cyccommute 

Excuse me!Being obtuse? That word you are using...I do not think it means what you think it means.

I was talking about my needs, not the rest of the world. I have no need for something that cleans concrete, brick or tile. I don't have a need for a pressure washer around my house for regular use. In fact, given that all of my sidewalks are pavers with packed sand in the joints a pressure washer would undo a whole lot of expensive landscaping. And the only tile I have is inside the house where a pressure washer would be about the dumbest choice for tile cleaning around.

If I happened to need one for other projects, I suppose I could rent one but after more than 25 years in the same house, I haven't found a need for one yet.

If you want to use yours for all kinds of household chores, by all means use it. But don't go telling the rest of us that we "need" one. Most of the world gets along just fine without one.

Huh? I am thinking globally. Your pressure washer method of cleaning is far more polluting than my...or the rest of the world's...using mineral spirits. First, the volume of mineral spirits needed to clean grease is tiny. It dissolves a lot of oil and grease. When I use it for cleaning chains, for example (but that's not the only way where it can be used), I use about 8 oz of the solvent to clean as many as a dozen chains. Or if I cleaned my chain as often as many people do (different topic), I could clean my chain about a dozen times before there is about as much oil in the solvent as there is solvent.

Now compare that to your pressure method. I don't know how much water you use but it's more than 8 oz. I suspect that its more than a gallon. That gallon of liquid isn't just water but contains a somewhat toxic material (as established before) that you just pour out on the ground. It also contains all of the oil that was on whatever you are degreasing. The water you use is contaminated with grease and your favorite antirust agent. All of the water is considered polluted...not just oil and grease in the water. Do that 12 times and, from a "global" standpoint, you've contaminated a whole lot more than my 8 oz of mineral spirits ever has.

So? Your part isn't a bicycle chain. It's also not greasy and it looks like it has been previously coated. On the other hand your stand looks like it could use a bit of coating. Looks like the rust inhibitor isn't doing its job.

cyccommute 

Thanks for agree with me but I have to put on my chemist hat...again. The mineral spirits don't degrade rapidly to water and carbon dioxide in air. n0+4c|u3 does have a (slight) point about mineral spirits evaporating in air and contributing (very, very, very slightly) to pollution. In air, hydrocarbons react with nitrogen oxides and UV light to form ozone and other pollutants. That's not good.

But the amount of mineral spirits being used by bicyclists to clean their chains is tiny compared to the hydrocarbons released by automobiles, leaf blowers, gas powered lawnmowers, gas powered pressure cleaners, etc. If you live in the methane plume here in Denver, even those sources pale in comparison. However, the other part of the puzzle, is the nitrogen oxides that are produced by burning hydrocarbons at high temperatures in the presence of nitrogen in internal combustion engines. Without those nitrogen oxides, you are short one leg of the stool to make ozone.

We bicyclists...especially the ones who commute and ride their bikes for utility...can take (most) of a pass on causing air pollution from cleaning bicycle chains. We aren't releasing unburned hydrocarbons nor nitrogen oxides and we are using far less hydrocarbons overall.

That's thinking globally.

cyccommute 

Ah, the 'Merican idea that "them people only know book learnin'"

I happen to work as a chemist with a whole bunch of chemical and mechanical engineers ("chemical" and "mechanical" don't need to be capitalized...so of the book learnin') and not only are they nice people, I find them very knowledgeable beyond their frame of reference. All of the ones I know have had to pass courses in college as part of a liberal education that are outside of their particular knowledge. And most all of them that I know are well read and curious beyond just their area of expertise.

This is my area of expertise. It's basic chemistry. That includes knowing chemicals, chemical interactions, chemical compatibilities, etc. Just because you have a pressure washer doesn't mean you're an expert. My degree and 35+ years of experience does make me one, however.

No, I haven't "tried and failed to prove you wrong". You were wrong to begin with and just don't know it.

Finally, a new flash for you, cleaning "parts" is cleaning the entire bike. Bikes are made of all kinds of "parts" and, as others have pointed out to you, a pressure washer is a good way of infiltrating water into places where water shouldn't go.

Dan Burkhart 

Too bad they don't have a peeing contest emoji.

Rubato

I stopped reading this thread long ago...

gearbasher

I just ride my bike through the local automatic car wash. And it doubles as an after-ride shower.

Homebrew01

MOD NOTE to All: The title of the thread is "Cleaning Parts"

For all those not interested in the topic, or focused on insulting others, please click the "Back" button.

Dave Mayer

Your posting made my hair stand on end. Nothing personal, but it is the weekend now, and every one of my neighbors comes out with some form of obnoxious 2-stroke gas-powered yard implement. This time of year it is leaf-blowers and soon, snow blowers. The leaf blowers are especially offensive, as instead of 30 minutes of light exercise raking by hand, my neighbors spend the same amount of time blowing the leaves onto the street, or someone else's property.

Pressure washers- damn. I have a neighbor who was running one of these for 2 hours over the summer. When I finally checked what she was doing, she was letting her kids run around in it as a type of hillbilly water spray park. So the whole street was subjected to 115 decibels of racket, and billows of smoke over a nice quiet summer afternoon.

BTW: the 2-stroke engines that run these monstrosities emit more harmful emissions than several cars.

