Three bike maintenance hacks
Mon, January 20, 2020 
Here’s one you can use at home or even on the road should a tumble put your handlebar stem out of alignment. The only tool you will need is an Allen wrench to loosen and re-tighten the stem.
Turn your front wheel at an angle, then closing one eye and sighting from above, sight the front and rear of the stem to center on the front tire. (See picture above.)
Stand straight and with one hand on the nose of the saddle, and the other on handlebars. Lean the bike towards you, rather than try to position your head above the bike.
In other words, move the bike to line up with your eye, rather than the other way around. Make sure the brake cables are tucked away under the stem, so they don’t interfere with your line of vision. (See picture)
Do you have trouble in centering side-pull brakes? Here’s a simple little trick that I have always used.
First, tighten the brake. Don’t worry too much about centering the brake pads at this stage.
With a flat punch, (An old bolt or ¼ inch socket extension works well.) and a small hammer, tap on the top of the brake spring as shown below.
Tap on the right or left side, moving the pads in the direction they need to go to center.
What you are doing, is not bending the spring, a light tap with a hammer will not do any harm. By tapping on the spring, you nudge the brake bolt into the center position without loosening it.
Make sure your brake cable housing is not too long, or too short, or it will constantly push or pull your brake pads off center.
If you need to remove the Power Link that joins your chain. (Right.) and don’t have the specific tool for the job, you can manage quite well using two thin screwdrivers, placed one on either side of the Power Link.
Hold the screwdrivers with one hand and then squeeze them together using a pair of pliers. (See Picture below. Left.)
This will force the two halves of the link towards each other and the two sides fall apart.
No tools are needed to re-join the Power Link. Making sure the link is in the top part of the chain, above the sprockets and chainwheel. Place the pins through the wide part of the slot.
Apply downward (Forward.) pressure on the right-hand pedal to hold the link in place. Then apply the rear brake and push down hard on the pedal with your foot, and the link will snap into place.
Check to make sure the side plates on both sides of the link are in the groves machined into the pins. (See picture above right.)
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Reader Comments (5)
Hi,
There's a better method for undoing the non-reusable "power locks", check out the following pic:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/H3rfnAPtOWI/hqdefault.jpg
It worked great on a 12-spd SRAM chain recently. For the reusable ones (8 and 9 speed "power link", they *should* come undone by hand if you press the plates together whilst pushing the rollers towards each other. Otherwise, see above.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3rfnAPtOWI
You might not be able to put this comment online due to the cross reference (copyright). Hope you find the method as useful as I did -- David
Dave, great stuff for the DIY gang, I have always said a British bike mechanics tools, are a bloody big hammer and a chisel, amazing what you can fix with them
Thanks for the post, Dave. I have used the first and third tip a lot (though I also remove powerlinks with with hands). I must try the second tip, as I sometimes have issues aligning the side-pull brakes on one of my bikes.
I hope you and your readers are enjoying a pleasant start to the year.
Very informative post Dave! Thanks.
Love this! Thank you for sharing such an insightful article!