DIY Life

Tandem biking has grown in popularity over the last few years. Far from being the quaint "bicycle built for two" of the past, tandem biking is all about serious fitness these days. The larger, stronger person sits in the front, steering the bike and controlling it, while the "stoker" is the person who powers from behind.

Tandem biking has several benefits. It's a great activity for two people with different fitness levels. It also offers a mental challenge along with the physical workout -- partners must team up to find a rhythm that works for them. But most of all, it's just a whole lot of fun.

The drawback, of course, is the price. Low-end models go for about $500, while top of the line bikes can reach around $2500.

You can make your own tandem for a lot less than that, however. Find a couple of used bicycles, then make your way over to Instructables, where they'll teach you how to build your own tandem bike. You'll need to be at least a little knowledgeable about the parts of a bicycle and how they work, but if you are, this is a fairly simple hack.

[via Make.]

Bikes. They're everywhere. Mountain bikes and road bike sales started trending up about a decade ago (thanks, Lance), and recently sales got an additional bump because of rising gas prices. Do you own one? If so, you're familiar with the expensive pricing structure at the bike shop.

You really should get a complete tune-up on a yearly basis. And if you do the work yourself, you can save bucks big time. This used to be a case of reading confusing manuals with substandard illustrations. But no more! At this excellent bike repair online resource, you can do it all.

The instructions are clearly written and the photos are well-done and informative. So get out the tool box, surf over there, and get started! This is a great time to replace a freewheel, adjust your brake calipers, or adjust a headset!

[via Lifehacker]

I was surprised when, after gifting my husband with a new bike for his birthday, he hung on to his old one. He explained he kept it around for days when he had to park his bike outside, because he didn't want the new one to get stolen.

It's a problem that bicycle commuters and bike enthusiasts everywhere have to deal with. Bikes are easy to steal and hard to track.

So what do you do when you have a nice ride that you risk losing every time you park it? According to MAKE, you ugly it. A little paint, some faux techniques to make it look rusty... suddenly you have a junker bike that still rides like a dream. Tear out the seat, replace the screws, and even the most savvy of bike thieves might not know that that beast is really a beauty underneath.

Road biking and mountain biking are as different in style as they are in culture.

Road biking requires cyclists working together in order to maximize their performance through drafting and other strategies. In my experience, the drawback is that in contrast to working together to get a better time, road biking can be very "every man for himself" when it comes to helping others with mechanical issues.

Mountain biking, on the other hand, seems to have a culture of assisting anyone who looks like they are struggling, in spite of the need for individual talent and achievement in order to excel at the sport.

There is no drafting on an intense section of single track. I have been lent tools, tubes, chain parts, tech tips, and encouragement during various rides when things have definitely not been going well. Many of these offers came entirely unsolicited from complete strangers who just happened to pass me and my friends when we had stopped to deal with a situation.

After the break I will, in the true spirit of mountain biking, share a few of the more unusual repairs I have encountered when either parts or tools have not been present to do the needed repairs properly.

Spring is nearly here, and for many of us that means hauling out our bicycles. Whether you're riding for fun, or commuting to work, a bike in good repair is essential to your safety and comfort.

Experts recommend a bike tune-up every year. Done professionally, this will cost you about $40, but you can easily do it yourself.

Here are 8 important things to do before heading out on your first ride. You'll find details about each step in these tips for tuning up your green-machine.

1. Pump it up!
2. Check for wear and damage
3. Check break lever and caliper action
4. Check break-pads
5. Check cables
6. Lube the chain
7. Tighten lose bolts and screws
8. Clean the bike

Once you've completed the tune up, you're ready to hit the road. Hopefully everything runs smoothly, but if you do encounter problems, this DIY bike repair site is a great resource for diagnosing and fixing common issues.

So you pulled out all the stops, put on your cape, and played Super Mom/ Dad for Christmas by getting the little one(s) a new bicycle with dual overhead thingys, quad turbo whatsits, and a unified theory of squidgybo. Congratulations on making their little dreams come true! Now that the bow is off and they have figured out that maybe deep winter isn't always the best time to go riding, where do you store the dang thing until the spring thaw where it won't get stolen, snowed/ rained on, or treated like a fire hydrant by every K-9 in a 10 block radius?

If you aren't lucky enough to have an out building or storage shed, and you garage is already full of either stuff or cars, what are you going to do? Do the kids park it where ever they can find room in the garage and hope it doesn't get run over or hit by one of the cars? Do you wind up like a contestant in the hammer throw and lob it on top of the junk pile and hope to not start an avalanche? Do you cover it up with a tarp outside hoping spiders and condensation don't reduce it to a small pile of rust before it gets ridden again?

