best ways and what to use for cleaning my bike
kierhanlon6
Posts: 158
hello i have got a orbea onix t105 and wondered whats the best way to give it a good clean and what clearner is best to look after the bike, and whats the best way to keep your chain good? how often to degrease the chain and what lube to use dry or wet?
thanks for reading
thanks for reading
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Comments
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To precis all the other threads on this topic:
I wash with warm water with a bit of fairy liquid in it.
Rinse well with clean water.
If you want a great shine, use Mer car polish. It's dirt cheap and is one of the best.
Clean chain with baby wipes.
Use dry lube in teh summer
Use wet lube in the winter, or when it's p*ssing down.
DON'T use WD40 on your chain, unless you want to relube it every few miles.Science adjusts it’s beliefs based on what’s observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved0 -
I use the pink muc-off spray all over the bike and leave for 5 mins, then rinse off with hose-pipe & repeat.
I then use muc-off degreaser all over the bike and leave for 5 mins, then rinse off with hose-pipe & repeat.
I then may or may not use muc-off chain cleaner to get the chain and sprockets looking like new - sometimes I just wipe the chain down with a rag. If I clean it, I then re-lube it.
I then (with brake pads out and wheels off) spray the whole bike with muc-off bike spray all over to make it shiny and new-looking.
Apparently one must be cautious when using bike cleaner around the BB and bearings for the wheels, but to be honest, I just spray it on everywhere.0 -
Secteur wrote:I use the pink muc-off spray all over the bike and leave for 5 mins, then rinse off with hose-pipe & repeat.
I then use muc-off degreaser all over the bike and leave for 5 mins, then rinse off with hose-pipe & repeat.
I then may or may not use muc-off chain cleaner to get the chain and sprockets looking like new - sometimes I just wipe the chain down with a rag. If I clean it, I then re-lube it.
I then (with brake pads out and wheels off) spray the whole bike with muc-off bike spray all over to make it shiny and new-looking.
Apparently one must be cautious when using bike cleaner around the BB and bearings for the wheels, but to be honest, I just spray it on everywhere.
Do you work for/sponsored by muc-off?
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MattC59 wrote:To precis all the other threads on this topic:
I wash with warm water with a bit of fairy liquid in it.
Rinse well with clean water.
If you want a great shine, use Mer car polish. It's dirt cheap and is one of the best.
Clean chain with baby wipes.
Use dry lube in teh summer
Use wet lube in the winter, or when it's p*ssing down.
DON'T use WD40 on your chain, unless you want to relube it every few miles.
+1 here - exactly the same but use muc-off instead of fairy.0 -
From the advice and guides I have read online washing up liquid isn't the right thing to use as apparently it can damage the paint work.
I rinse my bike down with clean water and use a bike cleaning spray like Muc off but half the price from Wilkinsons. I think it is called Fuc off or something.
Spray that on, scrub, rinse off, done.0 -
My LBS told me the other day that Muc Off is corrosive. They'd stopped stocking it since they discovered it.0
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Bucket of water with a bit of soap powder chucked in does the job for me if it's just a quick wiped down & clean.
For a proper clean, take everything off the bike and strip the bits down as far as you can - brake blocks off, jockey wheels on the derailleur out noting which way they go and which washers go where obviously. Remove chain rings & leave them in the bucket, cassette off and the cogs + spacers in the bucket too, and pull the cable inners out too so that they can have a nice relube & you can drip some oil down the outers.
Put the chain in a chinese takeawaypot soaking in diluted Muc-Off or whatever, then give everything a through clean getting it back to showroom condition. With everything down to constituent parts you can give it a real deep clean and get road gunk etc out of those awkward recesses.
Gives the wheels a good wash - I use soapy water and then buff with an old towel. As well as making them look nice it restores full braking power, having clean dry rims. The improvement is enormous.
When everything's clean & lubed, put it all back together again. Give the chain a good rinse, leave it to soak in 3-in-1 cycle oil or similar and then reattach after wiping off the excess. Refit all the cables, index the gears and that's it. End to end about 3 hours or so, a wet Saturday afternoon. Have a cup of tea, then go back and check that everything is tight where it should be tight and things that should rotate do so.
