Safety first: 5 ways to inspect a bike after your next ride

Jan 20, 2024

Beautiful young female bicycle mechanic focusing on a detail while working on a customer's bicycle Photo: Getty Images

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Cycling is one of those sports enjoyed by a wide variety of people, some with mechanical understanding and others without any.

However, it also relies on well-maintained equipment for performance and safety. A post-ride inspection can save you a lot of headaches.

Having your local shop or bike mechanic maintain your bike is always recommended. Sometimes, it is recognizing when a visit is needed that is the most critical. This is why it is crucial to inspect a bike and keep up with the small things so they don’t become big repairs.

Learning these preemptive and proactive DIY maintenance tasks and signs can limit your bike’s downtime and save you time and money on parts or labor.

Going out on a ride? See our 5 quick habits for your next pre-ride bike inspection to make sure you’re starting off on the right foot.

Our five ways to inspect a bike are fairly simple and, with a quick after-ride check-over, will not leave you needing roadside assistance. Better yet, a quick assessment can keep you from needing to sit in a long line at the shop waiting for parts or service.

If you ask me, brakes are the most important component to maintain. Reliable and predictable braking makes you more confident as well as safe.

For modern bikes, this means disc brake pads, but it also applies to rim brakes too. It has baffled me, but the transition to road disc has been a learning curve for early adopters since rim brake pads have significantly more wear material.

It’s almost comical the number of photos I see online of riders running their disc brake pads down to the backing plate. This results in the need for a new rotor, pads, and sometimes a caliper if things are neglected too long.

Recently I was on a ride, and one of the riders in the group had disc brakes that were making the most horrific high-pitched noise that would transition to grinding.

I politely mentioned that he should address it ASAP, and he replied, “Really? I don’t hear it.” It turns out it was too late, and the noise was the alloy backplate grinding away on his rotor.

There isn’t much material on a disc brake pad, so it can be hard to recognize that they are low. For me, the easiest indicator is the return spring. The quickest way is to look into the caliper from above at the amount of material that extends past the metal return spring.

Sometimes this can be easier to see if you remove the wheel. In some cases, the caliper may not have been perfectly straight, and the pads wore unevenly. If the material is flush with the spring, then it’s time to replace it.

Every system is a bit different, but typically best practices when you go to inspect a bike are never to actuate the brake lever when the pads and/ or rotor are not in place.

When replacing pads, you may have to reset the caliper pistons (on hydraulic systems), and this is simply done with a none marring lever like a tire lever or the Park Tool PP-1.2.

Pro tip, if all you have is a flathead screwdriver, leave the old pads in and leverage off of those to reset the pistons into the caliper. This way, you are damaging the already-worn pads and not the piston. Or take it to your local shop, and they can normally knock something like this out while you wait.

Your chain is truly one of the most important parts to look at inspect a bike. Keeping it well-maintained is essential to a well-performing bike and shifting system.

Chain lube is number one, but too much can be bad, too. If your chain is wet to the touch, then it will likely pick up dirt and road grime and lead to expedited wear. If you clean your bike regularly, then the buildup is not likely, but a wet chain is not good.

The best practice would be to clean your bike about once a month with a bike-specific spray wash. Making sure to scrub the chain and drivetrain with a stiff brush that will loosen up the embedded grime.

Never use high-pressure water, but rinsing the whole bike off with a pressurized hose is OK as long as it is on a wide setting that showers the bike, not a jet of water.

After finishing the cleaning, bounce the bike a few times to help get water out of the nooks.

Apply your favorite lube to the chain and keep rotating the crank backward for a few rotations after you have applied the lube. This will help ensure it gets into the rollers and pins where it really matters. Then give the bike a few hours to let that soak in before your next ride.

It is almost always a bad idea to lube your chain moments before a ride. Also, remember that there are loads of different types of lubes on the market.

Some are good for wet conditions, and others are better when it’s dry. There are also lubes that require more frequent cleaning and applications, so make sure you choose one that fits your needs and riding conditions.

Tires are constantly needing to be changed as they are your contact point with the ground and see some of the most abuse as well as the quickest wear of any part on a bike.

So having a spare tire or two at the house on hand is always a good idea. Road tubeless is a huge talking point on almost any road ride these days, and much of it is around convenience.

When I go to inspect a bike after a ride, my general rule of thumb is I run tubeless on any bike that gets at least one ride a week. This is because sealant lasts longer when it is moving, and temperatures are cool.