PVC pipe. It's affordable, easy to work with, durable. Not, it's not very pretty, but let me say again: it's affordable! PVC is sort of a wonder-plastic and can be used creatively in many a DIY project. (That is, if you're willing to overlook the fact that it's highly toxic and, therefore, not exactly a green choice.) Like this one, for example: build a bike rack using PVC pipe. I found this one on Instructables, offered up for public consumption by user "imarunner2."

This is a nice 'n' easy little project. If you have a halfway decent saw, you can make this. You will need a length of three-quarter-inch PVC pipe and a bunch of connecting joints -- six t-joints and six elbow joints. All the pieces are glued together using PVC cement. One Instructables reader tried it out and found himself out-of-pocket by a mere $5. Peanuts!

Interested in bigger, more elaborate models? Take a look at some of the pics people have uploaded to Flickr. You've got your king-size garage versions, and then you've got your mondo versions, too. That last one must've been a fun weekend project. Not.

Liking the DIY-with-PVC concept? Check out Gary's post on a DIY vehicle shelter made from PVC pipes.

Ever wonder what to do with all those bicycle parts that you know you can't throw away because someday they will have a use? Ever wonder what to do with those crutches that you hope you'll never need again?

Wonder no more, as I have found a great instructable on how to make a stool from spare bike parts and crutches. Ryan McFarland, aka zieak, went to the thrift store and purchased some old crutches. He took those old crutches, along with some bike wheels and inner tubes, a few bolts, a piece of plywood, and some insulation, and made an adjustable height stool with all those parts. Talk about ingenuity!

The complete instructions for the "bike-crutch stool" can be found at instructables.com. I don't know about you, but the inner tube seat doesn't appeal to me. I would certainly have to cover the insulation and plywood with something a little more feminine. For all you guys out there, this is probably the most manly thing though, right?

Overweight folks, beware the watt.

I am providing a concept for you that can accomplish several admirable goals all at the same time. If you're green-minded and spend your days telling people how we need to "save the planet," then you need to read this and put your butt where your mouth is...umm, sort of.

Convergence Tech Inc. is ready to provide you with complete plans for building a bicycle powered generator yourself . This generator utilizes any bicycle that is in decent shape and can easily produce between 150 to 200 watts at 12 to 20 volts DC. Bikes with larger wheel diameters provide a better mechanical advantage than bikes with smaller wheels but Convergence Tech indicates that their concept has been employed using bicycles of various sizes and types, all with satisfactory results. When you're done creating electricity, you can easily disengage the bike and ride it to work or school.

I used to have the coolest tire caps for my old bike. They were just a pair of dice, but at least 95% more awesome than the standard caps that came on the bike (the bike store also had similarly cool skull-shaped caps, but those seemed like they'd be tempting fate). If I hadn't lost the dice caps in a move, I'd definitely be using them on my new bike: a pearl-pink retro cruiser with white pinstriping!

So, I know that you can buy dice tire caps from some bike shops, if they carry them.

But if you have dice and some common equipment around, why not try making your own dice tire valve caps with this tutorial by Instructables user Supersaddy? It's a very simple procedure, even easier if you own a drill press: clamp down a die, drill a hole in it that's big enough to allow for insertion of the valve cap, glue the valve cap into the hole, let them dry... and ride off into the sunset with your rockin' new tire caps. You've got style, my friend.

However, be aware that there are two nearly identical tutorials for dice tire caps on Instructables. The other one recommends using Gorilla Glue, but Gorilla Glue may be inappropriate for the project, because it expands as it dries. That means that it can push the valve cap out of the hole that was drilled for it.

When I was a kid, my brother had a bicycle that had the seat cover ripped off. Let me tell ya, that was not a fun experience. I liked to ride into town, which is a 5 mile trip. By the time I rode those 10 miles, my entire bottom was crying out in agony.

You can keep your own bottom happy with this bike seat cover made by Lenore. She has made a cushioned bike seat cover out of fabric and foam. With her step by step instructions and pictures illustrating the procedure, you too can have a happy bum and finally ride those extra country miles that you just couldn't ride before when you had that crappy seat cover. Not only that, you'll have the coolest seat cover ever!

Some things are absolutely amazing and some other things are just, well, um...strange. Take for instance the amazing bicycle hack I ran across on the Core77 Industrial design blog. While the concept is positively brilliant in practical application, in execution the results could be less than desirable. Having logged literally thousands of miles in bicycle travel myself, I can tell you that the "Grocycle", a hybrid grocery cart-bicycle, is a major disaster just waiting to happen.

I love the idea but I hope the rider in the picture over there has his health insurance paid for in full because it will only take one pot hole the size of half a grapefruit and that bike rider will get an asphalt nose job, or worse. Perhaps we should all pitch in and buy him some larger wheels for the front of his cart, and a good bicycle helmet also.

