Originally Posted by
Moisture
Thank you for the suggestions. It looks like the crud stuck inside the derailer should be easy to blast out if I hit it from a couple different angles though.. Please bear with me and tell me what you think.. So far i've rehauled the hub on my rear rim and replaced the badly bent axle. The bottom bracket feels very smooth (may have been reserviced in the past by previous owner) but I will be taking apart the BB to replace the spindle with a shorter one, as my new crankset sits too far out on the spindle. The front derailer does not reach into second gear. Plus the cranks are wobbling slightly, so I am not too worried about getting water into there anyways.
I live in a condominium, so my only real choice in the mean time is to head over to a car wash bay. I don't know how friendly my friend or the local bike hub will be when they find out I am planning to use their local resources for a degreasing. The pulleys are not binding or anything, but in general there is so much dust and greasy crap all over the bike/frame I reckon it would be easier to start with a pressure wash first and simply not to use high pressure around the bearing areas. Then I can head over to the bikehub the next day and do a proper degrease there if I still need to. Does that make more sense? Or should I still do the degrease first and then pressure wash?
While bicycles have some pollutants, the amount is minuscule compared to what a normal car will generate. Washing a bike at a carwash won’t introduce much in the way of oils and grease into the environment comparatively. On the plus side, carwashes are regulated in what they can discharge into the municipal waste stream and have ways to deal with the material that is washed off cars. It’s far better to wash your bike (and car, for that matter) at a carwash then just dump the waste out on the ground and let it run into the nearest storm sewer which is connected directly to streams.
You might take along some Simple Green to remove excess crud from the drivetrain at the carwash. It sounds like you have a lot of “excess”.
I've learned the hard way not to use excessive lubricant on a bike's chain, especially when the chain is dirty to begin with.. lol
I gave up lubricants that make the chain dirty long ago.