Customer Reviews

Building Your Perfect Bike: From Bare Frame to Personalized Superbike

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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.

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.

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.

The tips given will make this a valuable resource long after I build my perfect bicycle. Great pictures and useful information adorn this indispensable work for the bicycling enthusiast.