Grease and lube - request for an idiot's guide

biondino

Hi all,

Can a helpful and knowledgeable poster please list a) the areas of a road bike that require greasing/lubricating and b) the substance that should ideally be used for each of these locations (a link to a branded product on the interweb would be handy too)?

I currently have a bottle of what is rather vaguely called "bike oil" which has been fulfilling all my lubrication needs to date but I've become very aware that I'm at best compromising and at worst actively harming various bit of my bike.

Thanks in advance!

redddraggon

There's lubing and there's greasing.

Lube the chain.

Grease nearly everything else. Pedal threads, bearings, alloy seatpost in alloy frame,

I'd recommend getting a book along the lines of Zinn and the Art of Road Bike Maintenance.

biondino

I haven't the faintest idea of how to get to a bearing. I suspect it'd be a very bad idea for me to try. On the other hand the crunching coming from my rear hub isn't going to get any better on its own...

toslow

Got a horrible feeling the crunching noise in the back wheel could well be the freehub body . A great book for me when i got back into bikes after to long an absense was ' The bike book ' from haynes . It covers most bike types and makes what looks like quite a fiddly thing to do appear quite simple , it was my bible for quite a while until i got the hang of things.
Within this book it has a section on lubing routines and general care for your pride and joy.

biondino

Bought all-purpose lube and teflon grease today from Bike Hut (is this a Halfords offshoot? Certainly in Putney it's in the old Halfords location), so I am I hope fully armed. After my ride tomorrow (http://toporoute.com/cgi-bin/getSavedRo ... JQBGAJPBXI in case anyone's interested - I also bought an A-Z of Surrey while I was out ) I might give the whole thing s big old clean. Does Muc-Off (the pink stuff) act as a decent degreaser or should I have bought something specific for that too?

venusi

Muc-Off's good for getting the dirt off but not great as a hardcore degreaser.

For your chain specifically, try Finish Line's citrus degreaser. I picked up a 595ml tin from Evans recently and used it on my chain today. It was amazing.

biondino

Thanks venusi - I'm not going to have time to get any degreaser before giving my bike a proper clean tomorrow, but I'll get some before next time. I guess I'm finally trying to learn all this stuff before I get a bike that's worth looking after extremely well