Best Book?

[beachcaster]

What do you think is the best book as a help for for general cycle maintenance ?

Ajustments........servicing... gears ....day to day stuff ?

barry

 

[Panter]

For MTB's I have the Zinn and the art of mountain bike maintenence book which is pretty good.

TBH though, there's so much good stuff on the internet that I think books are a bit outdated, sad to say.
Especially as a lot of stuff is supported on Youtube so you can see a working demo too, and all for free.

 

[rh100]

I've got the Haynes book - but a bit sparse on the detail in places - maybe it's just me though. The internet is good, but unless you take your laptop with wifi to where your bike lives - you'll be doing a lot of running back and forth to get the next step off the screen

 

[Garz]

The internet is fine to use for some research and confidence, nothing wrong with a proper book though as rh100 says to work with beside the bike. I have the park tools book which I was extremely lucky with as my mate bought me it for a present!

 

[Norm]

I've got the Haynes book - but a bit sparse on the detail in places - maybe it's just me though. The internet is good, but unless you take your laptop with wifi to where your bike lives - you'll be doing a lot of running back and forth to get the next step off the screen

+1 to all of that.

The Haynes book seems weird in places, as if they haven't figured out whether their target audience are beginners or experts, skipping between the two with no warning, rationale or, in many cases, explanations of what they are talking about.

I don't have it with me to give examples at the moment, but some straight forward (to me) tasks get half a dozen photos and other bits get a side-ways mention with no details other than a warning that doing it wrong will lead to your bike falling apart.

 

[summerdays]

I have 3, of which I like the Haynes manual the least. I also have Mel Allwood - The complete bike book - which I like with lots of photos, and I bought the Park Tools one for Mr Summerdays last Christmas, as it seemed a little more technical. I know that the information on the Park Tool book is on the web-site but its useful to have the book beside you when you are trying to do a repair.

 

[rh100]

I was surprised out how iffy the book was, I bought it on Hayne's reputation from using their books to fix cars. Hmmmmm, Haynes best known for motorists, motorists don't like cyclists and a iffy haynes cyclist book, it's a conspiracy I tell ya'

Also - I've just noticed how excruciatingly clean everything is in the photo's - I want to see stuff covered in crap like mine is! More realism required.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

The internet is great to see how it's done - Park Tools, Sheldon and bicycletutor (if you want vid).
A good book I have is the Rand McNally one, but it's a 1976 copy so there's no fancy new fangled stuff in it. The Park Tools book looks good but I've been too tight to shell out for that one yet though.

 

[Randochap]

Another Zinn fan and of Richard's Bike Book But, yeah, it's the Age of the Internets.

 

[Arch]

I've got the Haynes book - but a bit sparse on the detail in places - maybe it's just me though. The internet is good, but unless you take your laptop with wifi to where your bike lives - you'll be doing a lot of running back and forth to get the next step off the screen

Or, just live in one room, so your bikes and computer are in the same place...

 

[gbb]

+ another one with the Haynes manuals. Very skimpy on the actual 'nuts and bolts' of maintenance...its more about the theory.

It's actually quite difficult to produce a description of how to do a job...a description that an utter beginner will follow.
I write my own breakdown / repair instructions for machinery that we send all over the world...instructions that'll help an engineer to identify a fault and repair it pronto. Step by step instructions with photographs. The trouble is you end up with 3 pages on just a simple repair. Which is what mainstream publishers dont want. Short, hopefully (but usually not) concise details in the smallest amount of space.

I'd like to see the Zinn books etc out of interest...perhaps they go into much better detail.