Our bikes are hard-tail mountain bikes and as you can see for our blog, have been heavily used with around 3 months worth of downhill mountain biking which is probably their limit. They are far from ideal tourers, but fortunately they are great bikes and proven robust, so why not use them?
Of course, they need to be prepared for the trip to make them work better, and also to have some proactive maintenance to minimize the chance of them breaking when away. So here is a list of what we’ve done:-
Before:-
After:-
- Replace brake disks – a couple were damaged and were replaced
- New brake pads
- Replacement of brake fluid (mineral oil)
- Replacement of derailleur jokey wheels (Mels)
- Replacement chains
- Swapping of 2.1″ off-road tyres to 1.6″ smooth puncture resistant tyres
- Fitting of pannier rack (special one needed to mount over brake disks, but bikes have mounting points
- Replacement of seat-post to a suspension post
- Replacement of normal saddle with a more comfortable gel saddle (and proper fitting/adjustment thereof)
- Fitting of new wireless cycle computers
- 2x water bottle cages with 2x 650ml bottles each
- Bell 🙂
- Bar mounted lock
- Good clean & oil!
So really, not that much… The rest of the bikes seem fine and in good condition, so not expecting toooooooo many problems.
Here is a list of stuff we're taking with us.... Each item seems to best, or best value for money. Lots of new toys which hopefully will have use after the event!
Listed here for interest, and of course we get nominal commission from Amazon should you buy anything from an ad you click here which buys us a beer from time to time. Thanks 🙂
2 thoughts on “Bike Preparation”