Iain Treloar runs you through some quick steps to keep your bike sparkling.
When bad weather creates mucky riding conditions, your chain and cassette are more susceptible to rust and wear, the underside of your frame can become caked with horrible gunk and your brakes are likely to leave ghostly grey residue all over your rims. For the best clean—assuming you don’t have a full line-up of tools—it’s worth taking your bike to a bike shop for a really thorough job. They’ll be able to take the chain off, remove the cassette and clean everything in a way that can’t be done with all the bits still on the bike. But there are some simple, speedy and affordable steps you can take to keep your bike looking good and riding well.
Drivetrain
What you’ll need
- Degreaser
- Chain cleaning brush
- Rags
- Lubricant
- Wrap a rag around the chain stay, and then spray your chain and cassette liberally with degreaser, slowly turning the pedals backwards to circulate through the length of the chain.
- Grab your chain cleaning brush—a good example is the BBB Toothbrush—and, while still turning the pedals backwards, run the pointy end between the cogs on your cassette, to dislodge any accumulated grit. Run the chain against the tough bristles on the other end of the brush.
- More degreaser.
- Spin the chain backwards through a clean rag, to remove the grease and dirty degreaser from the chain. Move onto a fresh section of the rag, and continue until the chain is running through dry and clean.
- Although it is great at removing the grime from your chain, degreaser will also strip the grease from the rollers of the chain, making for a clunky ride. For this reason, it’s really important to reapply lubricant. If you’re mostly riding in good weather, a dry lubricant (usually wax or Teflon-based) is a good choice. If it’s off-road or all-weather riding that you’re into, a wet lube will adhere better in bad conditions. Apply whilst spinning the pedals backwards – you won’t need much, but it needs to circulate through all the links of the chain.
- Wait a few minutes for the lubricant to penetrate, and then wipe off any excess, especially on the side plates of the chain, as excessive lube attracts dirt.
Frame
What you’ll need
- Hose with trigger
- A bucket of soapy water
- Sponge
- Rags
- Spray the bike down. Don’t blast it—if using a high-pressure hose, you risk pushing the muck into the inner workings and bearings of your bike. A light-shower is ample.
- Using the sponge and warm soapy water, thoroughly go over the bike. Don’t concentrate too much on the chain, as you risk washing off the lube that you just applied so lovingly.
- Rinse the bike again to get rid of the suds and prevent soapy marks when it dries, and pat down with a clean rag to dry it off.
- If you’re feeling extra-tender, use a bike polish to give the frame some extra sparkle. Something like Pedros Bike Lust should do the trick, but avoid the temptation to apply to contact points like your seat and bar-tape, as a squeaky, slippery ride will be the inevitable irritating result.
Wheels
What you’ll need
- A rag
- Emery paper
- Flat file
The abrasion of wet brake pads on your rim, especially if those brake pads are dirty, will accelerate wear, but it’s relatively easy to keep them clean and improve your braking performance.
- Remove your wheels from the bike.
- Lightly work your way around the braking surface—but just the braking surface—with fine emery paper, which will clean the rim.
- While the wheels are out, if you’ve got the time and are struggling with gritty braking, check the pads for small pieces of embedded metal, pick these out and lightly file the flat surface of brake pads.
- With a dry rag, work your way around the rim, cleaning both the braking surface and the rest of the rim. The grey brake pad residue should come off easily.
- Reinstall the wheels.
Stand back and admire your newly sparkling bike.
Other helpful tips
- If you have disc brakes, when cleaning your drivetrain, spray degreaser away from the rotors. Disc brake pads are susceptible to contamination, and a bit of care can avoid a ride punctuated with sharp squeals from your brakes.
- Don’t apply any lubricant or grease onto the braking surface or pads of any brake systems. Ever.
- It’s smart to wear a pair of disposable rubber gloves when working on your drivetrain, and remove them when cleaning the rest of the bike. This will save your seat and bar-tape or grips from unnecessary soiling later on in the cleaning process.
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I reckon they’ve got the order of this completely wrong.
1) Do the chain/drive-train first, but don’t re-lube until the very end.
2) Do the wheels next, with them out of the frame (in my experience, degreaser is THE best way to get the brake pad residue off the wheels (and the back wheel will be covered in the degreaser from cleaning the chain)
3) Do the frame next (incl. Clean sponge, soap & water for the seat, tape etc & rag with degreaser on it for the parts of the frame around the .) while you still have the wheels off the bike (easier to access under the forks etc.)
4) Put the wheels back on
5) Dry everything off (the pro’s use an air compressor)
6) Re-Lube the chain (best to wait as long as you can to do this to make sure the chain is as dry as possible) – leave the lube bottle in your helmet so you don’t forget to do this before your next ride!!
So you do not need to wash the degreaser off before re-lubing?
Sorry – spraying it off was inferred, I guess.
5) Spray everything off, then dry everything off
Oh, and never turn your bike upside down to do it, because all the dirty stuff gets into the under-seat area.
I was told by a veteran bike mechanic to never use mineralised degreasers. It gets into the hub and you can never properly reapply lubricant to the inner workings. Is there a degreaser that’s not so penetrative?
At the risk of promoting heresy and inviting ridicule from waxy lube enthusiasts, I offer this regimen for thorough chain cleaning and lube.
It’s obviously best to remove chain if you can. Then put in a sealable tin and dunk it in the following ‘solvent+lube’ mixture. This is about 8-10 parts kerosene, to 1 part car engine oil. (Don’t believe the utter nonsense that engine oil is an inferior lubricant to waxy lubes! Be as sceptical of highly promoted and exorbitantly priced chain lubes as you should be of anatomically targeted analgesics. But I digress.)
Let chain soak for few minutes, gently swish around in the tin allowing grime to settle to bottom. Remove chain, exercise the links, put it back in, swish and so on until you’re happy that abrasive silicates and road grime have been washed out. Remove chain and let solvent drain off. Allow kero to evaporate perhaps using solar energy to warm it or just leave it hanging somewhere.
Importantly, the engine oil does not evaporate but is left behind in otherwise inaccessible places such as between rollers and rivet axles.
This technique is not just cheaper but gives far superior ‘deep’ clean and lubrication than outrageously expensive commercial, spray-on, chain lubes. You can filter the mixture through say, make-up wipes or a rag to remove solids and keep in the tin for next chain clean.
After returning from a wet ride and allowing the chain to dry out, I often lightly spray the chain with my mixture as a top-up penetrating lubricant. Allow the kero to passively evaporate and then wipe clean the exposed parts of chain just before next ride. Simple.
PS. Water based, neutral pH, degreasers cannot penetrate into and thus clean the bearing surfaces where high-melting point, wax type lubricants have been used previously. They cannot dissolve the waxy solids and the trapped grime.