[Howto] Take apart your bike.

[ridelife!]

Since i have a new frame on the way, i figured i'd post a howto on taking apart everything on your bike.

What you will need.

• All sorts of wrenches.
• All sorts of allen keys.
• Flathead screwdriver.
• Varsol cleaner.
• Lots of rags.

First, grab your tools.


Next, flip your bike upside down for easier access of the wheels.


First things first, the front wheel.


Find the right size wrench, and untighten the bolts holding the wheel to the fork.


If you have unsealed bearings like mine, when you take out the axle, you will see the icky grease and dirt and stuff in there.


The picture doesn't have the bearings in, but take those out first, put them on something so as not to get grease everywhere. See all that stuff in there? That's gotta come out to get fresh grease in there. Take a rag and get all that stuff outta there. Do this for both sides.


Now that you have that cleaned, you should have a pile of dirty bearings. Keep these on something away from your workplace so they don't get lost.


Moving to the rear wheel.


Take it off in the same way as you did your front, removing the chain tensioner as well.


To take your back wheel off, you gotta get the chain off it, so while you're at this you might as well just take it completely off. If you have a chainbreaker, cool. If not, you should have a master link. It's pretty much self explanatory from there.


Now put your chain aside, possibly near the bearings.


Now back to the rear wheel. When you get the axle out of there, if you have a freewheel, then it'll be like this. Very similar to your front wheel.


Thats for the freewheel side, take the bearings out, again putting them aside from where you're working. And clean that grease out.


Now you should have a pile similar to this.


On the other side of the wheel, the bearings will be a different size, so take these out and put them in yet another pile away from where you're working.


Your pile should look like this.


Now clean the grease out from that side as well.


Now we're going to clean these things. Take your bearings, and chain outside and put some varsol in a bucket. You don't need very much.


This is about all you need.


Now stick the bearings in there, rub it around with your hands, get them clean.

[ridelife!]

Now bring the clean and dried bearings inside.


This is where i recommend you put all your parts in one place, this means your axles, bearings, wheels and chain. To store the bearings, sounds weird, but take three different colored baloons, and stick each set of bearings in a different colored one. This way none will fall out.


Then put all your axle hardware on your axles.


Now find a corner or somewhere where you can put your cleaned up wheels, axles, bearings and chain.


As of now, your bike should look like this.


Now we wanna do the cranks. First take off your crank arms by undoing the compression bolts, then the pinch bolts with an allen key.


Now that you got the crank arms off, it should look like this.


To take apart your cranks, undo the bolts on one side, these may unscrew opposite as they could be locking bolts, they only need to be about finger tight. After these are off, you should see the thing pushing the bearings into the cup, this will unscrew as well. Now just take out your axle. Once you take your axle out, do the same as you did with your wheels; clean your bearings and wipe the bearing cup if you have unsealed bearings. Now get your axle and bearings, stick it together and put it in some sort of container.


Now you have this, and you're cranks are done.


Put your crank arms, spindle/axle/bearings container, and your sprocket over with your wheels.


Now is a good time to take a break, go play Madden 07 and score a 98 yard interception for a touchdown.

Now you can flip your bike over, it's time for the fork, bars, and headset.


First we'll take off the stem, then the bars. You gotta undo the compression bolt first, then the pinchbolts.


The compression bolt uses a wrench, pinchbolts use an allen key.


Now you should have that off and be left with this.


Leave that for now, we're going to take the bars out of the stem. Just undo the front bolts, and take it off. Make sure to put it back together though.


Back to the steerer tube/headset. Now take those spacers off, and now you want to get your headset open on the top, which will allow the fork to come out, as well as open up the bottom bearings. I have pretty much unsealed everything, so this is how you do it. Take a screwdriver and push it between the little covering and the cup. Pry this up, it should come off.


After it's off, it should look like this.


Thats the top done. Now we can get that fork off, and look at the bottom. At this point i will mention that you should do the same thing with these bearings, clean the cup and the bearings. Your fork should slide out and the bottom should look like this.


Then a close up of the bottom.

[ridelife!]

Right, now make sure you don't drop those bearings, again clean them and stick them somewhere else. Oh, and when cleaning bearings that are in a casing.. a toothbrush is very helpful. Now you're left with this.


And TAADA! you're golden. I will put up the reassembling part once my frame gets here. Put all your parts together in one place until i get the reassemblance up. Haha. I kept my fork on so i didn't have to take out my headset bearings.


BTW, sorry about the giant article, i wanted to be detailed.
BTWBTW, sorry about the triple post.

[screwglue]

nice ass article man! i gave u rep for it! this should be in the bmx tech faq for sure! i got a question, actualy 2, if u have sealed bearings do u still need cleaning it? and how do you take of 1 peice cranks?

[RideBmx92]

u spend all this time for doing this for everyone?
thx u i always wanted to no how to take my bike apart i suck

[Wombles]

i give u rep man! excellent review! too bad mine r sealed XD

[ridelife!]

Haha, thanks guys, i figured that i would've liked to know when i was starting out, so maybe people would find it helpful. Umm, the sealed bearings thing you don't really need to clean em, since not a lot of dirt gets in there, but with unsealed.. you need to every once in a while, 'cause dirt n stuff gets in there. you shouldn't need to do it with unsealed bearings more than like once every 6 months, if that. oh, and i think there is actually a one peice crank remover? don't quote me on that one.

[tafkin]

great article

[Celeborn]

Mostly good, but the part about taking the cranks off is very basic; "Take all the stuff apart" isn't exactly very helpful.

Would be nice of you went into more detail about this part.

[X0X]

Very nice artical :]