Four ways to ready your bike for spring while waiting out winter

Looking out the window at snow banks, icicles and frozen rivers, spring mountain biking might feel far away, but now is the time to start getting your rig ready for when the trails do open. Remember how you pushed through those last few wet weeks of fall riding with a stretched chain and worn out drivetrain, or those tires that were “good enough,” saying there was no point replacing them right before winter? Well, it’s winter now, and if you want to be first on the trails come spring it’s best to have your bike running right instead of trying to play catch up once the seasons started.

Bike shops aren’t as busy now, but they will be when the sun comes out, the temperature rises, and everyone and their dog wants their spring tune-up done at the same time. Avoiding the rush isn’t the only reason to get moving on maintaining, or even upgrading your ride. With companies steadily rolling out their newest and best parts, mid-winter can be a great time to catch the last of the old-model stock on sale before it goes out the door for good.

New Tires

Your old tires might be “fine,” but nothing beats starting a new season on a brand new, tacky set of tires. With the melting snow and spring rain comes wet roots and shiny rocks. New tires will help you find your legs faster after a couple months on the trainer. At least go back and look at your old tires to compare your memory with the reality of worn treads and missing knobs before you check this item off the list and move on.

Drivetrain

If you’re lucky, you can get away with setting off into spring having only replaced the chain. If you’re like most of us, though, by the time the trails closed for 2017 you probably needed that special touch to get your derailleur to shift properly. Remember thinking “I just have to shift up twice, then back down one really quick, and everything works just great” as your gears made a grinding sound? If so, winter’s the time to put that wounded Eagle out of its misery. No one wants to start a new season on a hurting drivetrain. As a bonus, you might still be able to catch some of last years parts on sale.

New Grips

New grips are not the biggest change but, like tires and drivetrains, grips are one of those parts where the line between “perfectly personalized” and “completely broken” are blurred. Grips are especially prone to the heavily rose tinted
often heavily rose tinted in the eyes of the bikes owner. If you’ve been away from the bike for winter, you should think about replacing the grips while your hands have forgotten what “perfectly worn in” feels like.

Bottom bracket and headset

Sure, there’s sexier upgrades to make in the off season. But these fixes can require extra service time and, even if they don’t add bling, they keep your bike rolling. Waiting too long on a bottom bracket full of grit from the fall or that grinding headset can end a frame just as easily as it can end a ride. And if you really need to add a bit of bling to your maintenance schedule, Chris King has taken the massive aesthetic leap of adding a matte finish to their limited edition colour offerings in BB’s, headsets and hubs. It’s King, so of course the new Matte Jet, Slate and Punch look really good.