KEVIN LIVINGSTON: Hi. I'm Kevin Livingston. Let's talk about general maintenance of your bike and also a bike check. Something you should use before you head out on your bike everyday. This is something I do. It's just a total habit over the years of riding. And even if I know my bike was maintenanced by a Tour de France team mechanic, I always would do the same thing every morning. One is I always check my own skewers so that my wheels are put on right and tight enough. So I would gently tug on this, feel the tension, feels good to me, I'd close it back up. I'd check that my tire is aligned properly between my brakes and the fork. I usually would give it a spin, tap the brakes. I make sure that my brake pads are properly aligned so that when I pull the brake on to the rim they're touching the rim, not rubbing my tire. If they are rubbing my tire and I begin braking, I would quickly blow out my tire and have a flat tire. I'm going to do the same on the rear of the bike. I'm going to check my skewer that it's tight. I can feel the tension just there by pulling it back, feels good. I close it up. I check that it's centered. And then I check my braking surface. The braking pads are on the braking surface of the rim. If I did need to adjust, a lot of brakes on these top-end bikes, even most bikes, you can do manually just by grabbing the brake and centering it yourself. There's allowed a little bit of give there by the bolts that connect the brake to the bike. The other thing I'll check is that my headset, this is my headset, are that my handle bars are tight. So I do that by grabbing my front brake and just wiggling back and forth the bike a little bit. I drop the front end. Make sure there's no noise. I know that everything up here is nice and snug and tight and safe. I might check that my saddle isn't slipping. Check my tire pressure. Gently ride--I would recommend checking the sidewalls of the tires will tell you how much pressure. Usually it's somewhere up to about 120 psi or you might hear, like, a term 8 bar. Let's see--what else? I check my chain. Everything looks good. I think I'm ready to go, I'm ready to ride. Bike checked out well. Now, going on to some general maintenance, when I get back from a ride, especially if it rained or I rode through some muddy terrain or some dirt, I want to do a general cleaning. Most of the time if it's nice out, it just takes a general wipe down with a cloth, maybe a damp cloth. I wipe my frame, all my components and everything. Now if my chain gets dirty I might use a degreaser to clean the chain on a cloth. Just using a cloth, holding it on the chain, spinning back while I clean the chain, and then I'm going to apply oil again. I'm going to oil my chain, my derailleurs. I may oil even a little bit, my housing and my brakes. Then I'm going to go back with a cloth and I'm going to wipe down everywhere that I oiled or lubed my bike. In that way I won't collect excess dirt because that grease is going to draw dirt on the bike. You could also wash your bike with a light soap and water, but don't use any heavy soaps because you don't want to damage any of the material or the glue or products that were used to make these bikes. That's some general tips on bike check and maintenance.
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