Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Technical Info

This website is such a treasure. When I was first getting into bicycles in 2013, it was a mix of Sheldon Brown and the local volunteer-run co-op that taught me everything I need to know. He is himself a generous spirit, advocating for DIY tooling, repair, and reuse.

I would highly recommend anyone into bicycles to try building their own wheel using his article.

R.I.P. Sheldon

https://www.wired.com/2008/02/sheldon-brown-w/

The old Web... Thanks to Sheldon for teaching me how to fix my bike, how to launch from a stop, and how to April Fools.

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/real-man.html

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/tork-grip.html

If you liked Sheldon Brown (who was a treasure but the content is out of date now), definitely check out the Park Tool videos on YouTube. Calvin Jones, their director of education, recently retired after building an incredible library of instructional videos. As an amateur bike mechanic, I wouldn't have been able to build or maintain my bikes without Calvin's videos.

I wished more of the web was like this.

if you like this you may also like:

https://outspokencyclist.com/tag/harriet-fell/

Sheldon's website is such an awesome relic of the internet we all miss. It still has a ton of relevant information if you ever find yourself dealing with obscure wheel sizes or something like that. Love it. RIP.

Sheldon was a wealth of information when I first started tinkering on my vintage 3-speed back in 2007. I would pore over these simple pages for hours in my dorm at college instead of studying. That led to dropping out and working in the bike industry for almost 10 years. It was a great preparation in problem solving and systems-oriented thinking before I got into programming.

I always loved this quote from here: https://www.sheldonbrown.com/stuck-seatposts.html

> To update an old saying, 28 grams of prevention are worth 454 grams of cure.

i built a set of wheels following his instructions, using my brake pads as the reference for centering and truing, rode dozen of thousands kilometers on them, daily, part of my courier job. all the wheels i had after that old Mongoose were also built the same way. i cycle a 1997 Trek 430 as my main transportation and i freaking love it. soldered a custom rack for panniers after its geometry. farewell Sheldon, i literally read your entire blog, at least twice

if i had found a cycling crazie to date back in the days, i would certainly use "building a tandem" section of that blog for suuuure

Random tidbit, his daughter is a researcher/mathematician at OpenAI.

A wealth of knowledge here, especially helpful for wheelbuilding and checking the compatibility of archaic sizing systems. Lennard Zinn is another great reference in bike maintenance: https://lennardzinn.substack.com/

This was a major influence for me, both getting into single speed and fixed gear biking before the craze, and building geo cities sites with my friends in high school

RIP to this legendary hacker.

The service Sheldon Brown provided to cyclists worldwide cannot be overstated. It also becomes apparent every time one needs to research some bike subject involving any technology that appeared after his death.

Hey Gemini, can you describe the imperial bicycle tire sizes compared to ISO in concise and preferably comical way?

Trying to understand imperial bicycle tire sizing is like trying to learn a language where the grammar rules change based on how the speaker feels that morning. It’s a chaotic legacy of Victorian engineering and regional stubbornness.

Here is the breakdown of the "Imperial Nonsense" vs. the "ISO Sanity.... etc etc

I learned wheel building many years ago from Sheldon's website and that lead to many great memories fixing other racer's wheels around camp fires in my 20s.

A fantastic resource!

I used to work on bikes professionally, and this was the first place we went for help. Even today, it's one of the clearest resources out there

This is such a great website. I have enjoyed reading the articles in the past. It was the final push that inspired me to build my own wheel set instead of buying a complete when I was building my new mountain bike piece by piece. The art and zen (and frustration of trying to feed a shift/brake line through a frame), I tell ya.

Legend! I was a bicycle mechanic for a decade and this guy was our jezus! He influenced so many of my creative bicycle builds and exposed me to things like Alex Singer, Rene Herse, bicycle quarterly etc.. Big love for Sheldon and all his passion and work.

I once posted in rec.bicycles.misc that I had just completed a 6 week solo bike tour of France. Someone asked me a series of questions about riding and camping in France and I spent about 10 minutes writing a response. Francophile Sheldon Brown asked if he could put it on his website and I was thrilled to say yes. He did so, formatting it and adding links and photos for the places I mentioned. (The page is still there but the photos and links are gone). Years later, a co-worker stopped by my cubicle and asked if I was the person who wrote that article -- he said it had inspired him to start bike touring ... I was again thrilled.

I've been a fan of this website for ages. What I like is the no-nonsense approach and referring to the underlying mechanical principles.

