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Tech How often do you clean your street blade?

How often do you clean and lube the drivetrain on your 'good' (i.e. fast) bike?

  • Every ride

    Votes: 5 21.7%
  • Every week

    Votes: 11 47.8%
  • Every month

    Votes: 3 13.0%
  • What's a drivetrain?

    Votes: 1 4.3%
  • My experimental reverse-polarity static-layup technology keeps my bike clean at all times

    Votes: 3 13.0%
  • I don't ride it, and keep it in a Michael Jackson Pepsi-era dust free Oxygen tent, so never.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    23

GrantT

Maximum Pace
Oct 2, 2012
1,912
1,616
Peer pressure forces me to clean my bike before every group ride. This is no more than once-a-week though, and if I'm not on any group rides with OCD peers, I might leave it a bit. 5 training rides tops, after which things start to get a bit sticky and cleaning makes a perceptible difference to the ride feel.

Anyone else bored at work going to own up?
 
Clean? Depends what that means. I lube and wipe the chain before almost every ride. Once a month or so, use citrus solvent to wash off the crud and I re-lube with Finish Line Ceramic Wax
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I would define 'cleaning and lubing of drivetrain' to include the cassette, jockey wheels, chainrings and chain for cleaning, while lubing can be restricted to the chain.

My method is to wipe any external stuff off the chain with alcohol wipes, clean one chainring and the jockey wheels superficially with same wipes, use one of those big spray cans of degreaser to spray into the chain while wiping along and catching more black stuff. Then I switch chainrings, clean the other empty one, remove the rear wheel, remove the cassette and clean each individual cassette cog with said degreaser and alcohol wipes. Then put it all back together, apply Finish Line Dry Lube across every rivet of the chain, and leave overnight to soak in a bath of virgin blood.
 
All that plus frame, rims, hubs, spokes, bars, brakes etc

If it is a sweaty ride I take the headset apart and clean it all out and regrease all over the bearings to give a layer of corrosion protection.
 
My bike gets a thorough clean before any big ride at the weekend. A few weeks back I realised on Friday night I hadn't cleaned it. It got a good cleaning from 12:30 to 1am.
If I go out for a small ride during the week, I don't clean it after each ride, but I do make sure it's in good condition.
@TCC i must say I was expecting more from you the last time we went out riding. It's very disappointing that you failed the family mart clean drivechain check.
 
The Famima check has us quaking in our carbon soles. I don't really work at the weekend I'm just too petrified I'll fail the @leicaman inspection.

This is all you need to ride with pride

 
Yeah, that is great if you want to get detergent in your bearings.
I don't know why you don't clean your bike with water. You change all the bearing in your bike like every week!!!
 
It might look like that, but it is actually every other buggers bearings I am changing for them on a constant stream of wheels in and out of my "lab".
 
Me, I'm really lazy, and they're all quite gunky (in TCC terms), but they all seem to keep working just fine.
 
It is not anal obsession, and nothing to be looked down upon or mocked.

A soldier keeps his gun in perfect working order, a highwayman his horse well fed and groomed, an assassin his blade razor keen, a barber his scissors sharp, and a man his body clean, toned and fit to the best of his abilities. The bike is no different.
 
ケツフェチ:tup

強迫性障害(きょうはくせいしょうがい)= OCD
 
Oh, and how do you say anal-obsessive in Japanese? @Half-Fast Mike
I'm not sure if I was being cited as an example, or asked for an answer. Anyway, according to Psychoanalysis 101 the two parts of this expression each both mean the same thing.

How do you say oxymoron in Japanese..?

@jdd
 
@Half-Fast Mike the air compressor blows away the water, making it even more shiny and nice.

Water acts as a surface leveller, essentially adding a perfectly smooth clear surface to whatever it lays on, so actually your bike will look the most shiny when it is wet with water. You can test this by spraying water over the surface of your bike and then shining a torch at it; with the wet surface, you can't see any micro-scratches. When the water runs off it, you can see all the micro-scratches. Polish does a similar thing, in a dry form to water, in this sense.

And that has to be the most boring thing I have ever posted.
 
And that has to be the most boring thing I have ever posted.
As you know if you actually think about it, unless the water is choc-a-bloc with detergent, surface tension will cause the water to bead. So spraying water over the surface of your bike will make your bike look wet. A small hand towel (10 g), available for almost nothing from all Grand Hyatt toilets, will resolve this malady more quickly than a compressor (18 kg) and without resource to electricity.
 
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