Fanylion Mountain Bike Team
Official site of the Fanylion Mountain Bike Team. Includes mountain bike ride guides, gear reviews, bike maintenance, team reports and rider profiles of the Fanylion Racing Team.
In this section
Starkey's Top Ten Tips
1. Stop your disc brakes squealing by removing the pads and rubbing them on a rough, clean surface, such as your concrete garage floor or paving slabs. This will roughen the surface and hopefully prevent that infernal noise.
2. Set your ideal saddle height by sitting on your bike and placing your heel on your pedal. Your leg should be straight. Then when you are riding with the ball of your foot on the pedal you will be in the most efficient position.
3. Set the sag for your suspension at ¼ for XC duties and ⅓ for freeride/downhill duties. Big freeride drops however may require your spring rate to be increased and rebound decreased to prevent bucking you off on landing.
4. If you snap your rear derailleur or rear mech hanger you can still ride on! Remove the rear derailleur from your bike, shorten your chain sufficiently that it fits fairly tightly around the middle ring at the front and the smallest ring on the rear cassette, and you can ride on, singlespeed. (Note you must use the small cog at the back or the chain will simply slide down your cassette to the smallest ring anyway).
Alternatively, split an inner tube and wrap your rear chain stay with it, secured with zip ties. Then loosely lash your chain to the stay using more inner tube. This will allow the chain to slide past but retain some of the tension. You may be last up the remaining climbs but at least you won’t have to walk home.
5. When you buy a new front derailleur don’t throw away the little plastic ‘Pro Set’ block; use it in the future when you fit new gear cables and you want to set up your gears again.
6. Use hairspray or spray mount adhesive when fitting standard grips. When the spray is wet it will help you get the grips onto your bars, then when it dries will hold them in place. But you really should upgrade to lock-on grips, then you wouldn’t have this problem.
7. Look after your chain! It is the singular most important part of your bike. If you return home from a muddy ride and don’t have time to clean your bike, you MUST at the very least give your chain a quick wash, wipe, coat with GT85 and relube. You will be thankful when you next retrieve your bike. Once you chain has started to rust there is no going back and your whole drivetrain will suffer.
8. Don’t waste money on expensive frame patches that prevent your cables rubbing your paintwork. Just wait till MBUK gives away a sheet of free stickers, then cut these to the required shape and use them. If they start to peel off after a couple of months, simply replace them.
9. Don’t throw away your old toothbrushes, keep them for bike cleaning duties. Nothing gets into those nooks and crannies like an Oral B toothbrush. And if your missus has been really annoying you, use her toothbrush then put it back in the bathroom afterwards.
10. And finally, Team Hodgson’s favourite: use two shoe cleaning brushes to clean your chain. Trap your chain between the two brushes and wind the cranks to get all crud and grit off. This is a quick fix and is no substitute for removing your chain and giving it a good old degrease. As I said before, look after your chain!
Happy Riding,
Team Starkey Grease Monkey.
Fany fact
The quickest way back to the car is to keep going.