Calvin Jones here, Park Tool Company. In this repair help video we're going to walk through a basic bike wash.
Let's begin with what we need for equipment.
Hand protection is a really good idea, such as the Mechanic's Gloves from Park Tool.
Next: some water. Just like doing dishes, steamy good hot water.
If you have multiple bikes to do, you'll need lots of it.
If you're just doing the one bike, one bucket should do you.
Rinse water is needed. If you have a hose you can use a nozzle - use a light spray.
Here we don't have that option; we're actually going to use a water bottle spray and that's all you really need.
Other equipment is going to include the dummy hub:
a very nice feature to help keep the solvent off the hub and the cassette.
A gear brush, a holder for the solvent, solvent - chain cleaner solvent - such as ChainBrite from Park Tool,
a series of brushes - this is the BCB-4.2. A large soft brush, what's called a bottle brush,
and this combination bristle and sponge brush.
We have a chain cleaner, a large sponge - a very good thing. Some soap - dish soap.
Chain lube, and a light lube for our pivots, and rags, a little workbench, a place to work
so we're ready to begin.
As some preparation for our wash we need to be ready with our buckets.
We're going to begin with some soap.
A good quality dish soap is important. In general don't be shy with getting the soap in the bucket.
Sponges are going to go in our wash bucket.
Small sponge, large sponge, our brush, our bottle brush, this bristle sponge combination brush,
not this brush. This gear brush is going to be for our solvent. We're going to put some solvent in here.
That is ready for later use.
A plain water bottle is fine. We're going to use this in our rinse water.
You can even mark a bottle specifically as your rinse bottle if you do a lot of this so you're not drinking out of it.
This is going to be for spraying the bike - it won't over-douse the bike, it won't blast out grease.
It'll be about the same as a rainstorm, which is not going to ruin your bike. So that's our rinse water.
We're using an upright style clamp and we're going to grab the seat post
but before we grab anything, we're going to wipe it down with the sponge.
If this were gritty, we'd be grabbing on the anodizing with the grit.
Also remember: occasionally clean out the jaws of the repair stand.
That way there's no grit in there to damage anything.
For the cleanest and most detailed wash, we're actually going to pull both front and back wheels.
On a quick wash, it's really not necessary to pull both wheels,
but to really get inside of things and to really inspect, it's good to drop the wheels.
For the rear wheel, we're going to need to replace that sprocket with something like the dummy hub
the DH-1 from Park Tool.
This bike uses a thru axle, so we use the pulley wheel, the axle from the bike,
and that's taking the place of our cassette cog.
We're going to begin first with the drivetrain which is typically the dirtiest, nastiest part of the bike.
We're going to use a degreaser and a brush on the pulley wheels and the derailleurs and the chainrings first.
after that we're going to use a chain cleaner on the chain.
So if the pulleys are really gunky, we're coming through here
brushing them, we may need to scrape them if they're extremely filthy, we'll do the top one...
We can see the build-up that's coming off - I can scrape it if need be
If these get very very caked with grit, grass and mud,
it does not do a good job of guiding the chain to our different gears.
So whatever needs brushing with the degreaser now we're doing it. We would move forward then to the front
We can do the chainring, get it looking good. Come to the inside, brush it, brush the small ring if necessary
and here I'm trying to brush from below, avoiding having the degreaser come down into our bearings
so try and avoid that whenever you can.
The front derailleur, we would brush with degreaser if it was needing it,
inside the linkages, whatever was needed.
Next we're going to use a chain cleaner such as the CM-5.2 from Park Tool.
This one engages the chain, it runs through the brushes. An important part of this is how we hold it.
We need to hold it so that we're guiding the chain straight to the front ring.
If we twist the tool, it's going to take the chain off the front ring, so this effectively becomes the guide pulley.
so we are going to install - make sure the chain is down in the large brush
Install the top cap, close the lid
we're now going to fill with solvent.
Come up at least to the fill line and we pedal backwards.
The chain is passing through a series of brushes and a sponge as it exits.
About a minute of that is fine - that looks much, much better.
Disengage and drop it.
Used solvent should be stored in an appropriate container.
The dirt and contaminates will settle to the bottom, and the top can be poured off for later reuse.
For disposal, check with your local authorities.
We're going to follow up with a different solvent - we're going to follow up with just soapy water as a second rinse.
Again we backpedal, it's going to help remove any of the small gritty pieces that may be left in the chain.
So after cleaning the chain and doing a second soapy rinse, we can see that chain is pretty darn clean.
We'll now move on to the components using our soapy water and our brushes.
