Trail-side Repair TipsOf course, when you're on tour with SingleTrack Colorado, we'll do our best to fix any mechanical problems that arise for you (two of our guides have been full-time bike mechanics in their time). But if you're out with a bunch of friends, or on your own, knowing how to fix a problem with your bike on the side of the trail may save you from a long walk, or maybe even a cold night out. Our guides have been breaking bits of their bikes on the trail for years, and they’ve been fixing their broken bikes on the side of the trail for years too – often with just a 6 inch strip of duct tape, 2 zip ties, and a small branch. The tips below assume a basic understanding of bicycle maintenance, and are a handy addition to a basic bicycle repair book - which never seem to include all the silly things that happen to our bikes on the trail. By reading our tips now, you’ll be able to learn some great trail-side fixes from the comfort of your computer at home, or more likely, from the comfort of your computer at work…What makes trail-side repairs different than working on your bike at home is that you often don’t have access to the proper tools or the replacement parts to fix the problem properly. Instead, you have to improvise. But remember, trail-side repairs are usually very temporary fixes to get you home, where the problem should then be fixed properly before your temporary fix fails and leaves you stranded again. A few important notes about trail-side repairs: - Like the Scouts say: be prepared. You don’t have to carry the kitchen sink, but a few basic tools and spares will go a long way. Always carry at least a multi-tool with a chain-breaker, all the sizes of Allen keys used on your bike. And ideally a knife and a small set of pliers too. A bike specific multi-tool and a handyman’s pliers based folding multi-tool are a great combo of tools to carry. In terms of spares, we recommend at least the following: a spare derailleur hanger, a spare set of break pads, a few plastic ‘zip ties’, a some duct tape (easily carried by transferring it to the barrel of your pump), and of course a pump, at least one tube, and a puncture repair kit. - Your tools are designed for a specific purpose, but they can often be used to perform another purpose too (like prying, levering or poking something) if you’re stuck without the proper tool. But be careful not to break them or your bike when using them for something they weren’t strictly designed for! - The trail can provide it’s own tools: a piece of wood, or even a rock can make an effective hammer (obviously, you’ll have to be careful), and a branch can make an effective brace, so look around and see what’s on offer. - Walking is nearly always an option. If you can’t repair your bike safely, don’t risk a nasty accident by using an unsafe repair, just walk out. Broken rear derailleur This is very common mechanical problem, and is often compounded by a broken derailleur hanger. As mountain bike guides, when we ride with our guests, we carry a spare rear derailleur – they’re not overly large or heavy and we have the need to use them on a guest’s bike about every month or so. So for us, it’s worth carrying one. If you and a group of friends are planning a multi-day ride, it might also be worth taking a spare rear derailleur (I can hear the weight-weenies amongst you hyper-ventilating at the thought of carrying a spare 250 grams - just in case). Otherwise, for normal day riding, it’s not worth carrying a spare rear derailleur with you. Note: using a Sram derailleur with a Shimano shifter, (and vice-versa) won’t work perfectly, but it’ll work well enough to get you home – you’ll just have to be careful shifting. So, when a rear derailleur breaks, and you don’t have a spare, what do you do? Most commonly, the derailleur will brake at the ‘knuckle’ that bolts onto the hanger- meaning the derailleur can no longer be attached to the frame. In this case, one option that works reasonably well on a hard-tail, is to turn the bike into a single speed. To do this, break the chain using your chain breaker, remove any bent or twisted chain links and put the chain around the front chain-ring and rear cog that will give you a gear suitable for the rest of the ride. This will probably be middle chain-ring and somewhere in the middle of the cassette – you’re best to walk the steep uphills and coast the downhills. Shorten the chain to a length that ensures the chain is tight (but not under tension) is this gear combo. Voila! Singlespeed heaven. However, on full-suspension bikes, this fix often doesn’t work well, as the action of the suspension compressing and rebounding over uneven ground tightens and loosens the chain, meaning your chain might snap, or more likely the chain will constantly shift into a smaller size cog on the cassette, releasing the chain tension and consequently meaning the chain will fall off. If you have a lock-out on the rear suspension, this may help. The derailleur is a delicate mechanism, so there’s many other ways it can break too! For example, if the pulley cage separates from the parallelogram, or the parallelogram breaks in half, try duct taping it back together, then just leave the derailleur in one gear so as not to put pressure on it. If that last sentence about broken parallelograms and pulley cages sounds like gibberish – you’ll know it when you see it – so just duct tape it! Broken derailleur hanger This should be a matter of screwing in a new derailleur hanger, which you carry with you with you in your camelback. Right? Always carry a spare derailleur hanger – they’re cheap, light, and