Bike Maintainence

My bike has been shifting like crap lately, so I decided to look into it.

First, I cleaned the drive train. I hadn't done this in a while and there was a lot of dirt and crud caked onto the gears, chain, derailleurs, and so forth. After a quick scrub down I used the cassette cleaner to pick out more gunk. At this point, the bike was much quieter pedaling. I decided not to clean the chain this time around, as it looked pretty good.

Then I went to adjust the gearing. My method is mostly "play it be ear" - tighten/loosen the limit screws and see if it got worse or better. I put the bike on my trainer rather than my bike stand as I didn't want to mess with the seat height for now. I didn't get anywhere with the limit screws but noticed that the cable was just a bit slack when shifted into the smallest cog - probably a side effect of the bike fitting and moving the aerobars back. So, I tightened up the cable, and this did wonders for shifting. On the trainer, I was able to get my bike shifting perfectly.