So this brush would be useful for the derailleur - we come on back, we scrub it up
and also the frame.
Come to the front and the pedals.
We need the other side
and we can also inspect as we go. We notice here - missing a zip-tie
so we make a mental note: need a zip-tie.
The large sponges are quite useful not just for the washing, but also as a reservoir for our brush.
The brush is nice, bristles get in there nicely, but they run out of water
so here we can just supply more suds to our brushes.
This is a caliper disc brake. We're using some gentle soapy water to wash it.
It's not going to contaminate the pads - we're going to rinse it afterwards -
so you don't need to pull the brake pads in this case.
These tight areas are getting hard to get to. The large mop head style doesn't fit.
We're going to switch tools - we're going to use a bottle brush. That gets inside of there nicely.
Very good. Brush brush brush.
and from the top and the saddle - up under the saddle where the mud comes.
Seat post there, I'm using the sponge
This one has a bristle side. It also has a more aggressive side
So if there's something chrome or something that's really hard metal that needs some real scrubbing
you can use the aggressive side of that brush.
A place we actually want to avoid scrubbing is the shift levers themselves.
The mechanical levers have little grease and oils in the palls and the mechanisms
you can flush that out with too much washing, it's hard to get the lubrication back in.
So electronic shifting, not a big deal, but the mechanical, we're not going to scrub hard on those mechanisms.
Everything's clean - it's time to rinse.
We're going to rinse, if you were to use a water hose, use a very fine mist - do not blast things on the rinse!
Again, a water bottle is a good way to go. It provides plenty of force.
The brushing is what loosens the dirt, this just gets the dirt off.
So we're going from the top downward on our rinse.
There we are.
That water is coming up clear - very clean.
We rinse out the brake shoes
basically a gentle rain.
There we are.
Last process:
Spin that quickly - helps fling the water off. Done.
Next, we're going to clean our wheels.
With our gear brush & solvent we're going to scrub the cogs.
Here I'm going to tilt the cogs downward to help prevent any wayward solvent getting inside the freehub.
Rather than tilt it this way, we're gonna tilt it like this.
There's going to be sometimes dirt packed down tight between the cogs.
We're going to use the comb part of the brush to get down inside and scrape that out
loosen that up to get that out of there.
That junk down inside tends to push the chain upward and cause bad shifting, so let's remove that.
Next, we're going to come in with our little bristle brush.
It's gonna help remove the solvent, make those shiny and pretty.
We can clean inside the hub there with our bottle brush. That's going to come in between nicely.
The big brushes aren't going to fit in here so we're using the bottle brush to get that clean.
It also can reach even down in here and get that nice and clean.
Again, we're introducing some soap here to this mechanism, but we're going to flush it with water
It's not going to be a problem for our braking.
Outside clean the rim here, use the large brush
come around on the other side, the same
if it's extremely dirty, you may need a small sponge to go in between each spoke
to get it clean.
Also the tread is good to clean.
Makes a complete good looking machine.
Lastly is a rinse - we start at the top,
the hub, the rotor and then the other side.
A little spin helps get off the water - ready to go.
Now we want to look at the drivetrain. You want to see that it's really dry - we can take a good cotton shop rag
we can get that dry, you can also let it air dry,
but we've gotta remember to come through and lubricate the chain.
We've taken the previous lubrication out with the solvent, we need to put it back.
We're going to leave the dummy hub in place and lubricate before we put the wheel in.
In that case we're not spraying any excess oil all over the rest of the cogs or any braking surfaces.
So we're going to find the master link, if this chain has one.
We're going to lubricate across, when we come back to our master link we know we're done.
Typically three to four revolutions is what it takes.
So here, we're going to do the slow lubrication method - one roller at a time.
This way we're not over-lubricating, making a huge mess,
and more importantly we're able to sight each and every rivet and each and every roller as we go
to see if there's a bent plate, a burr, a twist, a bad rivet, and know if it's a chain with integrity.
This is riveting stuff.
we're back to our master link
we give that a spin, work that lubrication in, take a rag, and wipe it out.
Lubrication on the outside simply attracts dirt. It's the lube on the inside that does us some good.
Ready for the rear wheel.
The bike can now just air dry just sitting there on its own. Fine.
It is nice to take a cotton towel or rag and then dry things off.
That does a couple of things in addition.
If we missed any spots like on this fork here, we can get those,
but most importantly, as we wipe we should inspect.
We can look at the welds, we can look for any loose fittings, we can look at all the joints,
and really get to know the machine so wiping it down - certainly not a bad idea.
Bike's clean and ready to go.
and that's the basic procedure for cleaning the bike. Thank you for washing.