Back to cleaning bikes: a newb using a pressure washer on a bike will destroy the bearings in minutes, leading to hundreds of dollars of repairs. Besides, the critical things that need cleaning on a bike are on the inside (the bearings), and not the outside. On the outside, I wipe with a damp rag.

cyccommute 

First I want to offer my apologies for those of us who own and use a stupid leaf blower. I own one and am truly sorry about the noise that I've had to generate for hours in the past. But, in my defense, I've had to get one and use it to deal with the largest balsam poplar in the state of Colorado.






That's seventeen 30 gallon bags each of which has been filled with leaves that have be ground down to almost dust and weigh about 50 lbs each...that's about 800 lbs of leaves and, as you can see, that's only about half of them that have fallen off the tree. When we blew them into a pile, the pile extended from the silver car in the foreground to the silver car in the background about the width of the car and about 4' deep. It's a lot of leaves and I have raked them in the past...not fun.

Sadly, there hasn't been a need to rake leaves for the past couple of years. The tree got hit by lightning and is in the process of dying.

My neighbor runs his for 2 hours at at time as well but he's "cleaning stuff". What he needs to clean for 2 hours is beyond me.

While I feel guilty about the 2 stroke engine and the duration I need(ed) to use it, I figure that I can count it against the 56 tons of carbon dioxide I haven't spewed into the air and 25 tons of NOX I haven't spewed into the air over the last 35+ years of bicycle commuting. Now that the big tree is (mostly) dead and I don't really need the blower anymore, I can go back to my smug satisfaction of being better than my neighbors

Although I agree with most of what you've said, I would make the correction that the bearings aren't going to be "destroy in minutes". It's going to take hours or days for the bearings to rust in the races.

As for the outside of the bike, I don't even use a damp rag most of the time. Dirt is a badge of honor. The saddest thing in the world is a clean mountain bike.

Sad bike



Happy bike

Jeff Wills

Topic drift! Topic drift!

I own a leaf blower, too. It's electric- and before you say "exporting pollution", 90% of my electricity is from hydropower.

It's pretty handy, especially considering I need to clean up after 5 Japanese maples. (Bastards won't drop their leaves at the same time, either.) I'd go out and rake if my arms weren't so withered from riding a recumbent all these years.

Does your waste disposal company pick up extra "yard debris"? I left mine out with my regular pickup, and they charged me an extra $40 for 8 bags. I learned my lesson and took mine to the leafy-stuff-recyclers myself.

3alarmer 

...has anyone commented on experience with peeing on parts to clean them ? Asking for a friend.

The boy stood on the burning deck, beside his sister Molly.
It was not only hot to him, twas also hot to Molly.

J.Higgins 

WD40 is actually pretty good for a nice coating on bare metal. Clean and polish the parts and then lay them out on a piece of paper or in a metal tray, and spray a light mist over the parts. The WD will settle out on the parts and coat them nicely. Cyccommute may agree with me in that WD40 probably has some kind of surfactant that forms a tougher coating on the parts once the solvents in it have evaporated. When I was a machinist in a ball bearing plant, we used to use WD40 in this manner. I'm not saying its a perfect solution for bikes, nor would I ride my bike without wiping the WD off it - wherever I had some on it - I'm just saying it has a lot of uses and I would not be without it.

I believe that the old school way of completely cleaning and lubricating your chain was to remove it from the bike, wash it thoroughly in a can of kerosene, and dip it in a can of melted paraffin wax. I've never done this personally, instead I've always used my ******-it-good-with-mineral-spirits-and-compressed-air-it-off-method. Messy, but works.

Question: Do those newfangled reservoir-type chain cleaners actually work?

danarello

The reservoir cleaners work excellent in my opinion. the chain is clean and after drying it is ready for some light chain oil.

cyccommute 

WD-40 contains a mineral oil...about 25%...which stays behind after the solvent evaporates. It's one of the reasons I don't like using it much. It works well to unfreeze sticky shifters, however.

Blowing off a chain is a pet peeve of mine. Some of my fellow volunteers at my co-op have shown people during our Fix-Your-Bike hours how to do this. Now everyone spends 20 minutes blowing solvent all over everywhere and emptying the compressor. The noise of blowing off the solvent is bad enough but then the compressor kicks in and sticking your ear in the business end of a 757 engine would be quieter

There's nothing "new" about their fangledness. They've been around since at least the early 90s...probably earlier. I bet just about every home shop mechanic has one...I do...and I bet they were used once, found to be incredibly messy and then hung on a peg board somewhere never to be used again.

They are about the most useless tool you'll ever own.

J.Higgins 

Good to hear this, because I suspected as much. Sometime the "timesavers" or "mess-savers" are worse than just actually nutting up and doing it. I've lived in my house for 25 years - long enough to remodel a second time. Here I was thinking that all I had to do is to get one of those sweet Graco cordless paint sprayers and I'd be done in no time. Nope. By the time I had to clean it and fuss around with it, I could have done it with a roller and brush and been happy. Money wasted IMHO. Thanks for your opinion!

UKFan4Sure

I use a strong solution of Simple Green in my heated ultrasonic cleaner. About 50 minutes and it's whistle clean.