Free Bike Tools

I came across this essay today while searching for something else.

Held Up By Downward Pull

Here’s a couple of sites that will help you if you’re looking to compare weights on bike parts

• Weight Weenies – Allow visitors to submit data.
• Wheelbuilder.com – I wish this data could be incorporated into my spoke length calculator but this is a good way to spec out wheels by weight. Mainly high-end stuff.

Alex Whetmore is a smart guy and bicycle geek. He’s written up a nice article on his experiences building his own generator powered lights. It’s worth filing away if only for his standlight schematic.

I’ve been thinking about writing one of these for this site but [this one's pretty nice](http://software.bareknucklebrigade.com/rabbit.applet.html).

I finally got back around to working on the [spoke calculator](http://wheelbuilder.freebiketools.org/) some more and now it’s ready for release. It’s got most of the data from the latest version of [Spocalc](http://sheldonbrown.com/rinard/spocalc.htm). I had to clean up the Spocalc databases because there was some questionable/confusing information in them. This web application uses the same math as Spocalc and I’ve used them both to build wheels so I feel comfortable sharing it with other people.

Please send any feedback to james @ this domain.

I just posted a [bottom bracket cheat sheet](http://freebiketools.org/files/BottomBracketGuide.pdf) in the Resources section. It comes courtesy of [Michael Webber](http://crankedmag.com). Hopefully I’ll have some more of these cheatsheets in the coming months.

[Alex Wetmore's new stem visualizer](http://blogs.phred.org/blogs/alex_wetmore/archive/2007/11/28/stem-chart-tool.aspx) he posted this morning prompted me to create a new section for [online tools](http://freebiketools.org/tools/).

Welcome to what I hope will become a useful repository for bicycle mechanics and riders. My initial plans are to gather up the best online technical articles that I can find and post them to the resources section. Soon my new spoke length calculator will appear and I hope it’s going to supersede to the others that are out there and become a valuable resource for the community.

Please send any feedback you have to james@ this domain and I’ll respond as quickly as I can.