- Keeping the transmission in your bike nice and clean
and lubricated is the key to A,
making sure your gears work correctly,
and B, the longevity of that expensive transmission.
Now although we clean our bikes on a fairly regular basis
and give your drivetrain a little bit of love,
it's important, perhaps annually, to have a proper
deep clean, and that means taking the gear off your bike.
This is how you do it.
First question you might be asking is why would you
take all your transmission off to wash it
when you can wash it on the bike?
Now of course there are simple things
like a can of degreaser and a firm-bristled brush,
like an old toothbrush or this car wheel brush,
for example, that you can use on the bike.
Now this does work really well on a day-to-day basis
just for general cleaning.
But when things do get a bit grimier,
you're gonna need to step it up a bit and go a bit further.
Now chain bath is excellent for this.
You fill these with degreaser to the line,
they've got rotating brushes inside,
you cycle the chain through it
and it does a really good job of cleaning that drive train.
However, all that dirt and muck that really gets into
the nooks and crannies of the bike,
it won't clean that stuff out, and sometimes when washing
the rest of the bike, once you've got your clean chain
that stuff can find its way back in
and you'll still have a gritty-sounding chain.
And of course if it sounds gritty,
it's gonna be wearing faster than it would be if it's not.
So the best solution, really, is to take the stuff
off the bike and treat each individual component
as a separate thing and give it a deep clean.
And when doing this it also means you can inspect
parts of the bike you can't normally get to,
like all around the bottom bracket,
the back of the crank, and stuff like that.
And this actually presents a really good opportunity
to do a full service if you're comfortable doing that.
So depending on your particular bike
and the orientation of your gears and stuff,
you're gonna need the correct tools for the job.
So first up you're gonna need some Allen keys.
In this particular case we need a five to remove
the rear mech, a three millimetre for the jockey wheels,
a five millimetre for the cranks
and of course a Shimano tool to remove that,
and a four millimetre on the chain guide.
Again, this will vary bike to bike.
Next up you're gonna need a chain whip and a cassette tool
in order to remove the cassette from the bike.
You're gonna need some generic sprays,
lubricants, that sort of stuff.
So first up is a decent quality chain lube
for lubricating that chain afterwards.
Some spray grease, I'll show you why,
but that's gonna be useful in some of the smaller parts
of the bike like the rear derailleur.
Spray degreaser and some just generic heavy-duty degreaser.
Ideally something that's biodegradable.
Now because you're gonna be working with degreasers
and solvents you're gonna want some safety gloves,
so some nitrile gloves are a good idea.
Some clean rags or some shop towel
for making sure that stuff is nice and clean,
along with a selection of various hard bristle brushes.
I like to use some old clear plastic tubs.
It's good so you can monitor how clean
the stuff is getting when you leave it in there,
and they're obviously reusable for afterwards.
Now some people like to use a water bottle
or an old jam jar for cleaning the chain in,
and we'll demonstrate that to you as well.
So first things first,
it's time to remove the chain from the bike.
This is also a beneficial way of doing it
because you can put the chain straight into solvent
whilst you're also removing the other parts for cleaning.
Now make sure before you remove the chain
you've got a method of rejoining it safely afterwards.
I always like to recommend
using a fresh joining link each time.
You can reuse some but it's never gonna be
as good as using a fresh one,
so ideally make sure you've got one of those first.
So to make the job easier, the first thing
you're gonna need to do is turn the clutch off on the bike
if your bike has got a Shimano mech,
and then I recommend using a little third helping hand
made from a bit of bent spoke.
You can use that to just hook into the chain
and give yourself a bit of slack, which makes this easier
to work on that particular link that you're gonna split.
Now there's various different ways you can split this link.
You can do it manually by hand, it's quite hard sometimes.
You can pinch the links together like this
and use your set of pliers, or what I like to do
is use the dedicated set of chain link pliers.
Now, okay, so they're not the cheapest thing in the world.
You can get cheaper models than this,
but it's a buy once tool and you'll be able to use this
forever working on your bike 'cause they fit all chains.
So now I'm just gonna pull it backwards
through the derailleurs there.
And there we have one filthy chain ready to be cleaned.
So as I said earlier, I like to keep
some of these little plastic tubs.
You can use Tupperware tubs, old ice cream tubs,
even stuff from Chinese takeaway.
All really useful to keep for this exact purpose.
I'm gonna soak this in degreaser and I'm gonna get to work
on this with a brush a bit later on.
