Wheels and Tyres

Wheels and tyres are vital to your safety. Learn how to check for and fix loose quick-release skewers, punctured tubes,worn tires and buckled rims.

Loose Quick-Release Skewers

Loose skewers result in loose wheels. If your rear wheel comes loose, it can slide against the frame and slow you down or bring you to a stop. If your front wheel comes loose, it could cause you to lose some control of your steering or worse, it could come off causing you to crash.

The Roberts Cycle webpage has a very informative page explaining how to use the quick-release skewers to remove and/or secure wheels on your bike.

Punctured Tubes

Fixing a flat tire is one of the most common basic maintenance tasks you will perform on your bike.

This video explains how to replace a punctured tube:

 

Worn Tires

There are only two reasons for replacing old tires:

1. When the tread is worn so thin that you start getting a lot of flats from small pieces of glass and the like, or the fabric shows through the rubber.
2. When the tire's fabric has been damaged, so that the tire has a lumpy, irregular appearance somewhere, or the tube bulges through the tire. 

Cracks in the tread are harmless. Small punctures in the tire such as are typically caused by nails, tacks, thorns or glass slivers are also harmless to the tire, since the tire doesn't need to be air-tight. Any foreign objects embedded in the tyre rubber should be checked for periodically and removed.

Buckled Rims or Wheel 'Out of True'

Let's assume that we have an out-of true wheel to deal with. The rim may be hitting one or both of the brake shoes during its rotation, or it may just be coming close. Fixing this is known as 'truing' the wheel. This should not be attempted unless you have mastered most other aspects of bicycle maintenance.

This video explains how to true (straighten) a bicycle wheel:

 

Further advice on how to true wheels can be found at the Sheldon Brown website. This article first appeared in Bicycling magazine, January, 1979.