Ah, The Glories of the Web

By Scott

"With great power comes great responsibility" is a phrase cited as far back as the French Revolution. It has been used by statesman, theologians, and comic book writers to illustrate the relationship between obligations and power.  With the rise of the Internet and such, power to the people was promised and in some way, it has been delivered.  I'm thinking of all the great tools out there for use by cyclists to make their lives easier. Here are a few sites that make our lives, and hopefully yours, easier.

Starting off with one of the best examples of a web site that does an a job that you don't realize you need until you need it is Jim G's stem comparison page. This site is simple and does a fantastic job of letting you compare current and proposed stem setups. Input the data for your current stem, enter your different stem, and play with the different stem angles and lengths to augment your cockpit setup. I'll be using this site when we get the Nouveau Randonneur bars in. I'm going to use our Replaceable Faceplate Stem and I'll be interested to compare setups.

One of the sites I visit on a daily basis here is Velo Base. It is a great treasure trove of information and photos about old parts. It is very nicely laid out to help you track down that older crank/derailleur/brake set you have and put a date to when it was made. The notes that many of the entries have can be invaluable to the collector/vintage bike enthusiast in terms of discovering if it has odd threading or tapers. If you ever want to know what the threading is on a Nevar crank and how it differs from a Stronglight of a similar era, this is the place to go.

We don't do in house wheel building for sale, but we do build wheels for ourselves when we need a specific application or to test a new product. To make the spoke length choices, Igor and Clint use pro wheel builder for their spoke calculations. While there are several spoke calculators our there, they've found this site easy to use and accurate.

When it comes to tools, Park is the one at VO.

When it comes to fixing bikes, one name comes to mind - Park Tools.  Their website is a great resource for both tools and how to use those tools to get your bike rolling or rolling better. I often forward a link to folks who are looking for instructions on how to do X or Y as I've not found a better site that lays out how to do so much, with great photos of the process.

Finally, we can't mention web resources without mentioning the late Sheldon Brown. If you ever want to go down a rabbit hole of information, then Sheldon's site is the one to start with. I have his crib sheet site on my bookmarks, as it is a quick way to find details about chain line, headset sizing, and tire sizes. If you go into the main site, there is just so much information, laid out so well, that it's shocking that it's been 10 years since Sheldon passed away.

Are there any sites you find useful that you don't think the average cyclist knows about? Let us know in the comments and let's add to people's knowledge.

Reader submitted links from various social media sources:

• Jobst Brandt: http://yarchive.net/bike/index.html
• Stack and Reach Calc: http://www.bikegeo.net/
• Wheel Calc: http://www.bikecalc.com/wheel_size_math
• Trail Calc: http://yojimg.net/bike/web_tools/trailcalc.php
• Wheelbuilding Checklist: http://www.sapim.be/sites/default/files/checklist.pdf
• Everything About Wheels: http://www.wheelfanatyk.com/wheelbuilding-library/
• Neat Spokehead Identification Guide: http://www.mrrabbit.net/docs/spokeheads/main.html
• Gearing Calculator: http://gear-calculator.com/