{"id":3451,"date":"2009-01-07T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-06T16:20:37","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2013-02-14T14:40:40","modified_gmt":"2013-02-14T21:40:40","slug":"barnetts-manual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/barnetts-manual\/","title":{"rendered":"Barnett’s Manual"},"content":{"rendered":"

The “bible” of bicycle mechanics, this 2000-page, four-volume manual is filled with detailed diagrams and repair steps for every aspect of fixing and maintaining a bicycle. Starting with a brief introduction to materials science, lubricants, and basic tool use, this comprehensive manual covers everything — from tires and tubes to wheel building, drive-train theory and application to frame alignment, brakes, seats and more in explicit detail. If anything can break on a bike, Barnett’s Manual tells you how to fix or replace it. The manual is far from cheap, but nothing else comes close to duplicating its value. I spent more than $1500 attending a professional bike repair and overhaul certification class this summer at the Barnett Bicycle Institute in Colorado Springs, CO. While the classes were essential to boosting my skills and understanding of bikes so that I could get a job as a mechanic, this manual is a fantastic resource for everyone, gearhead hobbyists and professionals alike. I’ve got my electronic version at home and we use a printed version at work.<\/p>\n

I have come to realize there are two philosophies of bicycle mechanics: what one might term Pascalian and Cartesian. The late Sheldon Brown<\/a> believed in a highly-evolved intuitive approach to bicycles. In my opinion, this can only come through time and extensive exposure to the craft. Barnett’s, on the other hand, believes in quantifiable mechanics so the approach (and therefore manual) is as close to a science as one can hope for. The thinking is that with the proper set-up one can reliably duplicate any procedure any number of times. So everything in the text is broken down logically, step by step. Personally, I believe a good mechanic must be both willing and able to apply either method as the situation dictates.<\/p>\n

While BBI no longer produces a paper version of the four-volume set, one can still purchase older print copies online for less than $125. Or the manual is available as PDF for $140. John Barnett explained to our class that it simply costs too much to make changes to a printed version of such a large manual.<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pro mechanic’s guide to bike maintenance<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[85],"tags":[702],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3451"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3451"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10193,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3451\/revisions\/10193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}