[HN Gopher] Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Technical Info
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Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Technical Info
Author : ostacke
Score : 247 points
Date : 2026-02-06 15:40 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sheldonbrown.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sheldonbrown.com)
| carabiner wrote:
| Random tidbit, his daughter is a researcher/mathematician at
| OpenAI.
| hackingonempty wrote:
| ...and his widow, Harriet Fell, is a CS Professor (emerita) at
| Northeastern[0], and an accomplished cyclist who completed
| Paris-Brest-Paris (a 1200km ride and to qualify you have to
| complete 200km, 300km, 400km, and 600km rides in the 8 months
| leading up to it.)
|
| 0: https://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/fell/
| foco_tubi wrote:
| For PBP2027 you have all of 2026, as well as 2027 leading up
| to registration, to complete the required BRMs.
|
| I'm riding my qualifying 300k tomorrow!
| markstos wrote:
| Good luck!
| cos2pi wrote:
| Allez!
| dan-bailey wrote:
| Oh thank god. I was planning on a 200km, 300km, and 400km
| this year, all as mental preparation, and then having to
| blitz next year by traveling to warmer locales. I I'm doing
| my 200km at the end of April, and my 300km in early July,
| followed by a 400km gravel in early August. Going to be a
| grind.
|
| Good luck tomorrow!
| eschneider wrote:
| Nice! Old me and my old bike are sticking to 200kms this
| year. :)
| mikestew wrote:
| Allez! Allez! Bonne chance pour demain!
| bobchadwick wrote:
| I'm never going to ride in the Paris-Brest-Paris, but someday
| I'm gonna make a Paris-Brest pastry:
| https://www.seriouseats.com/paris-brest-pate-a-choux-with-
| pr...
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I tried qualifying for PBP with some friends and we were
| fried on the 600. We did some longer rides, but never so
| intensively and without rest. Such good times. Maybe one day
| (likely when my kids are grown) I'll try again. I still dream
| of eating so much French food after annihilating myself on a
| bicycle. It sound incredible.
| rindalir wrote:
| I TA'ed for Harriet, she's awesome!
| keithjl wrote:
| This website is such a treasure. When I was first getting into
| bicycles in 2013, it was a mix of Sheldon Brown and the local
| volunteer-run co-op that taught me everything I need to know. He
| is himself a generous spirit, advocating for DIY tooling, repair,
| and reuse.
|
| I would highly recommend anyone into bicycles to try building
| their own wheel using his article.
| fyrabanks wrote:
| Same. I built my first wheel according to his specs. His whole
| website is so helpful and thoughtfully written. RIP.
| klum wrote:
| This is my favorite kind of website. An individual going into
| depth on a topic they're passionate (in the true sense of the
| word) about. Another example is Dan's Motorcycle Repair Web
| page [1]. A collection of such websites would be awesome.
|
| [1] http://dansmc.com/
| marttt wrote:
| Here's another, ultimate bike derailleur geekery -- Disraeli
| Gears: https://www.disraeligears.co.uk/site/home.html
| zampano wrote:
| Me too! I'm a big fan of Rob Robinette's guitar amp page [1]
| for similar reasons
|
| [1] https://robrobinette.com/Amp_Stuff.htm
| marttt wrote:
| Yeah. There's probably tens of thousands of internet users
| worldwide with that same story. Myself included: when I was
| fixing my Bianchi retro road bike's derailleur etc some 20
| years ago as a univesity freshman, this site was a definite
| gold mine, immensely helpful, and taught me a ton. One of my
| favorite procrastination rabbit holes as well back then. :) And
| -- a prime example of 1990s era internet and information
| freedom and layman-level enthusiasm -- selfless sharing of
| knowledge (and, I wonder if he also used Notepad to write the
| HTML :). Thanks, Mr Brown, for everything, all the way from
| Estonia!
|
| PS, interesting to note that Mr Brown seemed to be quite a fan
| of sci-fi books: https://www.sheldonbrown.com/org/books.html
| simlevesque wrote:
| RIP to this legendary hacker.