If you're gonna build a bike from the ground up, you might as well do it right, and do it thoroughly. Although most bikes don't need this step done, when I'm building a bike I like to get at everything: whatever I can clean, check over, and rebuild, I will. That way, I know the bike is done right, I know it's going to work properly, and I've just added years to the lifespan of this humble machine. And it'll be a lot more fun to ride.

The headset of a bike is basically the front steering assembly. It includes the front tube, the front fork, the steering handle bars, and the odd bits such as ball-bearing cages, washers, and nuts. If the bike you want to rebuild has a rough time steering, or feels clunky while riding, you might well want to rebuild the headset.

The one I'm working on has a bit of rust on the headset top lock-nut and adjusting race, but, as you can see, it all comes apart with the proper tools.

Speaking of which, you'll need the following tools to do it right:

If you ride a bike, you know the frustration of having a punctured tube. Suddenly, you are immobile. And that sucks.

Luckily, changing a bike tire tube is easy, but it requires a critical tool. The tire lever is vital to changing a tire, and if you have two of them, the work is cut out for you.

Slip the tire lever under the bead of the tire and pry the bead out from the rim. Then hook the lever tool onto a spoke, and, using the other lever, pry out more of the tire and then slide the free tool around the rim, pulling the bead out until that side is removed.

Removing the tire is easy. Carefully extract the valve stem -- the little tube you inflate the tire through -- from the rim, and then peel the tire and tube out of the rim.

Inspect the tire and tube for damage. In the photos, my tube has a puncture in it from a sharp, metal road hazard, probably a roofing nail. It also sliced through the tire itself, but hopefully you won't have this problem. The tube is the thing you want to pay attention to.

The hole in my tube is easily detectable. Nail punctures or other minor tears may not be so obvious, though. If your tire has a slow leak, chances are the hole is TINY. To find the puncture, put some air into the tube and submerge it in a bathtub or basin of water. Holding the tube under, inspect the tube closely for bubbles rising from it. Where there are bubbles, there's a leak. If you can't find it, put a little more air in the tire (in case the hole is so small that it only leaks under higher pressures), and repeat. If it's impossible to find a hole, you might have a problem with the valve stem. Submerge it, and gently work it around with your fingers to see if any cracks at the base of the stem are the culprit.

Once you find the damage, and it's not too bad to fix, you'll want to patch the tube. To do this, you'll need a kit with patches, sandpaper, and vulcanizing fluid (in a small tube). Sand the damaged area, spread vulcanizing fluid in the area around the hole (not too much, but you definitely want to cover the area where the patch will go), and wait for the fluid to set. This takes about 5 minutes.

Then carefully apply the patch, holding it on firmly and pressing all around it. Pinch it on and try to make sure it's contacting the whole area with the tacky fluid on it, and make sure the hole is as close to the middle of the patch as possible.

Let that set for a minute (with you holding it firmly, but not too hard) before you carefully remove the plastic backing from the patch. If the patch starts to peel up, you might need to sparingly put more fluid on the area, and then hold it in place firmly for a minute or two. The patch should peel off without too much hassle.

Replacing the tire is practically the opposite of removal. Put one side of the tire around the rim. You can do this by hand by pushing the bead of the tire over the rim and following it with your fingers around the rim until it pops on, and then carefully slip the tube back into the tire. Start with the valve stem, and be careful. I can't count the number of times I have replaced a tube but was careless with the stem, and ended up cutting the tube unintentionally right where the stem meets the tube. That sucks mightily, and I urge you to avoid this. It can produce a slow leak or a quick pop, and both of these outcomes are undesirable. Be attentive. The tube you save may be your own.

Seat the tube all the way around the inside of the tire, making sure it's not going to pinch against the rim. Push the un-inflated tire into the tire, feeling for twists or bunched up areas of the tube. Make sure the tire and tube are smooth against each other.

Then, using your fingers at first and then the levers, press the second side of the tire onto the rim. The bead will go on about 3/4ths of the way around the tire, then you'll have to use the levers again. It's a bit tricky at first, but once you do it you will feel confident and virile. Pump the tire up to acceptable limits, put it back on your bike, and ride away.

Note: You must make sure if you are replacing a tube that you get the proper size. Standard rim sizes are 26" and 27", and widths vary by tire. Some popular tire sizes are 26" x 2" and 27" x 1 1/4". Tire size is usually printed on the sidewall.

Everyone knows how to ride a bike, right? But amazingly, not very many people know how to teach someone how to ride a bike. If you're considering taking the training wheels off of a youngster's bike and teaching them how to ride a two-wheeler, your first step should be to make sure they want to learn it. Children run on very different clocks, and some will want to learn at very early ages, and others will be content to wait a year or two.

Today my 4 year-old came home from a group play date where almost all of the other kids were riding their bikes without training wheels, and announced that he wanted to learn to do so too, this instant! So we made plans to head over to the local park with a nice flat paved area to practice. After the jump I'll share some of the ideas I used to make the experience fun for both him and me.