How to Install a Bicycle Computer

Video Transcript

" Hi! This is Mike on behalf of expertvillage.com. For more information about bicycle maintenance please visit Prairie Path Cycles in Winfield, Illinois or visit our website at www.prairiepathcycles.com. In this clip I’m going to be showing you how to install a bicycle computer. Now the first thing you are going to want to do is take the magnet that comes with your computer and put it around one of the spokes and typically you’re going to be putting it around the middle of the wheel but do not tighten it down as much as you can right away because you will have to move it to line it up with the sensor. Now that you have your wheel magnet around one of your spokes, now you are going to take the extra computer and mount it to the fork. You are going to want to take some zip ties take one first, usually the top one and wrap it around your fork leg and just get it snugged and do not tighten it down too much because you will have to move it to line it up with the magnet and do the same thing with your bottom one. And then once you have it on there snuggly you can line it up with the magnet. In this case there is a little line at the bottom of the sensor that lines right up with the magnet. So once you have it pretty close where it is going to be lined up pretty good then you can snug down your zip ties. From here you’re going to be putting the wire up the rest of the bike to get to your handlebars. So the first thing you are going to want to do is take another zip tie and zip tie it around the fork a little bit above where you have the other zip ties. Once you do that your next step is to loop it around the front brake cable so that way you can run it up the front brake cable to get your handlebars, doing that, kind of keeps it out of the way and that is less likely to break than if you just have it loose throughout your bike. So what you can do is either make a little knot here at the start of the cable or you can put another zip tie around there, either way it works fine. Then once you have that you are just going to wrap it around the front brake cable as many times as you need to keep the slack out but you will need a little slack up at the top for reach to your handlebars. So you do not want to put it on too tight but you don’t want it too loose where the cable is going to flying around all over the place. And once you have your computer wire wrapped up around your cable the next step is to put the clamp around the handlebars and once you have the mount securely around the handlebar then the last thing you will need to do is calibrate your computer head and typically the only things you will really need to do is the time, date and your wheel size. Once you have that properly in your computer head just snap it into the mount and then give it a little test by spinning the font wheel and check to make sure that it is reading your miles per hour and anything else your computer may have and if for some reason it isn’t working, a good place to start checking is to see how close your magnet is to the sensor. Make sure it is close enough where it can be picking up and that’s how you install a bike computer."