| cguess wrote:
| Amen. If you've ever had to deal with repairing French frames
| from before the 1980s you know that finding a memory leak in a
| race condition is _easy_ in comparison.
| wampwampwhat wrote:
| I'm going to repeat this verbatim in my next technical
| interview. I still have nightmares about an old peugeot px10
| cos2pi wrote:
| A wealth of knowledge here, especially helpful for wheelbuilding
| and checking the compatibility of archaic sizing systems. Lennard
| Zinn is another great reference in bike maintenance:
| https://lennardzinn.substack.com/
| hackingonempty wrote:
| The old Web... Thanks to Sheldon for teaching me how to fix my
| bike, how to launch from a stop, and how to April Fools.
|
| https://www.sheldonbrown.com/real-man.html
|
| https://www.sheldonbrown.com/tork-grip.html
| diggyhole wrote:
| Thank you for sharing. This is wholesome as f*ck.
| foco_tubi wrote:
| Sheldon was a wealth of information when I first started
| tinkering on my vintage 3-speed back in 2007. I would pore over
| these simple pages for hours in my dorm at college instead of
| studying. That led to dropping out and working in the bike
| industry for almost 10 years. It was a great preparation in
| problem solving and systems-oriented thinking before I got into
| programming.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I wished more of the web was like this.
|
| if you like this you may also like:
|
| https://outspokencyclist.com/tag/harriet-fell/
| II2II wrote:
| I loved the wedding photo. It also left me wondering if they
| played "Bicycle Built for Two" at their wedding. It would be
| appropriate, both for the bicycle angle and because Dr. Fell
| moved over to a computer science department.
| czscout wrote:
| Sheldon's website is such an awesome relic of the internet we all
| miss. It still has a ton of relevant information if you ever find
| yourself dealing with obscure wheel sizes or something like that.
| Love it. RIP.
| rsingel wrote:
| R.I.P. Sheldon
|
| https://www.wired.com/2008/02/sheldon-brown-w/
| jmclnx wrote:
| Came to say the same, I meet him once in his shop, what a great
| person he was. His wife also has a great amount of bicycle
| knowledge from what I heard.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| And the shop itself closed in 2021 after being open for
| nearly 70 years. I purchased my Brompton there.
| bsimpson wrote:
| That's actually more recently than I would have guessed. He had
| already departed by the time I discovered bike building in the
| early 2010s.
|
| Time is strange.
| kccqzy wrote:
| Ah that's the reason why reading several articles on the site
| it felt out of date. For example the website states "Disc
| brakes have become increasingly popular on mountain bikes and
| are gaining some popularity for other bicycles" whereas in my
| experience disc brakes are popular for all kinds of bicycles.
| hinkley wrote:
| I'm a little surprised to learn that Jobst Brandt outlived
| Sheldon Brown. He was 9 years older than him and Brown died at
| 63.
| hilsdev wrote:
| This was a major influence for me, both getting into single speed
| and fixed gear biking before the craze, and building geo cities
| sites with my friends in high school
| 2color wrote:
| same
| tetris11 wrote:
| I'm so glad they went back to the old design.
|
| 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
| ian-g wrote:
| I used to work on bikes professionally, and this was the first
| place we went for help. Even today, it's one of the clearest
| resources out there
| chromatin wrote:
| When I was a young(er) postdoc and had to overhaul my bicycle --
| my main transportation to work-- this site was invaluable.
| Forever grateful to Sheldon.
| comprev wrote:
| I learned wheel building many years ago from Sheldon's website
| and that lead to many great memories fixing other racer's wheels
| around camp fires in my 20s.
|
| A fantastic resource!
| matsemann wrote:
| Similar story. As a student I bought an old bike and restored
| it thanks to lots of info I found from Sheldon. And building a
| wheel was such a fun but weird experience. Part mechanics, part
| art.
|
| 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
| shrubby wrote:
| Still awesome.
|
| And the web design!
| sloosh wrote:
| I always loved this quote from here:
| https://www.sheldonbrown.com/stuck-seatposts.html
|
| > To update an old saying, 28 grams of prevention are worth 454
| grams of cure.
