Bicycles 101 : Bike Breakdown

So in this part of my series, i will get down and dirty (not in an immoral sense mind you) on the make up of a bike in as detail as it can get. It may or may not go down to the bearings. Something many consider a nightmare.

So lets start off from the big picture, and we will cut it into a few pieces for easy digestion.

Bicycles in general can be broken down to 4 main parts of their construction. Below is a road bike taken as an example. The coloured boxes indicates where the break takes place :


Black : Wheels
Red : Frame
Blue : Groupset/Built kit
Green : Cockpit

So if all these parts were to be taken apart and laid out on the ground it would look like this :

The groupset

The Frame

The wheels

The cockpit

The cockpit is made up of a few seperate parts such as below :

The saddle

The handlebar
The headset
The stem

So all these parts will make up a road bike. For a mountain bike, its slightly different.

Green : Wheels
Blue : Groupset/Build kit
Black : Cockpit
Red : Frame
Orange : Front + rear suspension

A mountain bike has an extra important part, the suspension. Without it going off road would be less comfortable or even to severe discomfort.

The frame + rear suspension

Front suspension fork

The groupset

The wheels

And after these major parts, minor parts like tires, cables, water cages, pedals etc will be fitted on as well. But i will explain from most prominent to the least.

Dont worry if you still cant figure out how or where the items fit together. It will be explained later on as well.

So this short post is just to show you how a bicycle can be stripped down to its bare essentials.

-End Series VI-