Mountain Bike Servicing Guide
Keep Your Bike in Tip Top Condition
Proper bike maintenance is vital if you’re serious about getting the most out of your cycle, keeping it around for as long as possible, getting the best resale value and riding safely. Whether it’s scrubbing the mud of your Mountain Bike or putting some oil on your bike chain, cleaning your bike also makes it look better, and while that may not be important to some people, if you have spent a lot of money on your bike or just take pride in your purchase, then keeping it clean is one way to show that.
How Often to Clean Your Bike
How often you should clean and service your bike depends on a few different factors:
How often you ride: If you’re out on your bike every day, then you’re going to want to clean it more often than if it’s just your weekend hobby or you just roll out to the park trails from time to time.
Where you ride: If you’re a BMX park junky, you’re not going to be exposed to a whole lot of dirt and debris. If you are, then you need to talk to the park administrator and make sure they do something about that. If you’re doing any sort of off road biking or long distance riding on your road bike, you’re going to accumulate a lot more dirt than others, so you would need to clean your bike a lot more.
When you ride: If you’re a bike commuter and ride in the rain, snow, hail and sunshine alike, then you’re going to get your bike a lot more dirty than if you just ride it when the weather is perfect.
Considering all these factors, if you are riding your bike multiple times a week, especially in wet or dirty conditions, then you should be cleaning it about once a week. If you’re doing hard-core mountain biking or any sort of off road riding, especially if mud is involved, you need to clean your bike after every use. The same is recommended after long road rides or endurance trips.
Cleaning Your Bike
Bikes are not difficult to clean and once you get the routine down, you can clean them relatively quickly. Here is a simple guide to getting your bike as clean as possible, no matter what you have put it through.
Take degreaser and put it on your chain. Allow the degreaser to set in and do its work for about a minute or two.
Grab onto a shop cloth or rag and let the chain move through your fingers by turning the pedals. You will know you’re doing this correctly because you will see grease come off on the rag.
Take your back wheel off of the frame and spray degreaser on the cog. Make sure that the wheel has been tilted forward to keep the liquids from getting into the hub. Again, let the degreaser go to work for about a minute or two.
Repeat degreasing process on other areas of the bike that accumulate grease. Let it all soak in and do its job.
Take a splash of degreaser, warm water and detergent and put it all in a bucket. Use this solution to clean everything you did in the first four steps. When you’re done with that clean the rest of the bike with the same solution and your shop rag.
Rinse everything off with fresh water. Use a wet rag, sponge or brush. Resist the urge to use a high-pressure sprayer. While this might make your job easier to remove the mud and dirt, it can also slam water, cleaner and other materials into parts of your bike that you don’t want them to go.
Dry your bike completely. You don’t want rust or ice to form inside components.
Reattach the rear wheel and any other part of your bike that you had to disconnect to clean properly. Make sure that your nuts and fasteners are on tight and everything is secure.
Oil your chain before your next ride. You can do it that day but make sure everything is completely dry and good to go.
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The Bicycling Guide to Complete Bicycle Maintenance & Repair For Road