take up almost no room in your bag. If you’re caught short, and on your own – you could try turning your bike into a single-speed (as above). If you’re with a group of friends, ask them politely if you could see their spare derailleur hangers…….. (Obviously, they’ll have to be good friends). Because there are many different types of derailleur hanger, most will not fit on any bike other than the make of bike that it was designed for. Sometimes, though you’ll be able to fit another bike’s derailleur hanger to your own bike. If the hanger has a hole drilled for a bike rack, you could thread the quick release onto the hanger (followed by the quick release nut), then adjust the derailleur limit screws to account for the wider alignment of the derailleur – this works surprisingly well. Otherwise – see above for single-speed conversion. Torn sidewall on a tire 
A small tear can be fixed relatively easily with a suitable patch. Park Tools make some very effective tyre patches that are self adhesive, so they’re easy to apply to the inside of the tyre and they stay put. If you’re cheap, two pieces of plastic milk bottle the size of business cards take up no space in your pack, are flexible enough to move with the tire, but very tough, and will do for a couple of tears (if you’re completely unprepared, an energy bar wrapper, or a bank note will do). Duct tape the patch to the inside of your tire to stop the tube from poking out the tear in the tire. If the tear is larger than a few inches, this patch method may not work, as the pressure from the inflated tube will put pressure on the carcass of the tire and cause the tear to get bigger –then your tube will pop out of the tire and it will burst - dang. If you do suffer a very large tear in your tire, all may not be lost. We’ve repaired an eight inch horizontal tear, at the bead of the tire, using zip ties a toe-strap and duct tape to hold the tire onto the rim to ensure the tube couldn’t force the tear open further (we even remembered to take a photo). This works best on a bike with disc brakes – doing this on a bike with rim brakes would mean the rear brake would be inoperable – not ideal. Filling your tire with grass is an oft-cited repair, but you’ll need a lot of grass. Finally, unless you’re happy to completely trash your rim, don’t ride on a rim without a tire!
Note: If you have a large rip in your front tire, swap the repair to the rear wheel, i.e. use your undamaged rear tire on the front. This way, if your repair fails, you won’t have a blown front tire trying to flip you over the bars, you’ll have a blown rear tire, which is less likely to cause you to crash. Taco’d Wheel A what? A very buckled wheel looks like a taco and can be caused by a heavy crash or a seemingly innocuous crash – sometimes the bike just lands on a funny angle. If your wheel is bent so badly it won’t fit through the frame or fork, you’re going to need to replace the rim when you get home, but there’s still hope of riding it home. There are two approaches to straightening a taco’d wheel. You’d be appalled to see either carried out in the workshop of a bike shop. But on the trail, it works a treat! The first is to brace the wheel against a large rock or tree, with the buckled section supported by the rock or tree. Then lean with as much force as you think is needed, or even a bit more, to push the taco to a more straight shape. If this doesn’t work, you’re onto method 2. Pick the wheel up, hold it flat with the buckled section out in front of you, then, hit it against the ground as hard as you think is necessary. Check the wheel. Is it straighter? If not, keep doing this (possibly with more force than you started with) until the wheel will fit through your frame or forks. Then, if you were sensible enough to bring a spoke key, do as much finessing to get the wheel as straight as you can. Then get pedalling, and avoid any large potholes! Broken seat clamp bolt (the bolt or quick release on your frame, not your seat post) Without a seat clamp bolt, your seat is likely to constantly slip down, making pedalling very difficult. Some broken seat clamp bolts can be replaced with the 5mm bolt from the a-headset adjustment cap – which isn’t needed once the headset is adjusted and the stem bolts done up tight. If that bolt isn’t the right fit, look around to see what else you could scavenge from your kit. For example, on one occasion, a guest’s seat clamp broke, but as the nut on the seat clamp was a 4mm, the 5mm a-headset top cap bolt would not screw into the 4mm nut. However, one of our multi-tools was held together with a 5mm nut. We removed the 4mm nut from the seat clamp, replaced it with the 5mm nut from the multi-tool, and tightened it up with the 5mm a-headset top cap adjustment bolt. The rider then finished the 3-hour ride with a seat height suitable for pedalling. Easy! Broken free-hub in rear hub The freewheel of the rear hub is that part of the hub that allows pedalling action to drive the bike forward, but also allows the pedals to remain still when we are rolling. Without a free-hub, you’d have a ‘fixed wheel’ bike, like a track bike – if the wheel was turning, so would your pedals be turning – not great around corners, or on a rutty downhill! While we have seen freewheels seize, meaning whenever the wheel is turning, your feet are turning with it, it’s much more common for the free-hub to stop providing drive, so your pedals turn, but your bike goes nowhere. If your free-hub seizes, and is stuck solid, you’re still able to pedal, but downhills and corners can be tricky because you won’t be able to stop pedalling. It’s