Who checks their bike before a ride?

[Dingdong]

Rolling quite fast (about 45mph) down a longish hill the other day it suddenly dawned on me I'd not checked the skewers or nipped the bolts on the brakes for a long, long time. So I pulled over, and sure enough the front skewer was loose enough it could've popped the wheel out of the safety retainers at any time...

Does anyone give their bike a good once over every time they ride out? Paranoia has gripped me and I've checked just about every bolt and nut on the bike, twice! Is it only me!

[axel_knutt]

No, it just gets checked when I'm servicing it, or doing repairs. Servicing is no guarantee though, I once set off with both the straddle cables unhooked.

[Jdsk]

Tyres the evening before.

Otherwise when needed. Plus before tours. Plus they and other people's all get inspected and adjusted before the autumn family day on the Ride and Stride Saturday.

Then big service in winter.

Jonathan

PS: HPVs and other vehicles that are unfit to ride have bright yellow warning tape applied in front of the operator!

[millimole]

No
I'll give the tyres a squeeze. The brakes get checked when I get to the junction at the end my cul de sac.
If something isn't right I'll almost certainly know by the time I get to the main road.
Not been a problem in 50 years.

[mumbojumbo]

Check for flats about 2 hours before use.

[Stevek76]

Only if the bike in question is about to go on some sort of lengthy or multi day trip.

For usual wear and tear I find just paying attention works fine. Very unusual for a bike to just critically fail with no warning signs.

[Cugel]

Rolling quite fast (about 45mph) down a longish hill the other day it suddenly dawned on me I'd not checked the skewers or nipped the bolts on the brakes for a long, long time. So I pulled over, and sure enough the front skewer was loose enough it could've popped the wheel out of the safety retainers at any time...

Does anyone give their bike a good once over every time they ride out? Paranoia has gripped me and I've checked just about every bolt and nut on the bike, twice! Is it only me!

If your front wheel skewer was "loose enough it could've popped the wheel out of the safety retainers at any time" it must have been flopping about, rubbing the brakes blocks on the rim or disc and otherwise extremely obvious. Surely you would have noticed it as you wheeled the bike out of the shed!? And to get that way, you either forgot to tighten it last time you put the wheel back or it's been going that way for a very long time.

I feel you owe us an explanation of how you think a wheel could get so loose and you not notice, dsicovering it only after a random thought about "checking the skewers".

********
Personally I'm very careful when doing maintenance to complete the procedure then check and double check all of the nuts, bolts and anything else that keeps it all together. I've never had anything come loose or be left loose in the way you describe. If something was coming loose all by itself, I'd get warning signs of various kinds long before it came fully adrift.

Cugel

[PH]

At least once a week on a well used bike:
Wipe down
Oil chain
Tyre pressure
Check tyres for damage or debris
Skewers or nuts, back them off a turn, check wheel seated in dropouts, re-tighten
Brake block thickness and wipe caliper with a tissue (Spot leak or damage)
Check cables seated correctly and levers moving freely
Give fittings a shake - rack, guards, bottle cages, lights
Apply brake one at a time and rock back and forth
Lift front wheel and rotate bars
Spin wheels to check anything rubbing

That probably took as long to type as it does to do.

[Biospace]

Beyond the servicing work, I'll generally feel for anything not right over the first half mile and spend some of a lunch stop just looking at the bike, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

The beauty of a bike is that it is so utterly simple and mostly all on view, cables (and brake hydraulics) excepted. The concern is that more and more cars on the road are rarely serviced and checked, all the more so in harsh economical times.

[Dingdong]

Rolling quite fast (about 45mph) down a longish hill the other day it suddenly dawned on me I'd not checked the skewers or nipped the bolts on the brakes for a long, long time. So I pulled over, and sure enough the front skewer was loose enough it could've popped the wheel out of the safety retainers at any time...

Does anyone give their bike a good once over every time they ride out? Paranoia has gripped me and I've checked just about every bolt and nut on the bike, twice! Is it only me!

Personally I'm very careful when doing maintenance to complete the procedure then check and double check all of the nuts, bolts and anything else that keeps it all together. I've never had anything come loose or be left loose in the way you describe. If something was coming loose all by itself, I'd get warning signs of various kinds long before it came fully adrift.

