Bicycling Magazine's Complete Guide to Bicycle Maintenance and Repair for Road and Mountain Bikes
by Jim Langley

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Book Reviews of Bicycling Magazine's Complete Guide to Bicycle Maintenance and Repair for Road and Mountain Bikes

Book Review: All types of bikes covered in one source with great pix!
Summary: 5 Stars

In addition to discussing bike systems, there are chapters on creating a home workshop and even how to box a bike. (Exactly how my bike came from its manufacturer!)

There's really not a lot more to ask for from this book. The main complaint is that some of it seems a little out-of-date despite its 1999 copyright date, and I regret now that I did not list examples as they struck me, but a minor one, for example, was ignorance of 10-speed cassettes. However, some bicycle components are changing rapidly, and it's difficult for authors to keep up. Note that this is the 4th "expanded and revised" edition, so it does appear that the editors of Bicycling have made a commitment to update the book regularly.

I also got bogged down some times in the text description of procedures without pictures, but everything is clear when you get back into the step-by-step procedure section with the photographs. So it also seems that information is unnecessarily repeated.

Bicycling magazine has run articles on how to get home from different types of roadside breakdowns. It would be nice if they include this as one separate chapter that can be read before a trip. The rest of the book lends itself to a "only read the chapter I need at the moment" type of use. You don't need to read through the whole book to understand chapter 15 on saddles, for example.

I have also read and reviewed Complete Idiot's Guide to Bike Maintenance and Repair, and despite its knowledgable author and fun style, did not have step-by-step illustrations which are required for such a book. Others have also recommended the books by Zinn and Van Der Plas, and I have seen them and they look good, but separate books are written by each author for road bikes and mountain bikes, while this book is one reference for all bikes.

Transportation Books

• Books > Subjects > Professional & Technical
• Sports & Outdoors > Individual Sports > Cycling > Bike Repair
• Mountain Biking
• Miscellaneous > Reference