Originally Posted by WorldWind
I think washing a bike in water and detergent or any product that turns grease into soap is a bad idea.
Ask your wife of girl friend why she doesn’t wash her hair right after she gets a perm.
The reason that hair isn't washed after a perm is that the sulfur compounds used during the process need time to complete reaction. Washing the hair after application removes the sulfur compounds and leads to incomplete curling - and angry women
Originally Posted by WorldWind
Why would you remove all the protective oil and lubrication from your drive train and take it down to bare unprotected metal when all you really want to do is get the dirt and grit out?
If you have a non-plated chain then it is going to form a thin coat of rust in just the time it takes to dry once all the oil is removed. That rust is very abrasive and will mix with the new lubricant that you add.
While I agree with you that rust is abrasive, removing the oil and lubrication from the metal by water soluble detergents isn't going to happen in your backyard. Water based detergents just aren't that efficient without mechanical means. Also there is nothing magical about the lubrication added during manufacture of the chain. It must be refreshed often anyway. Complete removal, using solvents, would only require application of more lubricant. If water is used, the water should be displaced to avoid rusting. But the process of air oxidation of iron isn't so rapid that you need to do it immediately. A few minutes won't hurt.
Originally Posted by WorldWind
The solution to all this is a product that is perfect for us, WD40. It comes out of the can under pressure and can be directed in a small focused stream that will dissolve and flow away the grit. It is formulated to displace any water that is trapped inside the links of your chain and is designed to inhibit rust.
WD40 is a solvent that will remove all of protective oils that you want to keep. True it will leave behind another protective oil but it is one that isn't that good and will only serve to dilute the lubrication you should add after cleaning anyway.
Originally Posted by WorldWind
As to the recent turn of this thread…. Steel is not iron with bits in it to make it stronger. There is no iron in steel. Steel is made from iron ore in a blast furnace that blows oxygen into molten iron to add carbon atoms to its chemical structure and change it into steel.
Other metals in small amounts are added to steel to make all the different types used in manufacturing, this is called alloying. All the various types of stainless steels are a class of steel alloys, so they are all ferris metals, but most are not magnetic.
An alloy is a homogeneous mixture of elements where some elements can be metal or nonmetal depending on the alloy. It is made when the metals are liquid and, as with any homogeneous mixture (also known as a solution), the components of the mixture can be separated by physical means because no chemical reaction occurs during mixing.
Iron ore is commonly iron oxide with an oxidation state of either II or III (more commonly know as rust
). During refining, the iron in the iron ore is reduced from an oxidized state to the ground state where it becomes elemental iron; a ductile, maleable, conductive metal. When in the molten state, other elements - both metal and nonmetal- can be added (alloyed) with the iron to form a metal with different properties. During this process, however, the iron does not chemically combine with the other constituents. There is no, for example, iron carbide formed. The iron exists as elemental iron and the carbon exists as elemental carbon. The way that we know that the iron is present as elemental iron is that chemical compounds, where the oxidation state of the metal is changed, result in compounds that are crystalline, brittle and, for the most part, nonconductive. This is also why steels (unless they are stainless) rust. The iron present is in the ground state and can be oxidized.
Stainless steels are magnetic unless they have a high nickel content. However, these are rather exotic and not commonly used on bicycles. If you were to use a magnetic on a bicycle, anything that the magnet will stick too will probably rust in the presence of water.