Howto Disclaimer

With MTBGuru’s Howto’s, you should keep the following in mind: reading, understanding and using the Howto is by no means a guarantuee for succesfully finishing the task at hand, and any mechanical failure, accident, psychological trauma or other cataclysm that may result from using the Howto is entirely your own responsibility and liability. Never trust stuff on the Internet – actually never trust anything, unless you have good reason to do so. We aren’t professional bike mechanics or repair people and won’t claim to offer all wisdom here. Have a professional do the job if you don’t want to take any risk (which doesn’t mean the job will be done well, but at least you can blame someone when it does!). All that being said, we firmly believe that doing the work yourself is a gratifying experience, as long as a couple of rules are followed:

  1. Understand what you’re doing. If you don’t understand what you’re doing, you won’t know if, when and what you screw up. Thinking you understand it is not the same as understanding it. Howto’s and manuals are typically littered with jargon – therefore:
  2. Get informed. Google it, look it up on Wikipedia, check it out on Howstuffworks.com, scan around the forums, buy, borrow or rent books and manuals, ask your mechanically inclined buddy at work for advice. Using only one source of information (such as this Howto) is generally not a Good Thing.
  3. Have patience. Don’t do the work in a rush because you still have to pick up the kids from school or have a hot date in an hour. Wait until you have the time and then make yourself comfortable (put on a tune, sip a latte).
  4. Trust your work (only if Rules 1 to 3 have been complied with). This isn’t brain surgery, anyone who’s willing to take the time and do some self-education can do this.

Why spend all the time on this instead of throwing some money in and have the pro do it? This is where the gratifying part comes in: say you’re working on your bike: you are the one who is going to zip along at 30mph on the bike, huck off that cliff, fly down the mountain, bounce off those rocks, not your mechanic. She may be having a bad day while she’s working on your bike, her significant other may have just left her, and unless you have good reason to totally and utterly trust her, you will most likely do a more profound job yourself (only if the above rules have been followed, evidently). Good, some things are better left to the skilled hands of a professional, but trying or doing it yourself will certainly educate you and help you in case you need to repair something on the go.