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Hey Folks, thanks for joining me. Today I want to talk about cleaning your bike or
as I like to call it help save yourself a couple hundred pounds. Long story short
I've been cycling for *mumbles* 30 plus years and in all that time have had all sorts of different bikes
and I thought I was looking after them, I was putting them in and making sure they got their service but I was getting really
frustrated at the cost of services. A £40 or £60 service and I would end up paying £300
because of all the parts of the labour for all the replacement
parts.
Then a conversation with the mechanic at The Edinburgh Bicycle Coop told me
that this was basically because I wasn't cleaning my bike. What happens is that your drive train gets covered
in all the grime and dust and dirt from the roads and basically you then
every time you turn that chain, you are
treating it like sandpaper and you are rubbing it into all the you're moving parts and basically
sandpapering down the teeth on your chain rings etc and it just causes
all sorts of damage.
So I took his advice and I started cleaning my bike thoroughly every single weekend
and since then my services for my bike are down to maybe an extra £10
cause I might need a new chain here and there so it's made a massive difference. So what I'm going to do today
is show you how to clean your bike. You don't need any fancy equipment .
Basically a bucket of hot soapy water, a sponge, an old toothbrush. An OLD ONE, don't use the one you use to clean your teeth and some cloths. And what I do
the soap that I use is called muc-off, it's a proper bike cleaning soap and basically I clean,
as you can see, Iclean my bike in the garden this stuff is biodegradable and doesn't do any harm in the
garden but you could probably use washing up liquid and someone will now probably tell me you can't.
And also I use de-greaser to get all the yuk off the drivetrain and that's quite important.
A good decreases is the one bit of kit I'd say definitely buy one of the other things I
would recommend
rubber gloves, now, they dont have to be fantastic and trendy purple ones. Just your old
kitchen marigolds will do, the one thing I will say though is any kit
you're using for cleaning your bike make it your bike kit because it's going to get really disgusting.
And you don't want to put your rubber gloves back in the kitchen
covered in oil and gas and the wife will kill you basically. So anything you are using to clean your bike
becomes your proper bike cleaning kit.
Gloves on! Here we go. Here... I spoke to you about this, de-greaser. That's hat I use, you can choose your own brand.
disposable cup of some description
cause it is going to get disgusting so don't use your best china and again an old toothbrush. And that's all
we need. A little bit of de-greaser in the cup and then we're going to start cleaning the drive chain and
that's us
You don't need a lot, that's going to be enough to clean the whole bike.
You don't need loads of the stuff. And then what we are going to do is apply it liberally to the chain.
Ok the eagle eyed among you will notice that this is not the same bike.
Apologies we had some issues with filming earlier and
so now I've got one nice clean bike and I have to clean a second to finish the video.
So back to where we started, got some de-greaser and my toothbrush
and will apply to the chain front and back
all underneath it and in the links. Get it nice and covered.
The chainrings, the cassette and the jockey wheels
you want to get liberally on all of that. So here we go
Ok that's de-greaser over all of the working parts
of the drive train and cassette, chain rings, everything.
So now we're going to leave that for about 5 minutes
Just to let it do it's stuff.
Meanwhile we get a bucket of hot soapy water and
a sponge and we can get the rest of the bike cleaned.
OK so thinking so de-greaser's on.
We've done the main chain
all the jockey wheels
the cassette at the rear
and we've done the chain rings at the front.
Leave that to sit give it 5 10 minute, meanwhile
we'll get the rest of the frame cleaned
So it's a simple case of a bucket of hot soapy water
As hot as your hands can take because
this is going to get all the grime and oil off
and a sponge.
It doesn't need to be a fancy sponge but... your sponge is going to end up filthy and it will become your bike sponge.
I tend to have a dirty sponge and then a clean sponge or brush for afterwards.
But that's it, soap and water. Start at the top and working our way round.
Now I'm making sure I get underneath here with these cables.
Because any dirt or grime caught in these cables can actually go into the sheaths
and damage things as well so make sure you get there.
There we go. That doesn't take long at all.
Ok so the bike is pretty much clean now
What I'm going to do is take the wheels off
Give the wheels a good clean.
And the framework around the wheels
And that will be the bike clean.
Ok so, I start with the front wheel,
that's just my routine. Front wheel comes off and I do that first.
Ok, the front wheel is off
Gonna give this a good clean,
and this is your chance to have a look at your tyre and check for any glass or stones
that are caught in the tread and get them out and check the condition of the tyres.
What you want to do is get your rims nice and clean.
If you have rim brakes then this is important coz if your rims aren't clean
then the brake pads
are going to push all that into the rim of your wheels
I have disc brakes so this is my chance to get the disc nice and clean
Same again. A sponge and hot soapy water.
Ok now that your wheel is nice and clean, it's your chance to get
in and do the frame around the wheel and to clean the other parts of the brakes.
These parts are really hard ot get to so it's much easier when the wheel is off.
I fully accept that it might seem a bit much to clean the inside of your mudguards,
but as soon as they get wet, that will spray all over your nice clean bike.
A trick for cleaning the pads of your disc brakes.
Cloth!
Use it like dental floss.
OK that's the rear wheel off.
Exactly the same as before.
You can check your tyre at this point,
get both your rims and tyre cleaned
a chance for me to clean my brake and disc and
and importantly, a chance to get this rear cassette clean.
Get the de-greaser off it, cause you can't really get in there with the sponge.
So what I do, is I use the cloth like dental floss again.
I can get in that way and get all the gunk out from between the cogs and teeth.
So off we go!
OK! Once nice clean wheel
We'll get it back on the bike and all that's left
is to give it a rinse.
So we need a bucket of clean hot water
and either a clean sponge or a brush or cloth, whatever you want to use
to give it a rinse down.
OK! One nice clean and shiny bike.
Everything is sparkly in the tiny little bit of sun light we've got left.
Last thing we have to do, I have a bucket of clean, hot water.
You can have a sponge, a clean sponge, I've got this brush
and all I'm going to do is give it all a really good rinse.
and get rid of all the soap.
Then we'll give it a dry and an oil and we're done!
The bike's had a good rinse down,
get yourself a towel, a big cloth or watever
and give it all a nice dry.
As much as we don't want grime and old oil and things on it.
Having a wet bike is not good either. You don't want it to rust!
So make sure you get everything nice and dry.
OK bike's dry, now we're going to give it a little bit of oil.
For oiling the bike here's 2 different types.
There's wet lube and there's dry lube.
Basically this is about the weather.
Living in Scotland,it's not always nice like this. I mostly use wet because it rains a lot.
But during the summer when you don't get as much rain, you get a different type of dirt.
You get more dust and stuff and it sticks to the wet oil more.
So you might want to switch to a dry lube.
So all I do, and believe it or not this weather is unusual so I'm using wet lube.
Is... now I don't know why, but I've always been told to oil the underside of the chain.
I'm sure there is a perfectly good reason but no one has explained it to me.
I'll do as I'm told.
So just make sure you get oil on each of these links.
Take your time.
Run the chain making sure you get oil on all the links.
So there you go! We've got oil on all the links
The last thing to do which will seem a bit strange.
We're going to wipe the oil off.
Basically we want it to get in there to all the links but we wipe off the excess oil
So take a cloth, and just run the chain through it.
We have one nice , clean and well functioning bike.
If you do this every week, keep your bike tip top.
I guarantee it will run nicer for much longer.
Go, have a go and let me know how you get on.