Life Style

Pro BMX Bike Hacks that will Change Your LIFE

Today I’m going to be teaching you absolutely nothing but BMX bike hacks. Originally, I wanted to make like a how-to article today, but I decided it might be cooler to do something a little bit different and make one of those life hacks tricks that everyone makes.

I’ve been riding BMX for quite some time now and over the years, I’ve accumulated a lot of little tips and tricks that I think will make your life a lot easier and should help in a variety of situations.

Bike Bar Hacks

The most classic problem of them, all your bars move. Now, this really isn’t a solution to the problem, but if you’re out riding the street or you’re at a skate park and you don’t have an Allen wrench and you want to be able to at least ride your bike around.

I’ve got a little trick that’ll help you out and It’s not really rocket science.

If you take your handlebars and you place them on the ground, you can actually just kick right here and you’ll be able to get your bars straight again.

These all things are the same for BMX bikes for adults so you don’t need to worry about it.

Look at that, it might take a couple of tries, but it’s a quick and easy way to get your bike at least rideable again. A lot of people always ask how they can fix their bars from moving. So rather than just showing you how to do a quick fix and I want to show you more of a long-term solution.

Usually, when people have issues with their bars, moving nine times out of 10, they have either a new bike or a new stem or new bars.

That’s because there’s usually fresh paint on the inside of the stem or on the inside of the. If you look, you can actually see the dust from the paint wearing off on the inside of the stem and because of that new paint, the bars tend to move and slip around a lot.

You could have your dad or your macho uncle tighten down the bolts as hard as they can, but chances are, it’s not going to work, or they are going to strip your bolts and you’re going to be left worse off than you were before.

So, my solution that works nine times out of 10 is just taking some core sandpaper and rough. The surface that has contact with the bars.

That way has more to grab onto than just two smooth surfaces. In theory, you should make horizontal marks, but I don’t really think it makes a difference. If you can feel the little bumps with your nail, that’s a good thing.

See, look how shiny and smooth that is and that might as well be like soap. So we’re going to do the same thing to this as well and if you want to go crazy, you can also sand the bars too.

Although I don’t think it’s as necessary since it comes with these little girls. Still, though you can see where the paint’s already worn off from contact with the stem.

Dust Cleaning

Go ahead and clean all the dust off, assemble it back together, and you should be good as new. Well, you have your stem off.

One other thing that you should probably pay attention to is the gap. When you’re tightening down, make sure you have an even gap, both here and here, because if they’re not even, you’re going to have like an uneven clamping load and your bars might move.

Justin gives you have a hard time lining up your bars with your forks. One more tip I will give you is to use your forks kind of as a guide to line your bars.

I’ll usually run mine parallel with the forks or slightly forward, because I’m a taller guy, but it makes it way easier to find the right spot.

I know next we are going to move on to something much simpler, and this is one of my biggest pet peeves ever throttle.

The number of people whose bikes I’ve ridden at like skate parks and stuff that have throttle grip, but don’t fix it for some reason and like absolutely baffles me.

There’s no like little mystical genie under there making your grips, spin around the solution is extremely, extremely, extremely easy.

Just take your grip, roll it back and chances are, you’re either going to find sand because you fell in the dirt or water because you’re out riding in the rain, take your shirt, clean it up.

I’m going to need your help though. So, find a friend’s grip, roll it back for me and there’s absolutely no reason.

So many people should be selling. A common myth I’ve seen is that you can make your grips softer. If you boil them in hot water before you put them on your bike.

I feel like someone just said that just to kind of get a trend to catch on and just mess with kids and laugh because I tried it when I was younger, it didn’t work and I cried.

It did not make my grips any softer and I mean, my mom. So, I’m going to show you my way to stretch, grips out, and make them feel softer.

It doesn’t really matter whether you use the compressor method or WD 40. The first step is to get a little bit of hangover on the end of the grip.

Once you have just a hair of hangover, we’re going to use some channel locks and lock them on the grips to keep them from moving.

So, it might be handy to have something you can just poke a tiny itsy-bitsy hole. So it doesn’t compress air in there. Well, look at how wide we just stretch the script now.

If you feel a stretch grip, it’s going to feel way softer because the rubber is all spread out and you have like a wider area to grab onto when you take the vice grip off and it will naturally retract a little bit.

That’s why we left that hanging up and as long as the underside of your grips and your bars are clean, you should never have to use any sort of glue or adhesive to keep your grips from moving.

Although do you know when you have stretched out grips, they may move and be more susceptible to throttle grip than if a grip is compressed.

Tighten Wheel

So, remember to keep them clean this next trick I use all the time. So, what’s another thing that we absolutely hate when it happens to her. That would be a loose chain.

Often what happens is we grind on allege and we slammed down on it hard and the back wheel will move to result in a loose chain.

The noise might bother you or your back wheel mice and because it’s rubbing on the frame. So, I’m going to show you a very easy way that you can get your chain to be tight again.

That will usually do the trick just enough to get you by. Usually, you need to flame it pretty hard if it was enough to move your back wheel.

So usually, you have to slam it pretty hard to get the wheel, to move back again and it won’t really move unless you land hard on a ledge or something.

Again, another really common issue that people have is when they’re trying to tighten the wheel and keep their chain tight, it moves around because when you turn that little nut, it’ll like, go on the frame, and then we’ll either move the wheel back or forward.

So, I’m gonna show you a little trick for that too. You could have a friend pull on the wheel while you try to tighten each side, but that never really works. Start with both sides.

Then take your nondriver side, move it over. So it’s almost like touching the frame or like as far over as you can while kind of pushing it lightly backward, tight in that side.

Then while you’re tightening the other side, instead of having to push the wheel back, you can just push the wheel over to the side and then tighten the other side that way you’re kind of just working the wheel.

It might take a little bit of fiddling to get it right and to figure out a method that works for you.

But the side-to-side method always works in, saves me a lot of time and hassle. So next time your friend has a loose chain, show it to them and help them and let them understand how to do it.

Otherwise, you will be doing it every single time for them. Like I always do for my friends. That was back when I was nice.

Now I just say it you need to just play another common thing I’ve seen is people not ride or people complain because their compression cap is either stripped or they don’t have one.

So, they can’t get their headset tight talking about this thing right here. But if there’s a will, there’s away, but the way that this thing works, all it really does is pull your forks and your stem together to keep this.

If you live on the edge like myself, you can take your thumb and kind of rub it and it really absorbs in, but you don’t really have to.

your scratches are now invisible. I wanted to do something different today. I wanted to make something helpful. So here you go. These are my life hacks for BMX bikes.

Conclusion

If you ever have a friend that faces the problem that I gave you a solution, be sure to share this article with them and tell them to stop being afraid.

If some of this stuff was helpful, be sure to leave a thumbs up and let me know in the comments, what you would like to see me do for the next article and if you want to learn more you can visit OutdoorXsports for more information.

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