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So far the winter of 2011/12 will be remembered as “the winter of riding”, especially for those on the west side of the Blue Ridge where the upper elevation trails can be under several inches of the white stuff from December to the beginning of March. Typical Virginia winter riding usually means frozen trails, ice covered puddles, and maybe some snow. Even though these conditions might be hard on you, they are typically not too detrimental to your bike. But this is not a typical Virginia winter so you probably are finding yourself riding more frequently in conditions that are not favorable for your two wheel machine. The trails are not frozen, the puddles don’t have a protective ice layer and snow is replaced with mud. This all means an increase in the most important step of any proper bike maintenance, cleaning your bike!
Start to think about bike cleaning as part of your ride. Remind yourself that the ride is not over until the bike is washed down, lubed and dried. The main reason to do this immediately after your ride is to get the dirt off before it has time to dry and become encrusted in every small crevice. This is especially true for today's full suspension machines. I like to have my cleaning tools out by the hose prior to the ride, providing me with the reminder and motivation I need when arriving back home from the playground. Even though you might like your post ride beer cold in your hands, you don’t want your winter cleaning bucket water cold! So on the way to fridge, put your bucket in the sink to begin the warm soapy water fill up. A hose used properly for bike cleaning is a great tool, but a hose used improperly just increases your bike maintenance bill with each squeeze of the trigger. Think of the hose as a mist machine not a spray gun; use it to get moisture on the bike, not forcing mud off the bike. Let your new set of 3-4 various size brushes do the hard work. As for brushes, I like to have a specific brush for each part: tires, frame and drive train. The tire brush is usually a big stiff brush, the drive train brush is much smaller (think Park Tools) and the frame brush is a long handle smooth brush (auto parts store). In 10 minutes, I can do 2 or 3 rotations with each brush with a good hose rinse in between (remember gentle trigger).
When the wet part of cleaning is done, I spend a quick 5 minute dry/wipe down using my overabundance of XL tee shirts. You don’t have to be detailed during this stage. This is a fine opportunity to be a little spastic, just making sure you dry off over square inch of the bike in any order. Similar to brushes, I like to have different tee-shirts for different parts of the bike. My drive train tee- shirt stays with the greasy parts of the bike while my cleaner of the two shirts hits all the remaining parts of the bike. It is during this drying phase when I usually catch all of my bike’s small problems before they become big problems. When your hand is touching every part of the bike, so are your eyes. So use this quick 5 minute dry time to inspect the sidewalls of your tires and check your housing for any cracks. You don’t have to fix it right now, but put it on your mental to do list before the next outing.
The final leg of post ride bike washing is lube! By lubing your chain now, your chain will begin the needed replenishing of lubrication. When applying the very light layer of chain lube (at SBC we love Dumond Tech Original ) think of your chain as a big loop. You want to apply the lube to the inner circle of this loop so that the lube is pushed through the chain when you pedal, helping to push out the unwanted grunge.
More on what to do for bike maintenance next time. Now enjoy your post ride beverage and start dreaming of your next two wheel adventure.
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