Customer Reviews

Complete Bike Maintenance

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

While I think that the Zinn book (Zinn and the Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance) is pretty good, for most people this book will be much better. It is concise yet thorough, with plenty of detail, but not overly technical. And the book is filled with excellent color photographs -- hundreds of them.

I took a couple of bicycle repair classes last winter at a local bike shop. Then, many months later, I decided to put what I had learned to good use by adjusting my derailleurs. I grabbed the Zinn book I had purchased last year for a quick reminder of how to make that adjustment. It didn't make any sense. His procedure was too complicated, his description confusing, and he didn't even talk about the obvious trick to setting the low gear position on the rear derailleur. I set the book aside and fumbled my way through the procedure from what I could remember from the class. I was not satisfied with my results.

Then, while at a local bookstore recently, I saw "Complete Bike Maintenance" by Fred Milson sitting on the shelf. I took a gander to see if it had a better explanation of the adjustment procedure. As soon as I opened the book, I was grabbed by the beautiful color photography. I located the sections on adjusting derailleurs. Mr. Milson has described the adjustment in a few simple steps, and his description was very similar to what I remember from the class.

I immediately bought the book and readjusted my gears the following weekend. They came out great! My only complaint is that there should have been one more photograph for the rear derailleur setup -- one showing a view from the rear with the two jockey wheels lined up with the smallest sprocket. The written description gets you there just fine, but there was room on the page for one more picture.

All of the other chapters appear to be just as good -- great pictures, easy to understand text. I can't believe I'm the first person to write a review for this excellent repair manual.

I'll hang on the the Zinn book for reference (you can't own too many reference books), but Complete Bike Maintenance will be the first book I will grab when heading out to work on my bike.

After having looked around some more at other bicycle repair manuals, I have re-evaluated my review of this book and decided, quite frankly, that it's not very good.

To be fair - the book does a decent job of explaining how to do "maintenance", but just not much in the way of repair. I was continually frustrated by the many jobs that are delegated to a "professional repair shop", particularly those involving headsets and wheels. True, these parts do require certain special tools to install and adjust properly, but it would have been nice if the author had made the effort to empower people a little more, and show them how to use the tools if they have them. After all, part of the reason someone buys a book like this is to save money by not taking the bike to a shop for every little thing that goes wrong.

The book does have a lot of decent color photography, but is still lacking in in-depth explanations and instruction. Rather than trying to be an in-depth resource, the book is more of a glorified owners manual for a bike, explaining the basics of most parts of the bike, but still not giving you enough info to inspire the confidence and guidance you need.

I think this bike is only really good for the novice bicyclist who only wants to do the bare minimum on his or her bike, and needs some pictures to help out. However, if you want to fully understand how your bicycle works, and the best ways to repair it, you need to look elsewhere.

First a quote from page 50 on adjusting the rear derailleur:

"...check that the chain runs silently in top-gear. If it doesn't turn the cable adjuster ... counter-clockwise if the chain is trying to jump off the top sprocket, and one turn clockwise if it's trying to climb onto the second sprocket.
" Next, change down to second gear..."

Let's see, he equates "top-gear" to "top sprocket" and the top gear, of course, is the smallest sprocket on the rear cassette. Okay, we're fine so far but it would be more complete to also instruct to put the front derailleur on the largest chain ring, which is required.

And then he says to change to "second gear"? Doesn't he mean the second sprocket? To most people "second gear" means the second easiest, which is the second largest sprocket on the rear cassette. What he means is the second smallest sprocket.

For a book written to people trying to learn, this is unclear at best. Unfortunately, the many color photos do not help here. None of this is labeled on the figures.

He also spends more attention on toe straps (who uses toe straps?) than clipless pedals (cleats). There are many types of cleats and he just does a broad brush treatment of them. The text is outdated.

I also got a Zinn book at the same time. (Got them both but was expecting the Zinn book to be over my head.) My what a difference. The text is complete and clear. I agree with the bike champion that was quoted, "Leonard Zinn has a knack for describing mechanical tasks that a person with little or no mechanical background will find easy to understand."

I definitely wouldn't say this is greatest bike maintenance book on the market. Far from it. But it is a great start for beginners and is probably all you need if you only want to do basic everyday tasks like making adjustments ect... I'd highly recommend this book to every family that has bikes.

This book is excellent, it explains simple maintenance jobs with well illustrated diagrams for easy understanding. There are valuable hints included along with most maintenance tasks and this is certainly a bonus. Well worth the money and a great item for a new avid cyclist.

Nice overviews in detail. The only suggested I have is perhaps update the images with more modern components.

like some reviews have stated, this book may (or may not) explain some things better than zinn or other books. but come on, it is such a waste of space. it spends a lot of time covering really dumb stuff. it's really dated and out of touch as well. its description of a single-speed freewheel: "mainly used on kids' bikes"

This is a good reference for maintainance of bicycles. This book and a basic tool kit will keep you on the road.