| hinkley wrote:
| I have a vague recollection of someone using a cheap old saddle
| and a rubber mallet to unstick a seat post.
|
| 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.
| behole wrote:
| Legend! I was a bicycle mechanic for a decade and this guy was
| our jezus! He influenced so many of my creative bicycle builds
| and exposed me to things like Alex Singer, Rene Herse, bicycle
| quarterly etc.. Big love for Sheldon and all his passion and
| work.
| sorbusherra wrote:
| i worked as a bicycle mechanic when I got completely tired of it-
| world. This website saved my ass numerous times while fixing
| bicycles. Absolutely legendary webdesign also that just works
| well.
| FpUser wrote:
| Used to be my worship place along with the crazyguyonabike and
| Ken Kifer
| gashad wrote:
| Ken Kifer wrote a bunch of amazing bicycle content! Here's a
| mirror of his pages:
| https://www.phred.org/~alex/kenkifer/www.kenkifer.com/
| bookstore-romeo wrote:
| This is an incredible ressource without which I feel so many
| bikes and bike parts would go to waste. At the bike coop I
| volunteer at we're trying to follow Sheldon's footsteps by
| collecting information and procedures that are about making bikes
| & parts last for as long as they possibly can. What's truly
| amazing is that all that documentation is amazing for both low-
| resource repairs on the cheapest of old parts and vintage part
| enthusiasts.
|
| I think Sheldon Brown's impact is a valuable lesson on
| sustainable engineering and the enormous role documentation plays
| in it
| sebastian_z wrote:
| There is (was?) a bike shop in Pittsburgh, Kraynick's Bike Shop
| [1], where you could bring your bike and use their tools. It was
| nice, and I appreciate the DIY ethics and generosity.
|
| [1] https://kraynicksbikeshop.weebly.com/
| barbs wrote:
| I get the sense that there are a good number of these around
| the world. There's one I go to Melbourne sometimes, it's
| awesome.
|
| https://thebikeshed.org.au/
| jannniii wrote:
| So happy to see this featured here! Had been tinkering with bikes
| a long time before finding Sheldon's site, but when I did I was
| dumbstruck by the amount of insight. And to top that, what a
| person he was. RIP
| sebnukem2 wrote:
| A web site as old as the internet, and still relevant.
| manithree wrote:
| I lost my "Clear Creek Bike Book" in the 1980's but eventually
| Sheldon made me not miss it at all.
|
| 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.
| neoromantique wrote:
| Ask HN: How does one archive websites like this without being a
| d-ck?
|
| 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?
| OJFord wrote:
| A single user's one-off recursive wget seems fine? Browsers
| also support it iirc, individual pages at very least (and saved
| to the same place, the links will work).
|
| No doubt it's already in many archive sites though, you could
| just fetch from them instead of the original?
| neoromantique wrote:
| I ask in more general sense, if there is a way to fetch this
| stuff directly from webarchive or something along those
| lines.
|
| Gotta hit the search I feel :)
| ho_schi wrote:
| I've learned about that website only four years ago. It is still
| helpful, teaches me how to install front derailleurs properly (as
| deep and far to the front as possible, better chain line with
| less trimming and better shifting).
|
| The German Wikipedalia tries to safe some stuff.
| LTL_FTC wrote:
| This is such a great website. I have enjoyed reading the articles
| in the past. It was the final push that inspired me to build my
| own wheel set instead of buying a complete when I was building my
| new mountain bike piece by piece. The art and zen (and
| frustration of trying to feed a shift/brake line through a
| frame), I tell ya.
| luqtas wrote:
| i built a set of wheels following his instructions, using my
| brake pads as the reference for centering and truing, rode dozen
| of thousands kilometers on them, daily, part of my courier job.
| all the wheels i had after that old Mongoose were also built the
| same way. i cycle a 1997 Trek 430 as my main transportation and i
| freaking love it. soldered a custom rack for panniers after its
| geometry. farewell Sheldon, i literally read your entire blog, at
| least twice
|
| 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
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(page generated 2026-02-06 23:00 UTC)