But soaking in degreaser now means all the stuff
that's on the inside that's built up and congealed
and stuff in the chain, that's gonna soften
and be easier to get out, and it allows me to work on
the rest of the bike at the same time.
So next up you want to get the cranks off the bike,
and in this case Neil's got a chain guide on the top here,
so I'm just gonna loosen that off.
Also gonna take that off
and give that a bit of a clean as well.
Just because the chain passes through there
and you do get a bit of chain residue and buildup on there.
Now it's just a case of pulling the crank off.
Sometimes you need a mallet just to tap the non-drive side
just to get it out of the frame.
In this case it slides straight out.
Now the eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed
that Neil's bike is pretty filthy,
and why aren't I cleaning his bike?
Well, it's not important at this stage.
We're just gonna clean everything to do with transmission.
The rest of the bike is quite happy to work when it's dirty,
and of course, why should I clean his bike?
So now it's a case of remove the rear wheel from the bike
and then we're gonna take the rear derailleur off,
and then the cassette off the rear wheel.
Just undo that lock nut, and then you wanna remove that
from the cassette.
And then
taking your next spare tub,
I'm gonna put a cassette straight into this tub.
And that is where it's gonna be cleaned and degreased.
So I've just got some degreaser here
onto the rear cassette itself, so that's just gonna start
breaking down the bad stuff on there.
Again, I'm just gonna leave that to soak.
Some people can do this overnight, but I'm obviously
in a bit of a hurry with this to get Neil back riding again.
So with the rear derailleur you want to take
the jockey wheels off before you actually expose this
to degreaser, because sometimes they have bearings,
sometimes have bushes, either way
they can be damaged by the degreaser
so you're best off cleaning those separately.
So just using the three millimetre Allen key,
I'm just gonna undo the jockey wheel retaining bolts
and remove those before putting the derailleur itself
in with the rear sprockets.
Okay, so now it's just a case
of making sure every single component is clean.
Now earlier on you saw me take the chain off
and put that straight into this tub
and get some degreaser on there.
Now some people like to use a water bottle
or an old jam jar for this, in which case
you drop the chain in, seal it up, give it a shake,
and leave it to do its thing.
But I do find that most degreasers now
are powerful enough to not have to do that.
So again, it's just been sat here
and if you look at the colour of this liquid in here
you can see the amount of grit that's just come off it.
So I'm just gonna give it a good scrub as well
with the fine brush, and then I'm gonna leave that again
to continue degreasing itself and I'm gonna move on
to the cassette and the rear derailleur.
I'll basically systematically work my way
through all these parts until they're really, really clean.
Now of course it does depend how gunky they are,
how long it's been since you've done this previously,
and it's gonna vary the amount of elbow greasing
that I have to put in.
In this case she's looking pretty good already,
so check this out.
You can see all that residue and all the gunk
that's come off it, so
it's nice to just work the stuff into the chain links.
Flip the chain over, of course,
to make sure you're getting all of it done.
You can really see the colour of the degreaser,
it was just a yellow fluid to start with.
You can really see the muck coming off in there.
And bit by bit you can start seeing the chain
start to resemble a new chain again.
Same process for the cassette.
Just get stuck in, really give everything a decent scrubbing
and by the time you're done this is gonna look so clean.
You'll be really surprised, actually,
it'll look almost new.
Now if you like the idea of giving parts like this
a deep clean but you don't like the fact
that you've gotta get involved with a bit of elbow grease
like I'm doing here, get yourself a parts washer.
You can get them quite cheap, they can sit on the top
of your workbench in your workshop.
You can get 'em from as little as $40, $50
or roughly the same in pounds and euros.
You plug 'em in and they cycle degreaser over the stuff,
actually helps you do this,
and you can leave 'em to do their thing as well.
They work really, really well.
Of course you might not want to spend that money,
but it does mean this sort of job
would be virtually hassle free.
Now with the rear derailleur itself,
notice that I'm obviously scrubbing this with degreaser,
but you don't really want too much degreaser
to get inside the actual clutch mechanism.
We're gonna have a look at it afterwards
and show you how to just get some fresh grease inside there
to make sure that it continues to work well.
But you still need to make sure all that horrible grease,
muck buildup you get from the drivetrain is removed.
So now over to the chainset and the chainring.
Now you want to give the cranks a real decent clean.
Make sure the splines have got all the grease
taken off and all the nasty stuff.
So when you're putting them back on the bike
you're in effect doing a fresh instal.
