mtb maintenance book?

can someone recommend me a decent noddy guide to maintaining bikes (I have an mtb and a racer and can do nothing beyond changing the tyres...), as I couldnt see anything in the local bike shop ? Basic things like getting the right chain tension rather than building one from scratch.

btw, managed to fall off the mtb right into a nettle patch yesterday while wearing shorts and vest - one whole side of me came up like a leper in an acid bath

 

I think halfords do a haynes manual for bikes.
nothing you can't find out online mind.

 

Like dean says, there is a haynes manual.

If you're vaguely mechanically minded though, it's all very simple. Just trial and error you'll figure out what a lot of it does.

 

i have mel allwoods mountain bike maintainance
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos...51623/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_2_1/202-2653933-8068639

pretty good - easy to read and understand and goes from changing a tyre to fork maintainence and deraileur witchcraft.
cheers

julian

 

Other thing is a lot of maintenance stuff is published by the manufacturers. I have manufacturer's service manuals for my forks, rear shock, brakes, etc...

 

thanks - I'll check out those books.

 

The Park Tools website has some pretty good guidance for fixing your bike and Sheldon Brown has good useful stuff on it aswell. I think the book called Zinn and the art of mountain bike maintenance is supposed to be the gold standard.

 

I have that one and it really is fantastic. I am pretty much mechanically dyslexic, if such a condition exists, and I have just finished building my own bike from start to finish (other than buying a pair of ready spoked wheels - I'm going to try this only with the help of an adult) with the help of this book. I found it gave clearer instructions than a lot of the common manufacturer's (Shimano, Magura, Race Face) own instructions.

Can't recommend it highly enough.

 

I have a superb pictoral workshop manual from rond magura for the O24U fork, which just happens to be rather similar to my magura Asgards... Some of the other ones are rather less good though (fox's manual for the float is ok, but could do with a bit better description of some things, magura's description of bleed procedures for the louise/fr are rather poor).

I learned most of mtb stuff by trial and error. Other than wheels both of my bikes have been self-builds.

However, today I've been doing caliper pins, discs and pads on the car...