Thursday, January 31, 2008

Clean bikey!

Not much to say about last night's commute. This morning, I was extra hungry and there wasn't anything tasty at home, so I stopped by Burger King for some breakfast to eat at the bus stop. Once downtown, I saw the remnants of a pretty serious car crash. Lorin swung by to have coffee with me. It's been a few weeks, so that was cool. We bewailed the current state of the presidential race, bickered about music, and discussed the upcoming Bike To Work Week plans.

I swear, this time of year I spend almost as much time cleaning or fixing my bike as I do riding it. Okay, not quite, but I do spend more than a mere morsel of my week doing preventive maintenance, adjustments or repairs. If my bike is in any kind of disrepair, I pretty much have to figure out what's going on. Noisy chains, noisy brakes, and crufty shifting are not an option. Last night's clean and tune took a few hours but it was worth it.

I can tell you that I found the most awesomest degreasing agent ever made. Brakleen. Holy moly! Not only did it shine my rear gear cluster and chainrings up, but it evaporated in about a minute even outdoors in sub-freezing temperatures!

Anyways, here are some obligatory photos. Bath time for bikey!

My whole bike was covered in this grimy film:


I took the wheels off and scrubbed them down first, then threw the rest of the bike in the tub. First upside-down, then right-side up like this, but leaning over so it wasn't resting on the rear derailleur:


The rear cluster. I cleaned it with Brakleen and ran a rag between sprockets while it was still off the bike. This photo was after I re-lubed the drivetrain and all that good stuff.


The Goat is clean! Sorry for the over-exposure. The reflector tape throws it off and I mis-calculated the exposure time.



Random Tunage:
Des'ree - Dreams can come true
Sixpence None The Richer - Breathe

7 comments:

dirtdobber said...

My wife would kill me if I washed my bike in our tub. Then again, what she doesn't know will not hurt her. Washing indoors this time of year sounds like a good thing....

Noah said...

Chris, I should have replaced this:

"I swear, this time of year I spend almost as much time cleaning or fixing my bike as I do riding it."

with this:

"I swear, this time of year I spend almost as much time cleaning or fixing my bike and cleaning up after the messes I make as I do riding it."

It took me at least half an hour to clean the bathroom up after that little escapade. Had I not... well, I don't want to think about that!

Apertome said...

Your bike looks great. I don't think I'd go to all that trouble. I usually end up doing the best I can with my bike on a towel, using some degreaser and paper towels. I can't do as thorough a job as you have, but it doesn't take as long, either.

Anonymous said...

u came thru on the pics for me!cool,i also use a aresol brake cleaner on my derailers and cog,it evap"s quick,i also use a dust-a-way air in a sray can (no air compressor)to blow out chunks of debree.COOL TOPIC!,THANKS

Jennifer said...

I knew I couldn't possibly be the only person in the world who cleaned a bike in the bathtub.

Warren T said...

I have two very salty bikes that are waiting for a bath. I'm with Chris though, no way I'm going to get away with it inside the house.

Maybe I'll try the car wash if we get a dry day above 35 degrees.

Anonymous said...

When I come home in the aftn. I fill a gal. milk jug with warm water and just rinse all the salt/slush/dirt off the bike. Takes about 3min. I clean the chain/cassette once a week, Just a quick scrub. It it's dirtier. I'll remove the cassette and soak it in degreaser and run the chain thru a chain cleaner. Daily/Weekly cleaning is essential for Winter Riding. ScottNorthSide, Columbus,Ohio (considerbiking.org)

Privacy Policy

This site is driven by software that uses third-party cookies from Google (Blogger, AdSense, Feedburner and their associates.) Cookies are small pieces of non-executable data stored by your web browser, often for the purpose of storing preferences or data from previous visits to a site. No individual user is directly tracked by this or any other means, but I do use the aggregate data for statistics purposes.

By leaving a link or e-mail address in my comments (including your blogger profile or website URL), you acknowledge that the published comment and associated links will be available to the public and that they will likely be clicked on.