There are two benefits to all this. One is that your bike looks like new and is therefore faster - clean bikes are faster, fact. Second is that you discover how easy bike maintenance is and how adjusting brakes & indexing gears is actually dead easy and something you do yourself, as opposed to being a trip to the LBS. You don't see guitar players taking their kit back to the shop to be retuned. Gears are no different.
And it's therapautic too. Be as one with your bike.0 -
Bradders87 wrote:My LBS told me the other day that Muc Off is corrosive. They'd stopped stocking it since they discovered it.
Sounds like typical LBS mech chat. If it was bad for the bikes then I'm sure they wouldn't have been the first to notice.
A lot of cleaners are corrosive by design, look at T-Cut for cars - slightly corrosive to "cut" through the grime, and still one of the most popular cleaning products0 -
After the bike is clean if you really want to get the frame n forks sparkling then Pledge/Mr Sheen works great.0
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Thebigbee wrote:From the advice and guides I have read online washing up liquid isn't the right thing to use as apparently it can damage the paint work.
Washing-up liquid is a powerful cleaner and degreaser, but the problem with it is that it contains Sodium Chloride (salt) which is used to add to the viscosity. So not great for your bike!
My best tip is to fit a quick link on your chain. Makes cleaning the chain and rest of the bike far easier and quicker.
As for how often you should do it depends on the weather! During the winter nearly every ride.0 -
Save yourself time and money by using cheap babywipes.
Regular wipe down with them and a buff over with Mr Pledge. Never used anything else on my Orca and it still looks like the day I bought it. I clean the chain with them and also roll them up to clean between the cassette and between all chain links once in a while + lub of choice. Simple, easy, fast and cheap."There's a shortage of perfect breasts in this world, t'would be a pity to damage yours."0 -
Damp cloth to wipe off any grime on frame and wheels, i spray wd40 onto the cloth for thick dirt or tar, and Astonish oven cleaner spray for the chain. I always remove the chain to clean as it saves splashing road grime and grit onto the bike.0
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No need so special expensive bike cleaning products. Heard muc off is a bit harsh as a cleaner too.Say... That's a nice bike..
Trax T700 with Lew Racing Pro VT-1 ;-)0 -
CiB wrote:Bucket of water with a bit of soap powder chucked in does the job for me if it's just a quick wiped down & clean.
For a proper clean, take everything off the bike and strip the bits down as far as you can - brake blocks off, jockey wheels on the derailleur out noting which way they go and which washers go where obviously. Remove chain rings & leave them in the bucket, cassette off and the cogs + spacers in the bucket too, and pull the cable inners out too so that they can have a nice relube & you can drip some oil down the outers.
Put the chain in a chinese takeawaypot soaking in diluted Muc-Off or whatever, then give everything a through clean getting it back to showroom condition. With everything down to constituent parts you can give it a real deep clean and get road gunk etc out of those awkward recesses.
Gives the wheels a good wash - I use soapy water and then buff with an old towel. As well as making them look nice it restores full braking power, having clean dry rims. The improvement is enormous.
When everything's clean & lubed, put it all back together again. Give the chain a good rinse, leave it to soak in 3-in-1 cycle oil or similar and then reattach after wiping off the excess. Refit all the cables, index the gears and that's it. End to end about 3 hours or so, a wet Saturday afternoon. Have a cup of tea, then go back and check that everything is tight where it should be tight and things that should rotate do so.
There are two benefits to all this. One is that your bike looks like new and is therefore faster - clean bikes are faster, fact. Second is that you discover how easy bike maintenance is and how adjusting brakes & indexing gears is actually dead easy and something you do yourself, as opposed to being a trip to the LBS. You don't see guitar players taking their kit back to the shop to be retuned. Gears are no different.
And it's therapautic too. Be as one with your bike.
Christ, I thought the first sentence was your advice which was fair enough.
However you then went on to describe how you basically stripped the bike right down and scrubbed everything to within an inch of its life.
If you have that much time on your hands, fair play to you. I really am not that obsessed with my bikes.
Water, Fuc off - from Wilkinsons, rinse. Job done. 30 minutes max.0
