It is such a good feeling when one makes some adjustments and something becomes like new again while saving your money.

You will probably be looking at that bike with a lot of pride whenever you see it from now on.

I really need to clean up by gears and chain as well. They are all grimy. I plan to do with my my tongue and to oil my chain with natural human oil derived from my face and hair … just kidding. I will probably just clean it with a mild degreaser and a rag and use some type of lubricant. I have never done it before so it should be an adventure or really boring.

Jacob Can you tell me what kind of bike you own/price range? I am shoppng for a bike which I hope to use for errands and at least 3 days/ week to work. I’m 45 female and in fair/good physical condition The dealers i spoke to all recommend different brands. They were not helpful. thanks JL

Citrus is the stuff for cleaning your drivetrain.

To reiterate, if you put a front mudflap that hangs to within 2 inches of the ground on your bike, you won’t need to clean your drivetrain much more than once a year. Plus it keeps your feet a lot drier.

On the chain lube front, I don’t bother with buying bike chain lube at $5 for 2 oz or around $150 a gallon or whatever.

I use whatever oil happens to be around when I fill my metal oilcan. Which was hydraulic jack oilthe last time. Normal clean (unused) car engine oil works good, too.

Both work perfectly fine for the purpose of a basic road bike.

Why does the rear tire wear faster?

I only just now saw your previous bike-commuting entry, and I liked both it and this one; they sort of sound like the happy and excited rants that I’ve made my wife quite tired of My new bike had mountain bike tires, and I considered slicing of the nubs but eventually just bought some new road/country tires, and the bike now flies [even faster than before]. I reckoned that I’d need tires at some point anyway, and I can always use my mountain bike tires then. I was taken a bit aback by the price of the new tires: even on bargain, they cost 2x40US = 80US but were said to last long. When asked “How long?”, it was the bike seller’s turn to be taken aback. He guessed a couple of thousand kms, not too impressive; I hope they last longer. I save about 9USD each commute (33miles) in petrol/train tickets, but at 2000km = 1242miles, that is about 40c of tire per trip, not much, but comparable to the food-fuel (eg., rice: 66c) that I burn.

@bigato – Many replace both tires at the same time, so given your 1:3 wear schedule, they’d buy two tires per year if they didn’t rotate. If they did rotate, they’d only buy 1+1/3=4/3 tires per year. If you just replace each tire as it wears out, you wouldn’t gain an advantage.

From a safety point of view this is not an optimal strategy … better to throw away the worn rear tire, move the relatively fresh front tire to the back, and get a new tire for the front. This way if you have a blowout it will occur on the rear tire, which is much safer than a front blowout.