And the idea of that is that any sort of grit and stuff
that's worked its way in there over the winter's riding
or your last year's riding, that's not gonna create
any creaks when you reassemble the bike.
Now in this case the back of this chainring
is absolutely filthy so I'm actually gonna remove
the chainring from the crank just so I can make doubly sure
there's no grit and stuff on the back of it.
Again, on your particular bike it might be different.
You might have a direct mount chainring
that goes straight to the crank.
This one has got a spider with four chainring bolts,
so just gonna remove those.
So as you can see this chainring
is really, really clean now, and you just wanna be
inspecting the teeth for any damage,
missing teeth, anything that's overly worn.
And that runs true for your chain, your cassette,
anything that you've taken off to inspect.
So just as I mentioned before with the jockey wheels,
it's a good idea to take these off
'cause as you can see under these little covers
they've got actual cartridge bearings in there.
So now is the time to see how they feel.
In this case, they feel really good.
But you can do that ghetto hack that I showed you
with the headset video where you just peel off the top seal,
flush it through with some fresh grease
and put that seal back on,
and you'll get loads of use out of those.
So as you can see,
there's always horrible black gunk that just collects.
You just see it's there.
It's especially guilty of collecting
on these jockey wheels or guide wheels.
It's that unknown black muck
that just seems to come from nowhere.
Okay, so now everything is fully clean.
I've rinsed it all off so there's no degreaser residue
on there, just use hot water.
Now ideally you want to leave this all to dry
before reinstalling on the bike.
I've heard of people using hairdryers before
or even heat guns just to speed things up a bit,
but we're just gonna leave these aside
and then start putting the bike together
when everything is dry.
Now some people like to lube their chain
while it's off the bike just to make sure
some of that lubricant gets into the rollers
and the pins of the chain,
give it a wipe clean, then instal on the bike.
Personally I'm just gonna instal everything dry and clean,
with the exception of the rear derailleur.
Now as for the rear derailleur itself,
it's fully clean on the outside,
there's no sort of grit remaining in there.
I'm happy with that, but with Shimano derailleurs
in particular you can remove this cap over the clutch.
So I'm just gonna take that off and just check the condition
of the grease that's under there.
Now these are pretty waterproof and they do stay in place
quite well and do resist the elements,
but it's worth checking while it's off the bike.
And if I think it's gonna need a squirt of grease in there
or even a clean, it's the perfect time to do that.
Now as you can see in this particular one,
you can see how the clutch operates there with this lever.
It's absolutely fine, it's working in there,
but I'm just gonna maximise on it being open.
I'm just gonna put a little bit of spray grease
just on the inside.
It's not as thick as traditional grease,
so it's not gonna congeal or thicken over time.
So now it's time for reassembling everything on the bike.
So most things are self-explanatory
'cause you've already taken them apart,
but the crank in particular and the rear derailleur
just require a little bit of attention.
So in terms of putting the jockey and the guide wheels
back on, so let's just check this because the upper one
is a guide wheel and the lower one is a tension wheel,
they're slightly different, so in this case
the slightly rounder looking one is the lower one
and the more defined one is the upper one.
That's the one that guides the chain where it needs to go.
And just make sure when you get your orientation right
and they go on that you also include
some threadlock on those little bolts.
Okay, so now the rear derailleur is back in working order.
Now before I put it on the bike I'm just gonna spray
some all-purpose lubricant just into the pivots and stuff,
just enough to let it soak in there.
If any drips out I can still just wipe it clean.
Give it a wipe down.
Now it's time to reinstall to the bike.
As with reinstalling any of this stuff
I would recommend just a tiny drop of threadlock
just on the hanger bolts, and the only reason for that
is they're just subject to vibration.
It literally just has to be a drop, no more.
Now just repeat the same process
with putting the chainring back onto your cranks.
Don't forget to put it in the correct orientation
for your particular crankset.
Use some threadlock on those bolts
and then just reinstall everything back onto the bike.
Now just don't forget to use a fresh chain link
on that chain just to make sure it's safe and secure.
Now all you've gotta do is index your gears
and you're ready to ride.
So there we go, that is Neil's bike back together
with a spectacularly clean drivetrain,
if nothing else, so it seems.
So hopefully this video has been helpful for you.
I'd like to know what you think in the comments below.
If you want to see a couple more really helpful videos,
if you want to know about installing a new inner cable
and how you flush out the shifter housing,
all that sort of stuff, click down here.
And if you want to find out everything
about indexing and setting up your gears, click down here.
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