What parts fit your mountain bike? (I won't tell you to just Google it)

Comments · 987

• BE

  @BermPeakExpress · 4 years ago · pinned

  Yes, this video is way oversimplified and at times, flat out dismissive of details. I know Sram and Shimano 12 speed MTB chains aren’t “perfectly” compatible. Some bikes have freewheels and don’t take cassettes. There was a time where no bike took a thru axle. You could in theory buy a 12 speed HG cassette which would be incompatible with Microspline, which I omitted. Yes, rims have widths too. Older bikes have rim brakes. Valve caps aren’t universal—especially since some riders are going back to shrader. In our original footage I went on forever about wheels and Boost, but we edited it down to a minute because it felt overwhelming and counterproductive. In the end I didn’t feel these caveats would be important to someone who doesn’t have enough experience to Google something. This will hopefully be a simple and welcoming way to get them started out. Thanks for understanding, and feel free to include more info below because the comment section itself is a valuable resource.

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• OW

  @own277 · 4 years ago (edited)

  Tip: If you have an older bike, most large bike companies have an "archive" of past bikes different years. Vital MTB also has good archives of specs and geomentry of different bikes. My bike is a couple years old, and by going to its manufacturer's archive, I can see all its specs and what parts fit.

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• DE

  @Destide · 4 years ago (edited)

  YES! So many people don't cover this. For people starting out it can be some sort of black magic until you learn what measurements you need to record to find parts.

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• CY

  @Cyclingismywholelife · 4 years ago

  As a certified mechanic I can tell you that a non mechanic thinks you know how to fix every mechanical issue in the world on every vehicle in the world, I show them my process on how I find my answers too. I was a bike newbie once too, and I used to ask the newbie questions too, a bike mechanic showed me their process, now im good. Thank you for this video.

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• SU

  @SueBobChicVid · 11 months ago

  I love how he stayed completely clear of the bottom bracket!

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• FR

  @fras-dizzle7210 · 4 years ago

  A good trick if you don’t have calipers, find a decent adjustable spanner (one that hasn’t developed a lot of play yet) and tighten it in untill the edges measure the part and then measure the gap with a ruler.

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• KA

  @kay1975 · 4 years ago

  "When you have 85 standards it's not a standard anymore." Made my day! Thank you Seth!

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• JA

  @jakecalhoun · 4 years ago

  laughs in bmx

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• BH

  @bharathskumar2340 · 4 years ago

  I bought a new mountain bike for 150 dollars from my local store. I am from India and upgradability and adding new parts are very hard. Roads in India are very rough and that was the main reason I bought a mountain bike to go school. But after a few rides I don't know how , cycling always brings the joy during the tight schedule of life . So then I started spending some time for my bike and then the fate dawned on me, since I bought a cheap bike upgrading was no easy task for me . But most of your videos helped me in most tasks . So this video was a very helpful one for me. Also I had to mention that I started watching your videos from the time when you made a video about the Mongoose fat bike .

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• TH

  @ThailibanMedia · 4 years ago

  Although his website is not focused on mountain bikes I think every cyclist should know about the Sheldon Brown (may he rest in peace😞) wiki. He basically compiled his entire knowledge on bicycles into a wiki. It includes great overview of parts, their different standards andwhat measurements are important about them.

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• DA

  @daenzhang1099 · 2 years ago

  ".... what other store sells shirt other than GAP?"   I love the bike mentality, $10k on a bycicle, $200 on a tire, $2k on a wheel, totally normal, but shirts should not be more than $10 bucks

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• JA

  @jasonknight1085 · 4 years ago

  What you&apos;re saying speaks to me because I&apos;m a web developer. Specifically an efficiency and accessibility consultant. <br><br>A lot of times my cleints -- or their users -- know that something is wrong. The problem is they&apos;re not experts, so they don&apos;t know how to articulate it. There&apos;s all sorts of lingo and jargon and it&apos;s painfully easy for beginners to get buried under it. It&apos;s why when a lot of other web developers say idiotic thigns like &quot;The user doesn&apos;t care about the code&quot; I worry. It&apos;s not that they don&apos;t care. If something is wrong usually they know it, they are just too ignorant on the topic to articulate it.<br><br>Quite often I get questions where it&apos;s so badly worded, I have no clue what they&apos;re talking about. People often just seem to make up words for things and expect us to know what it is. <br><br>Hell, I&apos;ve dealt with that in bikes where even in my relative novice status, I&apos;ve got locals flooding me with questions. Which is why I constantly google bike diagrams to know what each part is called. Like a friend was talking about &quot;top rings&quot;... when he meant a headset spacer. Or &quot;barrel choke&quot; because they&apos;re a gun person, when what they meant was a star fangled nut and spacer cap.<br><br>A rookie website owner &nbsp;isn&apos;t going to know the difference between a Node and an Element, any more than a rookie bike owner will know the difference between a quick release and a &nbsp;nutted rear.<br><br>And it takes a lot of patience when people come to you with questions where you not only don&apos;t know what they&apos;re talking about, it turns out to be something insanely mundane and simple. You WANT to say &quot;Oh FFS just google it&quot;, but quite often people don&apos;t know the right words to even search properly in the first place!

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