himespau 

I have a couple of questions about cleaning.

First, my braking surface is kinda black. I'm changing my brakes and my cables over, and I want to do all I can to help it out by having a clean rim too. I've seen a lot of people recommend the red scotchbrite. I don't have any of that , but have a fair bit of the green. Would that work instead with some soap and water? What's the difference between the two? Abrasiveness?

Also, I've cleaned my chain several times, but it always comes back gunky. Part of that is the weather (and possibly where I store my bike), but I think it's also that I don't do enough to clean my cogs/chainrings so the gunk just gets transfered back and forth. I don't have a freewheel tool (it's a 6-speed, so I think that means free wheel, no?) so is the best way just to pop the wheel off and go at it with a cog brush and a bucket of soapy water? I use a finishline chain cleaner thing to clean my chain without taking it off (as I don't know how), so, if I were to keep using that, do I clean the chain before or after the cogs? Would the citrus cleaner I use on my chain be better to clean the cogs?

By the way, I don't have a bike repair stand, but I do have a greenfield stabilizer kickstand which makes using the chain cleaner really easy as it doesn't interfere with my pedal movement like my old kickstand mounted at the bottom bracket did (not that that matters to you, but just that I like using the chain cleaner as it's pretty easy in this setup, just doesn't do a good job if there's still gunk on my cogs).