Oliver: Can you make your bike dirt-proof? Imagine a bike where dirt and grime doesn't
stick to it. A bike where the components and frame actively repel dirt because of the surface
coating on them. It sounds a bit like science fiction, but it's not. This tech actually
already exists. It's commonly used in the automotive world to apply ceramic coatings
to bodywork to help them keep cleaner. I've wondered, could you do this to a bike? I'm
going to try it out on my much-beloved Pinarello F12.
To do this, I've got hold of a couple of different products that we can try. One of them is designed
to be used on the frame-- car bodywork. Another one is for car alloy wheels and I figured
it'd be interesting to see how that works on your chainset and cassette. Let's find
out. [music]
The first step before I apply any of the coatings is to clean my bike. Admittedly, it's quite
clean at the moment already, as it should be, but when you're applying these coatings,
you got to make sure that there's absolutely no dirt underneath, to trap underneath the
coating, you've got to be meticulous, so I'm going to go to town.
[music] Just got a bit of drivetrain cleaner on there
to get this chain all immaculate as well, and my cassette and my chainrings too.
[music] Before any of you clever clogs back home watching
this say, "Don't pressure wash your bike", world tour mechanics the world over pressure
wash bikes every day, and also Si did a GCN MythBusters video where he showed that pressure-washing
your bike didn't damage your bearing, so I'm going to pressure-wash my bike.
[music] Now, I've cleaned my bike. The instructions
on here say, "Dilute it by 1:10 with clean water in a foam or a lance generating spray
bottle." That's what I've done here, this is going to go into the pressure washer. "Then,
apply it to the wet surface of your car", or in this case, bike.
Then, it says, "Just leave it for one for two minutes and then rinse it off with a pressure
washer." It says, "Rinse it off with a pressure washer as this is required to activate the
coating." You can repeat it as well, apparently, and do more layers to build it up and make
it even more dirt-proof presumably All right. Let's give it a go.
[music] I'm bringing my car in tomorrow.
[music] [laughs] That's ridiculous. I have to do both
sides. Except one side of the bike is filthy. The other side is just really clean. [chuckles]
[music] All right. Leave that a couple of minutes
like it says in the instructions, and then blast it off with the jet wash to activate
it. Something that I've just-- I've never done this before obviously. I was thinking,
"Oh, yes. I'll just apply that just to the frame", but as you saw, the way the spray
lance works is, it's gone everywhere. It covered the entire bike. I couldn't really avoid that.
Anyway, let's see what happens. [music]
Already, you can see the beading on the paint here. When people clean cars and they use
these coatings and you get this beading on the water on the surface. They call it love
beads, but it looks like it's working. It looks like there is some kind of coating on
there. Already, this is hydrophobic because of what it's doing with the little droplets
of water. So cool. Look at those little beads there. All right. Try the other side.
[music] The instructions say that for maximum durability
of the coating and to make it better, you can apply another coat. That's what I'm going
to do. Let's do one more coat with this. [music] All right, I'll give it a minute then
activate this second layer with a lance. 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24. 36 is
a lot of time. [music]
I've applied the second layer now. It looks super cool. There's all these little love
beads on the surface you get when you wash your car. That certainly suggests that there
is a hydrophobic coating now on the frame. It'd be interesting to see how it holds up
but I'm going to head up into the tech set now and apply this product which is an alloy
wheel coating. It's a bit different and I'm going to just apply it with an applicator
on to the chainset and also probably the rear mech as well and we'll see how that gets on.
For the wheel coating which I'm going to use on the chainset, I want to read the instruction.
It says, "Apply four or five drops of this stuff in the bottle to this applicator and
then apply evenly." It says, "Bonding begins immediately. Remove excess within one to two
minutes with a light wipe from a microfiber cloth and then leave it." It says, "Don't
contact-wash for seven days after you've put it on." It says, "Leave for about two hours
to dry." Let's give it a go. [music]
I'm just wiping off the excess with a microfiber cloth. I've applied the ceramic coatings now.
I've got to leave them for a couple of hours to cure, set or whatever it is they do. Then
I'm going to take it outside in search of rain, bad weather, dirt, and mud and just
see how well they perform. Unfortunately, we live in the UK which means bad weather
is a rare occurrence. I may be waiting for several days before that happens. [sighs]
The dirt-proof coatings on my bike should have cured by now. I've come to my local park
in search of mud to test them out but if I'm going to do this properly I need a control.
A bike that's not been surface treated in any way. Fortunately, I brought this along;
Si's brand new Pinarello Dogma disc but he's not even ridden yet. Probably don't tell him
I'm doing this with his bike, but I'm sure he won't mind.
I've managed to find some mud. Here is what we're going to do. I'm going to ride both
of the bikes back to back up and down through this mini swamp until they're suitably covered
in dirt at which point I'm going to take them back to base and then wash them down. The
theory is that my bike with its coating on the dirt shouldn't bond to the surface. It
should drop off as soon as you spray it with the hose. Let's see if it actually works.
Si's bike is probably going to get quite dirty. His brand new bike that he's not ridden yet,
but it's in the name of science. I'm sure he'll understand.
[music] I think my bike is quite dirty now. Time to
try Si's bike. No, beautiful, beautiful, I've just cleaned it. For God's sake this better
work. [music]
You may have noticed that Si's saddle height is a bit higher than mine, so yes I know the
saddle's too high, but for this test, I'm going to have to adjust it. It'd be all right.
Yes, that worked. Yes, that's dirty. First observations though, the dirt is sticking
to both of them, but there's definitely a lot less dirt stuck on to the down tube area
of mine than there is compared to Si's. I don't know what to read into that, but I think
the main thing will be how easy that dirt washes off once we then blast it with the
hose. That's what we'll do next. We're going to
wash Si's bike first, just in the way that I normally would. In theory, the dirt should
stick to this bike more than the one that's been coated, but we'll see.
[music] The mud has washed off really easily. It's
what you'd expect, but interestingly, already, visually there's a bit of a difference. You're
not getting all that fine beading that I was getting on the wet treated bike. You can see
the water is just-- You can just see it's visually different. It suggests that the surface
of Si's bike, the untreated bike, is a lot less hydrophobic. It's just normal.
Also, there's quite a bit of dirt left on the bike after I've washed it. Once it dries,
that's just going to stay in and you're going to have some grimy marks on there. Like I
say, most of the dirt has just washed straight off with the jet wash. Time for my bike. I'm
excited to see what happens now, so let's go.
[music] Having washed the two bikes, the surface treatment
on this is really evident. The beading, again, you can just see all those little water droplets,
suggesting there is a really hydrophobic surface coating on there. Really, it's cool to see.
Admittedly, the dirt just dropped off both of them. There still is a bit of dirt residue
left on this one, and there isn't quite the beading suggesting that it's not quite as
efficient, but I don't think this test is fully representative of real-world conditions.
That's because mud is pretty water-soluble, isn't it? It just drops off with water. The
things that really get your bike dirty are oils and greases that you pick up on the road
and also come from your drive train. They're the things that create big smears
and stains that are quite hard to remove without a degreaser. That is where I think this kind
of coating will be far more effective. It's been difficult. I haven't been able to fully
replicate that today, but I think longer term, I'm going to be interested to see how it holds
up to those oils and greases. Stay tuned for that. I'll hopefully give an update at some
point, but in the meantime, I hope you found this video useful and informative.
Let us know in the comments if you'd be interested in trying a hydrophobic ceramic coating yourself.
I'm certainly going to be keeping one on my bike, I think in the future. I think we could
be on to something here. I'll see you next time.
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