I would highly recommend anyone into bicycles to try building their own wheel using his article.
PS, interesting to note that Mr Brown seemed to be quite a fan of sci-fi books: https://www.sheldonbrown.com/org/books.html
Then I found his other article on an alternate wiring for a shimano mountain bike RD-310 7/8 speed drive train (which unlocks 9-speed ability), which thus let me use the rugged 7/8-speed derailleur for the cassette WITH shimano dura-ace indexed bar-end shifters (which use, get this, 9-speed spacing on an 8-speed index because it made their system "proprietary"). All of this works together flawlessly <3 <3 RIP sheldon brown.
Hear, hear. It's an incredible resource.
I got into building and fixing bikes around 2004, and built a couple of fixed-gear bikes on a shoestring budget using parts from Nashbar.com, and Sheldon Brown's wheelbuilding guide.
I also corresponded with Sheldon a few times via email, and created the Wikipedia article about him. He contributed to it a few times himself, before his untimely death in 2008. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Brown_(bicycle_mechani...
Imagine my heartbreak when I didn't tighten the lockring enough and stripped the threads the first time I tried to skid stop :')
Things are still being updated, primarily by John Allen. There's some writing about changes on the blog: https://sheldonbrown.com/blog/
(I have every expectation that he'd be quite pleased to entertain well-written updates from other parties, if anyone feels like being constructive. John is pretty easy to contact.)
Time is strange.
Curious, what does "He was 68 63" mean. Is it a bicycle gear joke about his age at death?
if you like this you may also like:
A devious genie maliciously interprets your wish, and…
Poof!
This website’s content is now regurgitated across dozens of AI slop websites.
> To update an old saying, 28 grams of prevention are worth 454 grams of cure.
Friends don’t let friends put aluminum posts in steel frames. Especially if those friends ride in the rain instead of wussing out and calling for someone to pick them up.
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
It’s amazing what a difference just a little generosity of knowledge can make in other peoples lives.
I'm riding my qualifying 300k tomorrow!
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
A fantastic resource!
I ended up writing my thesis on bicycle wheels after this. Or, it's a thesis on optimization algorithms, but I managed to play around with optimizing wheels as the "real world application". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10410813
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
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.
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.
I think Sheldon Brown’s impact is a valuable lesson on sustainable engineering and the enormous role documentation plays in it
The German Wikipedalia tries to safe some stuff.
Front wheel is still vulnerable but if you don't use QR skewers you have a huge leg up
Always tried to street people away turning a perfectly good road bike into a fixed gear but it was the rage at the time
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?
FWIW I have a local copy of sheldown brown's website I mirrored a few years back when they announced the shop would close as I expected they would eventually shutdown the website too. I don't know if his wife is still alive, she had her own space nor if someone has taken over the maintenance.
No doubt it's already in many archive sites though, you could just fetch from them instead of the original?
Gotta hit the search I feel :)
I don't think that's being a dick for old-web sites that still exist today. Most of the information is text, the photos tend to be small, it's all generally static (ie, light-weight to serve), and the implicit intent is for people to use it.
But it's pretty slow-moving, so getting it from archive.org would probably suffice if being zero-impact is the goal.
(Or, you know: Just email the dude that runs it like it's 1998 again, say hi, and ask. In this particular instance, it's still being maintained.)
https://archive.fart.website/archivebot/viewer/?q=sheldonbro...
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
Legends Never Die.
And the web design!
