Building Your Perfect Bike: From Bare Frame to Personalized Superbike [Paperback]

Richard Ries (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1997

This book shows how to specify the frame and other components to optimize a bike for the individual cyclist's personal use and preferences. It shows what to look out for in frames, components and accessories, and how to select the ones that are most suitable for the reader's riding style. It covers frames, steering, drivetrain, wheels, gearing, brakes, saddles, suspension and accessories, with particular emphasis on the balance between weight and strength. The author gives detailed instructions on how to install and adjust the various parts for maximum performance, and information is provided for road bikes mountain bikes, tandems and special bikes.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Motorbooks International (January 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 093320177X
• ISBN-13: 978-0933201774
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,293,655 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Thin book, thin content., December 9, 1999

By 

J. Thorne (AUSTIN, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Building Your Perfect Bike: From Bare Frame to Personalized Superbike (Paperback)

For the neophyte, the book provides a fine introduction to what features or products could help improve riding enjoyment. It is organized around sample projects of a 'beam' style road racer, a tourer, and a dual-suspension mountain bike. It contains a lot of discussion regarding the varieties of missions a bike might take on and how features or products for some missions aren't much good for others, for instance, and encourages the rider/reader to seek a more personally-suited machine. For the experienced rider who knows what s/he wants to ride and is looking for advice on BUILDING the dream bike her/his self, however, it is a bit thin on the nuts and bolts needed to get it all together and working smoothly. Retitle it "Things you could buy for different kinds of bikes you want to build and problems that might creep up if you do," maybe.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining, but..., August 5, 2005

By 

Mark A. Lucas "SingleSpeeder" (Austin, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Building Your Perfect Bike: From Bare Frame to Personalized Superbike (Paperback)

I received this book as a gift from a non-cycling family member. At first I was excited and eagerly read it. Well, it is interesting, and does provide some advice on how to select components, but mainly its a coffee table book to read when your significant other is watching some show/movie you are not interested in.
DINGS: --If you are an experienced rider, serious about building your own bike, and read current bicycling magazines, you probably already know more than what this book will tell you, --the components are circa 1997-2000. --It does not give a comprehensive step-by-step process to buy bike components, --likewise it is not a comprehensive installation checklist, and it is *very poor* in how to fine tune installed components such as derelliers (sic) or forks. --It does a poor job on geometry and sizing.
PROS: You can find it in discount/half-price book shops for less than $10, it is colorfully illustrated, it makes a good book for a kid interested in bikes, it provides an overall approach to designing, sourcing, and building a custom bike.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Filled with essential knowledge about building a bicycle, October 10, 2003

By 

Frank Forrest "Quasar" (Northern California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Building Your Perfect Bike: From Bare Frame to Personalized Superbike (Paperback)

While the book is only 128 pages long, it is crammed to the gills with important details and information about bikes and how to build them. The photographs are excellent and are a great help in explaining the more intracate deatails of assembling a bicycle.

Richard Ries does a nice job of organizing the book in a logical progression. He starts with the bicycle frame and how to select it all the way through to the final installation of all the bike components. He also details what components are good and which to select from. I have been looking for a book like this for a long time. Many books cover repairing the bike, but there are few, if any, that logically takes you through each step of building one. He gives advice on how to avoid trouble and tips on how to do certain tasks easier. The only downside of the book is that it was written in 1997. Although not a big problem, there are certain hardware advances that are left out of the book because it is not current. However, the book is very helpful in teaching the basic things needed to know about building a bike. "Machineheads" will most likely feel that the book is too simplistic in nature, but for the rest of us who struggle with mechanical endeavors, this is just what we need. This is not a repair manual, but a primer on how to build your first bike. Richard Ries draws from his own personal bike projects as examples to demonstrate how to do it. The advice is down-to-earth and understandable. This book is out of print, but you may be able to track it down on the internet. A very underated book. Don't let the size of the book fool you. Every page is essential without all the fluff. Now, I can finally start on my own bicycle project and maybe you can too. Hopefully, Richard Ries will attempt a new edition of his book with updates. I, for one, would certainly buy it.