Bike maintenance is an important element in cycling. Learn how to remove the front wheel of a bike from a pro in this video.
Open quick release system
Open brake
Loosen fork
Pop wheel out
Kevin Livingston is a former professional cyclist who successfully rode and completed six Tour de France races as a teammate of Lance Armstrong. Kevin now focuses on Training and Coaching through his company, Pedal Hard Training Services in Austin,TX.
KEVIN LIVINGSTON: Hi. I'm Kevin Livingston. Now I'm going to show you how to remove your front wheel and put it back on. Most bikes these days you're going to find use the quick release system. There are no nuts and bolts or wrenches needed. It's a quick release. So first you begin to remove the wheel, you begin by opening the quick release. Now the quick release is open. I'm going to--same goes for a screw, lefty-loosey-righty-tighty, so I'm going to spin it, I'm going to hold the nut over here and I'm going to spin this over here left to loosen on the fork. You may need to open your brake if the tire is large to clear the brakes to remove. On most bikes like on this road bike this is a more competitive bike you wouldn't need to open the brake. But let's open the brake to give more room for our tire to slip out. A lot of the forks are made now with a safety hook too so that even though I loosened it, it still won't come off the bike. So I'm going to have to loosen it some more. And then I'm going to pop it out, nope some more. Now I've got it out. Again these little notches on forks are a safety in case that were to come open or you may even forgot to close it. It's gonna take a lot for that wheel to come off your fork. Now let's talk about putting the wheel back on the bike. Again I've--maybe I've travelled in my car and I needed to remove my front wheel so I'm going to come back in, drop it into the fork. Now a good tip here is I'm going to hold my skewer and my lever over here, I'm going to hold it straight and I'm just going to tighten manually this right with this hand. And generally you want to tighten it about as tight as you can get where it's snug just manually like this. We had to loosen it quite a bit to get it off the fork. So you continue to tighten it, now it's snug by hand, that's tight enough. I keep the skewer open on this side, I make sure my wheel is centered in the fork, and now I close the quick release. And it should just close. There should be some tension it doesn't have to be super hard. If it's too hard and you force it, you might strip this bolt over here and this could pop off and you're going to need a new skewer. One thing to consider on your quick release and your skewer when closing is the position. I could close it at any position, I could close it here but I don't like this position because if another rider--if I were riding with someone else were to overlap my wheel, their wheel could become engaged in their spokes and open up my skewer which would be very dangerous. I prefer to have the skewer horizontal pointing back, I close it back towards me. In this way it's nice and snug and tight and there's not a bigger risk because of a wheel getting in there and opening it up. I close my brake. Do a quick check make sure it's centered. And off you go.
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