I know dick about bike mechanics other than the very basics. Very, very basics. I'd like to change that though. How did you folks get started working on your bikes? Any resources you can recommend or other tips?

You can volunteer your time at Cycles for Change (formerly Sibley Bike Depot) to work on bikes. They're a good bunch of people and it's for a good cause.

Park Tools and Sheldon Brown are great online resources.

My advice (and how I got started) is just dive right in to a bike rebuild. Get a good metric allen wrench set and a few properly sized cone wrenches, and buy/borrow/make a few more tools as you go. Be ready to make a lot of mistakes and ask for help. Get to know your friendly local bike mechanic and remember that he/she probably likes beer.

my problem is i no longer have a bike that i feel comfortable dicking around with.

I knew I should have bought that $25 beater bike that was for sale in my neighborhood a couple weeks ago. Thanks for the tips.

What I've learned from my recent mechanical problems is, your primary / only bike is not the one you want to learn on. You want to have something to ride while you're learning.

I should have just taken my bike in and gotten it fixed by someone who knew what they were doing and limited my learning to my project bike.

This. The latter especially worked for me.

Yeah, but if you learn to wrench on bikes by overhauling something you're attached to and ride all the time it just makes it that much more specialer.

Maybe so, but the 2wks I spent bikeless SUCKED *SS!!

Special or no. Never again. I need a backup bike.

hmmmmm ... it's been a long time.

i think it was back in college in the early, early, very early 70's ... someone gave me an old hercules frame and i built a bike around it. sew-ups. sugino crank. sun tour deraileurs & shifters. and i dunno what else. i had about $300 in it and in the 70's, that was a TON of money.

the wheels were egg shaped ... my first lacing attempt. other than that, it was a decent bike.

i can do MUCH better work, now.

I went and picked up a couple of older books on bike repair at Half-Priced books, which was fine since I was working on old 70's and 80's bikes most of the time anyway. Sheldon's site and the Park site have gotten me through a lot of problems.

Find yourself an inexpensive 10 or 12 speed Japanese bike from the bike boom, fix it up and sell it. It doesn't even have to be your size. Maybe it's better if it isn't. Don't get a Huffy, a French bike, or an electro-forged Schwinn (like a Varsity or Continental) and especially don't get a department store bike.

I find visuals helpful. A Bike tutor if you will

Worked at a bike shop when I was 14 off and on - too many years later I still remember (even the 70's did not cause that much memory loss)

Work on your bike - start small, buy a few tools (good ones) and start wrenching - no substitute for experience.

More great tips, thanks everyone. I'm gonna try to find an old bike to work on at some point. And then I'm gonna make Zombinate come over and oversee my work.

You could volunteer at MMRB. They need help tearing down bikes, which isn't a bad way to learn how to take them apart, and then you can learn some simple repairs. While they need experienced mechanics, as they are busy, you can pick up some knowledge helping out.

Invaluable. I thought I knew a thing or two about bikes. Then I went to Harris Cyclery and learned I know nothing about bikes. It's a great read and now I know more than nothing about bikes.