best to take downhills very very gingerly in this state. Otherwise, just pedal home and head straight to the bike shop. If on the other hand, your free-hub fails to engage when pedalling, there is a relatively simple fix to turn your bike into a fixed wheel bike (as above). From your pack, whip out your plastic ‘zip ties’ and fasten the back of the cassette to the nearest spokes near where they slot into the hub. You’ll want to use at least 3 zip ties. If you carry spare spokes, bending these around the cassette and spokes with your pliers will be a bit stronger. This fix is great if you have a lot of mainly flat, reasonably easy miles to cover (what are ya, a roadie?), but be careful on downhills and get off for steep uphills, or you’ll break the zip ties and be back to square one. Blown rear shock If you have an air-sprung shock and the shock blows a seal, you could find your suspension bike bottomed out- which will make it pretty difficult to ride, and possibly damage the shock. Partly because air shocks are pretty reliable these days, and partly because we’ve been lucky, we’ve never blown a shock – yay. Nevertheless, we’ve heard tell of two solutions, one using an appropriately fashioned stick to jam between the shock and frame, effectively locking out the suspension. The other solution is more interesting and ingenious: depending on how your suspension configuration activates the shock, it is possible to use a spare tube to oppose the compression of the shock, making the tube into a simple spring. For example, if your rear suspension is activated like a Kona, or a Turner, or an Iron Horse, with the shock compressed vertically in line with the seat-tube, it’s possible to tie your spare tube around the top-tube and the shock linkage – oingo boingo! But, remember, you’re aim isn’t to get a nice cushy ride, its to wrap the tube as tight as possible to keep everything still and safe. (Explanatory photo coming soon!) Loss of hydraulic brake fluid and/or a broken brake lever reservoir cap (hydraulic disc brakes) 
Your brake levers sit an exposed position, and it’s common for a lever to be bent. But if you’re really unlucky, you may damage the top cap of the reservoir on brakes like Hope and Shimano, where the reservoir sits atop the brake lever, or you may lose hydraulic fluid. If you damage the top cap of the reservoir and don't fix it, hydraulic fluid is likely to drain or be spilt from the brake, leaving you with no brakes, and nasty caustic hydraulic fluid on your frame and your hands. Surprisingly, the reservoir isn’t under pressure when you squeeze the lever, so all you need to do is stop the fluid from running out of the top of the reservoir – your quick fix doesn’t need to oppose the force of you pulling the brake lever. To achieve this you’ll need a flat piece of quite rigid plastic (or wood if you’re a dab hand at whittling). Suitable options might be the case from your puncture repair kit or that small piece of thin wood over in the bushes. In the case we witnessed, the rider used his own lunchbox! Cut the new top to shape, use your Philips screwdriver to ‘drill out’ holes to put the screws through, and tighten your masterpiece onto the brake lever body. If you’ve got nothing suitable to make a top cap, put as much of the broken or damaged top cap back over the reservoir, and you guessed it, duct tape tightly around the exposed reservoir as many times as you can.
If you lose enough hydraulic fluid from your brakes that there is none left in the reservoir, your brakes will no longer work. But, in a pinch you can top it up with chain lube, or any old oil you can get. If you happen to be in Europe, olive oil is a viable option – no kidding. In fact, while we haven’t tried this ourselves, we’ve heard tell that water will get you by, but I expect you’d want to go easy on the brakes to avoid heating the water to boiling temperature. It’s worth a go. Of course, you’ll need to flush the brake system clean and refill with brake fluid when you get home. Or better yet, ask your friendly local bike shop to do it for you – you’ve earned it. Broken Shoe No seriously. This has happened to two of us in the past - once when half way through the 50 km Karapoti Classic. When you’re shoe upper comes away from your shoe lower, leaving half your shoe still clipped into the pedal, it makes riding the bike much more difficult than you’d think. So what’s your best bet? Duct tape liberally and aggressively around the shoe while you’re wearing it – making sure you don’t’ tape over the cleat! Then try to be gentle when clipping out of your pedal – so as not to rip the duct tape. Broken frame -OK, you’ll be pretty unlucky if this happens to you, but the repair of a broken frame, in our case a snapped chainstay, is a good indication of how far you can go with some inventive thinking and the right bits in your camelback. The snapped chainstay repair was carried out by a tour guest who was an engineer by trade and who carried a healthy spares kit with him –though we used only two Allen keys and a spare derailleur cable to repair the chainstay to a state where the bike could be ridden carefully on a 4wd road back to town. A picture speaks a thousand words when it comes to this repair, but we didn’t take one, so you’ll have to just imagine. More to follow: yep, we’ve seen even more silly broken bits than this. We’ll be adding them to the site, along with some photos just as soon as we can. If you have any of your own suggestions, we’d love to hear them, email us at info@singletrackcolorado.co.nz . “If you can’t fix it with duct tape, you aren't using enough" |