Cugel

It was a pair of those Titanium 'sticks', which weigh about 50gr the pair. They don't seem to lock off the way big chunky QRs do, in fact I've had to develop a 'knack' of setting them, then actually screwing them lock tight once adjusted. On this occasion the external washer had cracked through. I've stopped using them on all but my shiniest of bikes for this reason.

I've also had a pair of handlebars snap on me right at the joint which sent me flying, as well as a new chain snap on a very steep incline which also put me off the bike. From some of the older 'lads ' I ride with, I've also heard of steel forks snapping, seatposts shear off, cranks snapping and even badly built front wheels going Z shaped at the most inconvenient moment. Apocryphal tales I've heard range from a rear drop out failing on a long European tour, only to be replaced by a well whittled joint of wood, someone riding 10 miles home on a tyre stuffed with grass and leaves, and my favourite: a badly buckled wheel straightemed in a cow gate! From a race mechanic friend I heard a story of a lad whose Carbon forks snapped in a ferocious sprint finish and in a freak accident he was impaled on the blades. Lived to tell the tale.

I also know someone who had one of those Kirk Precision (remember those funny shaped magnesium frames) snap clean through at the head tube. Thankfully he was turning into his driveway on the way home from a big ride so it was only his pride got hurt.

I suppose there's little on a bike that can't be fixed in an emergency with a bit of ingenuity and patience. I used to carry a tube of super glue inside a handlebar plug, which on occasions I've used to mend a split tyre, repair a cracked saddle and even temporary fix a headset race in place on a poorly made aluminium frame. All rolling repairs just to get me home.

Rolling downhill now seems fraught with dangers! But I suppose it's like anything else: if we sat down and considered every single risk, we'd never go out of the house. Things break. And in the age of Carbon everything, Titanium this and that, I've found that things break a lot more frequently than they used to. I never leave the house now without giving my Carbon forks a good twist and once over and the saddle and cranks a bit of pressure before setting off on long distance.

Ultra lightweight skewers are very much to be avoided!

[Dingdong]

These... Apparently they don't have an internal cam mechanism. The lightest I've with an internal cam feature are Tune copies, coming in at 55gr the pair.

[Dingdong]

Extralite Streeters come in at a jaw dropping 28gr the pair. They come without springs to save weight
Wouldn't touch them with a barge pole...

[Nearholmer]

Up to now my routine has been similar to that described by PH above, and I have a habit of checking over the bikes of other members of the family as I take them in and out of the shed for them, but having read Cugel's post I'm now considering investing in an ultrasonic flaw detector, weld x-raying equipment, an endoscope to look for internal corrosion (my bikes are steel framed), and any other NDT gear I can lay my hands on.

[reohn2]

Rolling quite fast (about 45mph) down a longish hill the other day it suddenly dawned on me I'd not checked the skewers or nipped the bolts on the brakes for a long, long time. So I pulled over, and sure enough the front skewer was loose enough it could've popped the wheel out of the safety retainers at any time...

Does anyone give their bike a good once over every time they ride out? Paranoia has gripped me and I've checked just about every bolt and nut on the bike, twice! Is it only me!

Do yourself a favour,get rid of the qr skewers and replace them with hexbolt ones,that way they can't flip open and become a safety issue and stand less of a chance of you having your wheels stolen if you leave your bike unattended.
Halo make good quality hexbolt skewers for road and mtb spacings,and in various colours to match your bike.
Assuming you don't race,ask yourself when it was you needed to quick release your wheels?

[Carlton green]

Instead of checking a frequently used bike before every ride I’ve adopted, without realising it, a different way of doing things that works in three ways. The first way is constant monitoring; whilst cycling, and even when just looking at it, I’m mentally checking that everything looks right and is operating as it should. The second is in build and maintenance; fashioners are often secured with locktite and I won’t use lightweight components - or any other - that are marginal on strength and or durability. The third is my style of riding; I don’t ride fast and constantly consider safety. Part of safety is considering your own actions on the road and those of others and part is on what your bike is both doing now or might do in a moment.

Of course the above doesn’t consider tampering; that hasn’t been a concern for me for a very long time but there are ‘foolish folk’ who, for what ever reason, are glad to place others in danger. There are occasions and places where an extra check over before use is wise.

There’s always a degree of luck in life, but minimising the odds helps. YMMV.