Zinn Road Bike Maintenance - any good?

[JakobW]

That's a manufacturer recommendation that's he's passing on, isn't it? Perhaps worth noting that Zinn is tall (6'6"+?) and powerful - IIRC he was a nationals level racer in the US - so will be putting more through the bars than most of us. If you regularly inspect your bars that's a safety factor, but if you do lots of miles, spending £60-80 every few years isn't going to break the bank, and is cheaper than a dentist's bill...

[Sweep]

He should write for the average person though shouldn't he, or at least qualify his statements? We're not all metal bending powerhouses.

Re your question upthread kyle, I know park have very decently put a lot of their excellent book and expertise online. In my view fine for a pre job bit of research, but for the job itself I always check everything as I do it - don't even trust myself to turn things the right way. So, with greasy hands, I much prefer and would recommend the book. For beginners it will pay for itself in no time.

[Samuel D]

Scunnered is no beginner, though.

YouTube is a mixed bag. Most bicycle mechanics videos I’ve watched have contained serious mistakes or other bad advice. They usually suffer from misguided efforts to make them entertaining. They gloss over critical parts of an explanation while spending minutes on irrelevancies or the obvious. Zinn sometimes explains in a couple of paragraphs what a YouTuber needs ten minutes of rambling to do worse.

The basic problem is that which the whole web suffers from: being good at getting your content seen is a different skill from having content worth seeing. Hardly anyone has both.

Besides, video isn’t an ideal format for showing the operation of hidden mechanisms. For that you need words and cutaway drawings, which is natural book territory.

I suppose it depends what you expect. If you have a loose headset and have no idea why or what any of the parts are called, perhaps a YouTube video is a better way to solve your problem before your commute. But who among us is in that situation? We know roughly what we’re doing even when we’re not experts in some area. So we’re looking for accuracy of terminology, sound technical explanations, nuanced treatment of conflicting factors, best practices, and bankable expertise. Books remain the best source for those things today.

He should write for the average person though shouldn't he, or at least qualify his statements? We're not all metal bending powerhouses.

It was 3T’s statement but he qualified it anyway. Read the book sample I provided. But Zinn is an American author, so he probably has a duty of care in two dozen states to advise excessive caution in such matters lest he be sued into bankruptcy.

[peetee]

It was 3T’s statement but he qualified it anyway. Read the book sample I provided. But Zinn is an American author, so he probably has a duty of care in two dozen states to advise excessive caution in such matters lest he be sued into bankruptcy.

Understandable, however, i would have thought it more pertinent to quote a limit on milage as repeated loading is far more likely to determine the life of aluminium components in so short a timespan.

[Carlp]

It's a great book, got me out of trouble recently when I was doing up an old BSA, it covers most thing and mostly modern bikes, but it was very useful to a complete mechanical klutz like me.

[middleagedspread]

I have Zinn MTB version and (don't laugh) Haynes The Bike Book.
I more often than not find Haynes better than Zinn but not as good as YouTube.
I think if I had to choose a book it would probably be Park.

I have all three books, and each has their merits, but for road bike maintenance, I'd take Zinn over the other two. The clarity of the line drawings in Zinn are superior to the photographs in both the Park Tools Blue Book and Hayne's, and there's a lot more specificity in Zinn (For example, see the attached pictures: Zinn's covers many different examples of each component type, and I found the exploded diagrams invaluable).

Of course, this also explains the higher page count in Zinn, and can lead to Zinn appearing repetitive if you read it straight through. But I also valued the chapter on road side repair, which prepared me for the family bike ride when my daughter's derailleur got eaten by her back wheel.

Of course, with Zinn, you require two (expensive-ish) books if you have both a mountain bike and a road bike (there's no coverage components that aren't found on road bikes or mountain bikes respectively, e.g. internal brakes or gears). The Blue Book and Hayne's are both good books - I prefer the brighter photographs in the latter, but the former has more content and detail - and both can gloss over differences between, for example, the many different types of components that Zinn's illustrates.

I bought the books over a decade or so, in the order Hayne's, Park Tool, Zinn. Since getting Zinn, I've relied on it pretty much exclusively for my road bike maintenance. I still sometimes refer to Park or Hayne's for Mountain Bike components (since I don't own Zinn's other book).

[Scunnered]

Scunnered is no beginner, though.

Not an expert either!
Got it as a Xmas present, looks ok from a first skim thru'

[Samuel D]

The 5th edition of Zinn’s book omitted some 4th edition material that was made available in a downloadable PDF instead. Details here.