What's new at sheldonbrown.com
We have added to our page about on-road repairs. There is now a quick list so you can check which particular tools you might need for your bicycle, and we have covered some additional tools.
The basic on-road repairs will get you home or to the next bike shop on your bike, almost every time. If you can’t find the time or inspiration to learn them yourself, you might ride with someone who did!
We have a major revision to our article on truing wheels, referring to some new tools and additional techniques. There are several new photos. Enjoy.
New article about drum brakes — how they work, their advantages and disadvantages, installation, maintenance, safety considerations.
All of our pages about fixed-gear and singlespeed bicycles have been updated. Information about derailerless drivetrains including workarounds for frames with vertical dropouts has been consolidated in a single article and expanded. Table of contents for these articles.
Pages about tandems and tandeming Sheldon Brown and family on home-built tandems[/caption] have been updated. We have more about disc brakes, brake levers, Gates synchronizing belts, and details about upgrading a cheap beach-resort tandem to ride with a child.
A band brake, common in Japan and occasionally seen in the USA, is an inside-out drum brake. Instead of brake shoes which press outward against the inside of a brake drum, a band brake has a flexible band which wraps around the outside of the drum. A band brake is easy to install and adjust, and we show how. While a band brake can be very effective for flatland cycling, it is not good for downhills and should never be used on a front wheel. Read why in our new article.
New information has been added in our article about inner tubes on how to check for installation problems which could lead to failure of an inner tube.
Update to Damon Rinard’s Spocalc Spoke calculator — new advice on fatbikes and hub motors, more spoke calculators for mobile devices added to the list at the bottom of the page, correction of a minor math error (display of bracing angle for radial spoking).
We have a new article which describes how the spokes transmit pedaling and braking torque between the hub and rim. The spokes do it by changes in tension — but how much does the tension change? The article explains the drawing below.
A brake quick release lets you remove and replace a wheel without deflating the tire. Our new video shows how a brake quick release works. The video appears in our article about flat tires, and the glossary.
