Mountain Biking - Moving on from Soaking the Chain, what about washing and relubing the pivot joints.

I gave ole sparky a nice warm bath last night. Its been good and deserved a treat. Soft Bristle brushed all the joints with a mix of water and Simple Green. I'm too cheap to soak the bike. What about the joints on the suspension and derailers? Do you loosen the joints or just drip some lube in? Lay the bike on the side, WHAT? Then wipe dry? I've noticed dust builds up around the flex joints pretty fast.

Since I'm laying my ignorance for all to see, how often do you remove the cogs from the Rear D and lube the nifty little wheels? What grease? :50:

As a test of whether pivots need attention, remove one of the shock bolts (or the spring from the shock) and cycle the suspension. If it feels smooth, leave it alone. If it feels chunky, time for maintainence. The type of pivot mechanisms your bike has will dictate how they should be maintained. RTFM.

The jockey wheels on my bike might catch some incidental tri-flow overspray once or twice a year if they're lucky. More importantly, and if you're using a chain lube other than dumonde tech, the upper wheel should be inspected periodically and the gunk scraped off or sprayed off with brake cleaner.

I tend to go probably overboard and take my RD apart and completely clean it, grease the jockey wheels, and drip some wax lube into the pivots every year while I'm sitting inside bored and waiting for the snow to go away. I have no idea if you really need to do it that often, but that is the basic cleaning method I've read from multiple sources for RDs. If nothing else, maybe my RD will last me until I can't find 9sp cassettes anymore. It's a quality derailer, so why not take care of it and use it for as long as possible. I say clean and grease away! As for the grease, I have no idea if there's some "proper" grease for such a task, but I just use my regular Park grease.

I have a 1994 XT RD that still shifts like new. And it has been neglected and abused for years on end sometimes. :eek::eek::eek:

That's awesome. My XTR is a 2002. Still shifts like new too, and not a scratch on it. I'm hoping to keep it that way for as long as possible. I had an LX that broke where the pivot bolt is that mounts it to the frame, but that one was clearly well used and abused and never taken care of it's whole life when I got it. It was on a freebie bike, so whatever. It did encourage me to keep mine clean and lubed, though.