places to learn about building bikes?

hey, I'm relatively new to bike building/repair. i just fixed up an old schwinn road bike frame, stripped it down and painted it, and now i'm building it back up. i'm looking for places on the internet that can teach me the basics of bike repair to help me along the way. i know mostly how everything works but i'm looking for places that i can go if i have trouble with specific things.

for instance, the frame i took apart had an older bottom bracket, but i want to get a cartridge bottom bracket to replace it, and i've heard that sometimes they wont fit in older frames, and that they need to be "tapped" in. not sure exactly what that entails and what tools i'll need to do that.

also, just putting in a new headset and wondering exactly what tool i'm supposed to use to get the brackets into the tubing of the frame.

any help or points in the right direction would be greatly appreciated! thanks

-Derek

I recently was bumming around the bookstore and looked at "Zinn and
the Art of Road Bike Maintenance". I was impressed with this book.
In just a few moments, i found some useful techniques to use in the
replacement of some cartridge bearings - a repair I hadn't attempted
before.

I especially appreciated his focus on toolsets - beginning, medium,
and advanced. Importantly, one of the most critical things in the
advanced toolset was "patience" (represented by an icon of Budda).
Patience and a willingness to put something down until you think of a
better way (or ask on rec.bicycles.tech) is the most important skill
for complex bicycle repairs.

After looking through the rest of the book, I'd highly recommend that
book to beginning mechanics.

- Don Gillies
San Diego, CA

Derekcommonground wrote:
hey, I'm relatively new to bike building/repair. i just fixed up an old
schwinn road bike frame, stripped it down and painted it, and now i'm
building it back up. i'm looking for places on the internet that can
teach me the basics of bike repair to help me along the way. i know
mostly how everything works but i'm looking for places that i can go if
i have trouble with specific things.

for instance, the frame i took apart had an older bottom bracket, but i
want to get a cartridge bottom bracket to replace it, and i've heard
that sometimes they wont fit in older frames, and that they need to be
"tapped" in. not sure exactly what that entails and what tools i'll
need to do that.

also, just putting in a new headset and wondering exactly what tool i'm
supposed to use to get the brackets into the tubing of the frame.

any help or points in the right direction would be greatly appreciated!
thanks

-Derek

The big standby, which is also free, is Sheldon Brown's page at
sheldonbrown.com . Other good free web sources are the Park tool repair
help pages and all the various pdf's of Barnett's Handbook you can
download.