Originally Posted by
FBinNY
If you ride in the Winter when/where they salt roads, the salt will destroy stuff pretty quickly. Regular hosing off helps, but finish with a Spring cleaning consisting of a heavy duty washing of all places salt can get to.
Use of products like LPS-3, and other oil/wax products during assembly also helps prevent salt water from wicking into the crevices between attached parts.
As a scuba diver, I can tell you that it's best to remove salt while parts are still wet. Once salt dries it's much harder to re-dissolve and remove.
BTW- so far, I haven't found anything that's an aid to salt removal (other than lots of water). When doing my annual dive equipment service, I end up having to toothbrush off dried salt deposits.
Maybe someone here knows of something that can be added to rinse water to speed salt removal.
To be honest, I'm not sure what's in the salts that are used on US streets.
But, I'd be interested to see what would happen if EDTA was added to water used to wash bikes.