Should I always lube when cleaning bike?

abdul12

The thing is I lubed couple of days ago. But due to rainy season there is gunk and dirt on it. So for washing purposes
1 do I need to again lube up the whole chain once more?
2 can i use bike chemical to remove gunk from chains and cassete ?
3 can i use water over the chain, cabels, deraulers etc?

sungod

decent sticky wet lube usually lasts few several really wet rides in drier conditions it should be ok for a few weeks

if conditions are dusty, a dry lube can be better as it picks up less dirt, but it needs to be applied more frequently

fit a kmc missing link so that you can easily remove/refit the chain for cleaning

running the chain through an old linen cloth (or other material that doesn't snag/shed fibres) to take off surface dirt is enough for quick tidy up

for long term cleaning you can use degreaser or solvent to strip all the grease and dirt, i've got a small ultrasonic cleaner i use for other stuff but it does chains too, after this you need to wash all traces of degreaser out, dry it out, then apply good wet lube and give it time to penetrate, having 2-3 chains to use in turn simplifies this

you can use water, i hose my bike down after wet/dirty rides, then wipe most of it dry, but chain/cassette i just leave to dry

Matthewfalle

I degrease the whole bike once a month, chain and sprockets with Jizer. Other degreasers are available - if you do a search you'll see a billion arguments about which is best so let's not enter into that here.

Paint on with paint brush. Let it soak in. Hose off with strong hose.

Dry off (towel or I use an air line). Reapply lube to chain.

Water everywhere is fine

Once a month I'll give the bike a whole degrease and wash with car shampoo, dry off, relube chain. Once every few months it gets a polish with car polish.

Wet lube is heavier than dry lube so stays on longer but attracts more gunk and skank to the chain.

rolf_f

Matthewfalle wrote:

I degrease the whole bike once a month, chain and sprockets with Jizer. Other degreasers are available - if you do a search you'll see a billion arguments about which is best so let's not enter into that here.

Paint on with paint brush. Let it soak in. Hose off with strong hose.

Dry off (towel or I use an air line). Reapply lube to chain.

Water everywhere is fine

Once a month I'll give the bike a whole degrease and wash with car shampoo, dry off, relube chain. Once every few months it gets a polish with car polish.

Wet lube is heavier than dry lube so stays on longer but attracts more gunk and skank to the chain.

With all that water and degreaserflying around, how do you stop it getting into the a freehub, wheel and bb bearings or do you strip and regrease those as well?

ben-----

> 2 can i use bike chemical to remove gunk from chains and cassete ?
> 3 can i use water over the chain, cabels, deraulers etc?

I find I can get the drive chain pretty darn clean using dry cloths, and a dry old nail brush (and for my older bike I use dry kitchen paper towels, but the bits go everywhere). I suppose it may depend which kind of lube you're using in the first place, and also, I suppose, how bad it's got, or putting that from another perspective, how often you do it. On my older, for the wet, bike I use Progold Prolink lube which is a lube and cleaner in one apparently, and it's surprising how well, quickly and easily it cleans up with just dry cloth etc. I do this generally after every ride [*]. On my other better/summer bike I use Muc Off C3 dry lube. Again I use just dry stuff, cloth and nail brush. I do this after every 150 to 200 miles. It doesn't clean quite so quickly/easily as the other bike but it gets totally clean without any water or chemicals.

[*] this is how Lennard Zinn in his bike maintenance book describes and advices - including the Progold Prolink lube. Doing this quickish not too thorough clean very regularly means you never have to clean it seriously.

DeVlaeminck

As always if it's worth doing it's worth doing right.
http://sheldonbrown.com/chainclean.html

Matthewfalle

Rolf F wrote:

Matthewfalle wrote:

I degrease the whole bike once a month, chain and sprockets with Jizer. Other degreasers are available - if you do a search you'll see a billion arguments about which is best so let's not enter into that here.

Paint on with paint brush. Let it soak in. Hose off with strong hose.

Dry off (towel or I use an air line). Reapply lube to chain.

Water everywhere is fine

Once a month I'll give the bike a whole degrease and wash with car shampoo, dry off, relube chain. Once every few months it gets a polish with car polish.

Wet lube is heavier than dry lube so stays on longer but attracts more gunk and skank to the chain.

With all that water and degreaserflying around, how do you stop it getting into the a freehub, wheel and bb bearings or do you strip and regrease those as well?

It's quite easy. It's not flying around. It's degreaser on a paintbrush. You apply it where it needs it, not fling it around. I'm not dunking the whole bike into a vat full of the stuff.

BB bearings are fine, wheels bearings are fine, freehub is fine. No dramas. In fact it must be pretty difficult to jazz these up I guess.

Chain and sprockets are done once a week so (my bad in the post above) so you don't actually need that much of the stuff.

So far 15 years of doing it this way and no problems, so finger crossed eh Rolf.......