Cycles are an interesting invention as it's easy to look at and figure out what the parts are doing and this leads to a huge number of people thinking that they can improve certain bits. Unfortunately, most "improvements" aren't and there's very good reasons why cycles have evolved to their modern designs. In engineering terms, I find it fascinating as cycles are all about trade-offs e.g. strength/weight/aerodynamics/cost

I rebuilt a bicycle using tools in my dad's garage and basically just guesswork. Then I discovered this website and found out everything I'd done wrong. I had mismatched bearings, crap brakes and gears, you name it.

Must admit, though, this was pre-YouTube. While I do admire written works like this, and I still treasure some of my cookery books, there's nothing like watching someone do these things. Especially things involving subtle skills that nobody would think to write down, like adjusting derailleur gears. Learning by copying is the original and best way for many things.

I lost my "Clear Creek Bike Book" in the 1980's but eventually Sheldon made me not miss it at all.

It's not as comprehensive, and more corporate than Sheldon's site, but I currently love Park Tool's youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@parktool). They shamelessly mention their tools, but they frequently give alternatives like, you can get this park tool for pushing your disc brake pads back into place, or you can just use a plastic tire tool.

This is an incredible ressource without which I feel so many bikes and bike parts would go to waste. At the bike coop I volunteer at we’re trying to follow Sheldon’s footsteps by collecting information and procedures that are about making bikes & parts last for as long as they possibly can. What’s truly amazing is that all that documentation is amazing for both low-resource repairs on the cheapest of old parts and vintage part enthusiasts.

I think Sheldon Brown’s impact is a valuable lesson on sustainable engineering and the enormous role documentation plays in it

Today I learnt that you're supposed to favour the front brake, and I cycle every single day as my primary means of transport. Thank you.

When I was a young(er) postdoc and had to overhaul my bicycle -- my main transportation to work-- this site was invaluable. Forever grateful to Sheldon.

When I started biking in the early 80s, Fred DeLong’s guide to cycling was THE book. But it didn’t have videos (obviously). My interpretations weren’t standard because I never had another human to compare with. Sheldon’s guides were the logical torch passing from Fred and it was neat to see how the things I had been doing for 30+ years we’re supposed to look.

Thank you for sharing. This is wholesome as f*ck.

There is (was?) a bike shop in Pittsburgh, Kraynick's Bike Shop [1], where you could bring your bike and use their tools. It was nice, and I appreciate the DIY ethics and generosity.

[1] https://kraynicksbikeshop.weebly.com/

Too bad there isn't something like this bug focused on Dutch and German city bikes. There's a lot of knowledge not covered in one single place, spread over hundreds of small webpages, YouTube videos etc in multiple languages. Some of it just passed as word of mouth.

I’ve learned about that website only four years ago. It is still helpful, teaches me how to install front derailleurs properly (as deep and far to the front as possible, better chain line with less trimming and better shifting).

The German Wikipedalia tries to safe some stuff.

Highly recommend using his way of locking your bike - you can secure both the frame and rear wheel easily with a small U-Lock (harder to pry open)

Front wheel is still vulnerable but if you don't use QR skewers you have a huge leg up

Love this site - ran a small side business in college tuning up people's bikes. Sheldon's site was so helpful

Always tried to street people away turning a perfectly good road bike into a fixed gear but it was the rage at the time

Ask HN: How does one archive websites like this without being a d-ck?

I want to save this for offline use, but I think recursive wget is a bit poor manners, is there established way one should approach it, get it from archive somehow?

So happy to see this featured here! Had been tinkering with bikes a long time before finding Sheldon’s site, but when I did I was dumbstruck by the amount of insight. And to top that, what a person he was. RIP

I'm so glad they went back to the old design.

There was a point a few years back where someone did a site revamp with modern CSS and all that horrible jazz in clear attempts to monetize this incredible resource.

Happy to hear they reverted

Used to be my worship place along with the crazyguyonabike and Ken Kifer

RIP Sheldon Brown. His enthusiasm for and ability with bicycles - and his clear and engaging way to communicate both to you - were a large part of getting me back into cycling as an adult.

Legends Never Die.

i worked as a bicycle mechanic when I got completely tired of it-world. This website saved my ass numerous times while fixing bicycles. Absolutely legendary webdesign also that just works well.

a truly heartwarming website and discussion. I built my wheels the Sheldon Way as well, I'm looking at them right now. Such a rare combination of wisdom and generosity. Thank you, OP, for posting. Also, hey all, click that donate button!

I just visited his website today, when I needed to check something about tire widths.

a lot of the changes and updates to articles since Sheldon Brown died are controversial, I recommend checking out an old version on the Wayback machine

A web site as old as the internet, and still relevant.

Still awesome.

And the web design!

An absolute treasure. R.I.P., Sheldon.

A true derailer