For those riders who live in northern areas and love to ride in the mountains, deserts, or along the bumpy roads. They have to face the muddy paths across their exploring journey. So, no matter what, how you keep it matters greatly when you have a thing.
Many people ask if is it necessary to wash mountain bikes? Yes, it is. If you clean or wash your cycles, you prolong their lives.
Here arise many questions, such as how to clean a mountain bike? How often should I wash my bike? Can l wash my mountain bike with dish soap? And how to clean mountain bike chains and disk brakes? You need not worry because you’ll find the answers to your queries in this blog article.
How To Clean a Mountain Bike?
Cleaning mountain bikes is vital in maintaining your bike’s survival or life. So, the question is, how do you properly clean a mountain bike? You may think it a strange or difficult task, but amazingly, it’s not a big deal to clean them. If you follow the following steps, then cleaning mountain bikes will become very easy.
These steps are:
Firstly, you have to set up an area for cleaning or washing (it is good to use hot water for better results).
Prepare the materials or stuff you will use for cleaning and ensure these types of equipment are soft to prevent scratching on your bike. For example, soft brushes or microfiber clothes.
- Apply washing liquid on a soft brush and rinse your bike with it.
- Do scrubbing. Take a big brush for the bike frame, medium-sized brushes for hard-to-reach places, and small-sized brushes (old toothbrushes) for the cassette and chains.
- Repeat the process of rinsing on the whole bike.
- Ultimately, dry your mountain bike to enjoy a new ride or travel.
By following the above steps, your bike will be cleaned with more superiority. This sense of action will make your bike’s ride smoother.
How to Clean a Mountain Bike After a Ride?
How often should I wash my mountain bike? It is essential to clean or wash your mountain bike after a hard drive or muddy drive. You can use soap to wash your bike.
But, you should not use water with high pressure on the bearing parts of the bikes. The water pressure should be low so that no damage or harm could occur to them.
Tips for Proper Cleaning After A Ride
How to clean a mountain bike has been discussed in the above section. And how to clean a muddy mountain bike? The whole steps are similar to the overhead described steps, but the additional thing is to lubricate the disk brakes, chains, and bearing with the following vegetable oils:
- Olive oil
- Rapeseed
- Linseed
- Sesame seed
- Canola
- Peanut oil
- Corn oil
Many riders ask why we can’t use castor oil as a lubricant for mountain bikes? The reason is that this oil is denser than others and acts as a weak lubricant to penetrate the rollers.
How to Clean a Mountain Bike with Disc Brakes?
One of the components of mountain bikes is disk brakes, and their cleaning is also important. To clean them, you have to follow the below steps that are:
- Take mild soap of any brand (brake cleaners are not necessary)
- Then take some water (special sprays for the cleaning of brakes are not needed)
- Wet the soft brush with the mixture of water and mild soap.
- Clean the disk brake with the help of the brush and run the pedals by holding a cloth around the chain.
Precautions:
Before applying any product, you should remove the dust from the disc brakes and through simple hot water. While cleaning your mountain bike’s disk brakes, ensure you can’t use compressed sprays. The reason is that it can cause damage to the seal of disk brakes.
How to Clean a Mountain Bike Chain?
Mountain bike chains are the significant transformers of power. Most mountain bike chains are made from alloy steel, but some are covered with nickel aesthetics to prevent corrosion. Cleaning is required to keep the lining of the chain. You can clean it by following this:
- Remove the dirt from a chain with a piece of cloth.
- You can run your bike chain through a degreaser.
- Soak the bike chain in the methylated solutions (methanol and pyridine).
- Dip the chain in a container that has melted paraffin or a candle.
- Then, dry it and place the chain in its position.
Cleaning should be done to get the bike’s long-lasting, smoother, and more efficient working. Dust abrasively covers the bearings of your bikes, which affects their maintenance by retaining moisture.
Yes, you can use dish soap, but it will not only remove the dirt but also detach the grease that lubricates the brakes. You can use dish soap, but after diluting it.
Water with high pressure can damage the sensitive parts of your mountain bikes, such as pivots and bearings. So, it would help if you used a sponge, hose, or bucket to wet your bike and for cleaning.
I hope they are helpful to you after a long journey in the mountains. So, let’s have fun and enjoy your trip with the well-organized set-up of bikes.
