimes you have to pull back the rubber hood to expose this port, and the routing towards the shift housing can sometimes be complicated. The hardest type of shifters to work on are grip shifters which usually require complete disassembly in order to replace the cable – if you run into these be sure not to loose the little spring which allows the shifter to ratchet through the gears!
Some bikes use hub gears which is a little beyond the scope of this article but the concept is the same – you need to set the cable tension such that the indicator is in the correct position which should allow the hub to make each shift correctly. There are also other less common cases such as single-speed bikes, which are actually easier because the only necessary adjustment is chain tension.
10. Adjust saddle & setup cockpit. Now you can either take the bike out of the truing stand or flip it right side up and make sure that the ergonomics of the bike make sense. The saddle should normally be level, and the brake levers should be angled slightly down. I normally just use the feel test to set what this angle should be, and then sight across the handlebars to make sure that each lever is set up the same way.
11. Adjust headset. I like to do this adjustment last because you can’t really do it in a repair stand, and you also need a good working front brake. Simply apply the front brake and rock the bike forwards and backwards – if there is any looseness or you hear any clicking around the headset, tighten it until the movement goes away but not so tight that the handlebars don’t turn freely.
12. Test ride. Finally we get to the point where we can see if all of our hard work paid off. When you test ride a bike you’ll want to shift through all of the gears and also make sure that both brakes work without squeaking. You’ll also want to select the highest gear and pedal up a hill – if the chain skips, the freewheel or cassette is probably worn out and needing to be replaced. Obviously you’ll also want to note any other issues and repair them, but with any luck this won’t be more than a minor adjustemnt and the bike will now be ready.
Conclusion
Hopefully the guidelines above give you a basic idea of the methodology a typical bike shop would use to carry out a basic tune-up, and this is something which also very easily translates to a home mechanic’s setup. Of course you can work on your bike any way you’d like to, but there are a few things I’ve described which I think are worth repeating.
First of all you’ll notice that I repeated emphasized assessing the bike at every opportunity and making sure that it is really worth fixing before proceeding. If you’re working on your own bike the main cost is going to be the amount of time you put into your bike so the economics are probably less important, but it is still possible to come across an issue which cannot easily be fixed such as a seized bottom bracket or seized seatpost, and if you have a broken wheel you may also find that you have an unexpected major repair to contend with.
The second point I’d like to emphasize is that the order really does matter. It doesn’t make any sense to adjust your brakes before making sure your wheels are reasonably true, and it also doesn’t make sense to true your wheels before you make sure the hubs are properly adjusted. This is less critical when it comes to things like adjusting your shifting, which you can do before you adjust your brakes, but I like adjusting my brakes first so that I have an easy way of stopping the wheel during the shift adjustment process. Similarly, it also doesn’t make too much sense to go through and adjust the brakes and gears if you’re then going to pull the crankset and replace the bottom bracket, because you might find that the bottom bracket is seized and that you don’t want to proceed with the rest of the tune-up. So of course you can be flexible in how you approach bike maintenance, but it does pay to be systematic and I think that the order I described things in in this article is a very good starting point for most situations.
And finally I’d like to point out the level of work that a bike shop would typically include in a basic tune-up. A tune-up carried out as described here will result in a bike that is safe and mechanically sound, but most notably will not include overhauling any bearings, which is an optional step that you can absolutely carry out on your own bikes at home. However, in most cases there is very little risk in not overhauling them – if you never regrease a headset, you will simply eventually reach the point where it becomes indexed and should be replaced, which is a simple and relatively inexpensive fix. Bottom brackets are the same unless you are trying to save a vintage cup-and-cone bottom bracket, but wheel bearings are an exception because your bearing cups and cones are at higher risk of pitting if you don’t replace the grease regularly. I definitely overhaul my wheel bearings when tuning up my own bike, but even pitted bearings will work fairly well and it is pretty likely that you will have a more serious issue such as seized spokes or a broken axle by the time your bearings pit so not overhauling wheel bearings is still not the end of the world in most cases.
I hope this article has been helpful for any home mechanics taking their bike maintenance to the next level, and I am also curious to hear how other professional mechanics approach a basic tune-up. If you’d like to get in touch with me the easiest way is to send me a message on Instagram @crazycyclingchannel.