If you have more than one bike and the spare rarely gets ridden, then I would likely have it set up with tubes. A flat tube is quicker to air up and less likely to have damage from sitting flat. While tubeless is not really damaged from sitting flat, the sealant will dry up and need to be replenished before you could go out.

As far as an everyday bike, I recommend tubeless for anyone on modern wheels with a 19mm internal width or wider.

Make sure you have a full tubeless system, rims, tires, valves, and the appropriate rim tape. Road tubeless cannot and should never be attempted with any product that is not intended to be tubeless.

Sealant is the last key ingredient to a successful system, and there are many brands and types.

Understanding the difference between types of tubeless tire sealant is important. There are two main types of sealant, normal and extended life (endurance).

Within that, some sealants have particles in the fluid that helps with larger punctures. Most brands just have a regular formula that responds faster to punctures but needs to be replenished every 2-4 months. Extended life sealants as the name implies last longer in the tire between replenishments, about 4-6 months.

The downside is it does take a few extra seconds for it to stop a leaking puncture in the tire. The last version that only a few brands offer is a cold-weather sealant for when temperatures are below freezing.

Knowing and understanding what sealant you have will help moderate expectations. I use a small piece of tape on the rim near the valve with the date I last refreshed the sealant written down. That way, every time I air up, I know when I am reminded.

I also look for signs that I may have had a puncture and lost some sealant. This is best done when you finish a ride because it will be most evident, and I can top it off before the next ride.

If this is your first road tubeless setup, you will likely need to adopt a new tire pressure and likely need to consider a new tire size. Road tubeless should never exceed 72psi. There are plenty of pressure calculators, but simply more volume (tire size or rim width) means less pressure. So when shopping for a tire, check something like the SRAM AXS pressure calculator before choosing a size. You may need to go larger to stay under the max pressure of 72psi.

This might sound funny or weird, but I can’t tell you how many times I have quickly diagnosed a problem on a bike just from the sound of a bike as it was moved or “bounced.”

What does this mean? When you inspect a bike, lift it a few inches and do a controlled bounce. Listen for anything that sounds weird or different. Sure, the drivetrain and chain will make noise, but I’m sure we all know what that sounds like. Many times you can hear a headset that is in need of adjustment, but many times it is something like the axles/ quick releases.

On rides, I often hear a weird noise from a rider’s bike and before we roll or at the next light I will ask if I can check their bike. The most common is a loose cassette, wheels not secured correctly, and loose headsets. Lots of loose headsets, and I can normally hear that from over ten feet away.

In my pre-ride checklist I mentioned securing wheels correctly, but sometimes people over do it. Many thru-axles don’t have handles and are overtightened with a long at-home style Allen set.

Most on-bike multi-tools are much shorter, offering less leverage and I have seen many riders struggle to get them off even though they have the correct tool. They don’t need to be insanely tight and, as with everything else on your bike, have a torque spec.

If you’re going to inspect a bike after a ride, you might have that internal itch to do a derailleur adjustment when things seem a little off, but we must resist. Remember that the small screws on any derailleur do not adjust the shifting tension, and they also don’t move on their own. If your shifting was good and now it’s not, they are not the reason, so leave them alone.

In most cases, it is either a chain/ cassette that needs cleaning, lubed, or replaced. It can also be a miss alignment. Maybe you dropped your bike or leaned it against the derailleur.

Last is a degrading cable or housing that is adding friction to the system. In any case, don’t start turning the small screws. It will lead to a much more complex repair.

If you have an electronic system, things are a bit easier to diagnose. Start with the battery. If the battery is low, the voltage can drop just a tiny bit and cause issues. If the system is wireless, there are batteries in the shifters that need to be changed too.

In most cases, on an electronic system, it is a bent derailleur hanger (always good to have a spare at home) or an excessively worn drivetrain. The latter is because the systems are so precise and consistent that you don’t feel the hesitations in shifting till they are beyond recovery.

If you have cables start with small adjustments in the cable tension, a quarter turn on the barrel adjuster. Keep count of how many turns you put on it in case you go in the wrong direction. If one or two quarter turns seem to fix it, then you likely just had a bit of stretch.

If you do more than one full rotation, then there is an underlying issue, and you may need new housing, or a cable is starting to fray and could break soon. Also, with many bikes going to internal routing, housing and cables get manipulated in very confined spaces that cause excessive wear.

Many times this can be a design problem but something to consider when trying to get a regular maintenance schedule routine.