Road salt. Great for keeping the roads clear, bad for bikes. After just two weeks of winter weather I had to spend 2 hours cleaning off the rust from the fork/chain/group. Its a good thing my nice bikes with road tires are useless due to snow because I would really be annoyed with that sort of rust on them.

That sucks. All I can think of is hosing off the salt daily and spraying with WD40.

or atleast use a rag to take the salt off everday

What do you use to lube your chain? I use gear oil that I "borrow" from my work.
And it works for me, no chain rust.


THIS IS A BIKE PATH by 1nterceptor, on Flickr

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7jfcWEkSrI

I've been using synthetic chain oil for all my bikes, but this one lives in the garage and doesn't get as much TLC as the ones that get carted inside. I think I need to clean her a bit more often. During the spring/summer it didn't seem to matter but with the conditions on the roads at the moment it obviously does. I noticed that the gears in the cluster that don't get much use were starting to rust so I threw on some wd40 and spun the rust away. Then I recoated everything with the chain oil. Hopefully it should keep the rust at bay. I'm a bit worried about the bearings as well. Its a cheaper bike and I bet they aren't sealed.

If you can mount fenders that will keep a lot of salt off the bike. Just make sure they are full coverage fenders like the Planet Bike Cascadias.

I have plastic half fenders at the moment. Perhaps a set of full fenders might be in order.

I lived in two hi-salt area for years, Vermont and the beach in South Florida. The caustic slushy goo that would cover the roads in VT would eat a bike up and spit it out. Drenching the whole bike in WD-40 regularly slowed the process down.

No salt trucks yet. I've been able to ride this year alot longer because of the mild winter. When the salting starts it's time to bring the bike in and get it ready for next spring.

Full coverage fenders would help a lot still. Also if your fork is rusting try painting any places the paint is missing, if this is a suspension fork with steel stanchions there is not much you can do other than trying to keep a thin layer of grease on there. Also if you are using a wax based chainlube switching to an oil based one would help it stick around much longer. A guy who posts on here regularly FBinNY makes Chain-L and that would be a great choice but lots of other options work well too as long as it is oil. Don't want to get another chainlube debate going....

The key to fighting corrosion is to keep everything well lubed, bare metal painted and washing the bike more often is not a bad idea either although it is something I do not do around here since they do not go too crazy with the salt usually.

I've always lived and ridden on the salted roads of Michigan, and I don't have much problem with corrosion. A little bit, yes, on the cheap bits, but I've learned to live with that! Maybe for those of us who live in winter salt environments learn to overlook a little bit of the red stuff because if we didn't, we'd go crazy!

That said, it can be managed without too much futzing around. Component quality is probably a factor, favoring aluminum over steel or plated steel bits (e.g. chainrings and cogs), and replacing fasteners with stainless steel pieces. If you're a ******/shot caller, go Ti. The one area this pays dividends is in rack and fender mounts, which often get the cheapest bolts and screws. A dab of anti-seize on a replacement SS bolt and you'll be good for years.

Of course, allowing a melt-off and washing the bike helps a lot, but rust in the bolt heads and on the dropouts under the skewer contact points is pretty inevitable and hard to defeat. I'll also "+1" measures recco'd above like periodically spritzing the cluster with WD40; I don't generally need to do it, but it shouldn't hurt, I don't think. It might make the melt-off from the bike a little nastier and prone to staining, so if the bike is brought indoors or hung above anything in the garage, you may want to be mindful of that.

I switched to an aluminum winter bike back in '95 here in Minnesota because of the salt. It's handled it much better than the steel bike it replaced. The fork is chromoly however, and as chriskmurray mentioned, painting spots as necessary is the key.

A mental shift I went through many years ago was convincing myself that the drivetrain is a disposable item and not to beat myself up for not keeping it pristine. My winter bike gets a fifth the miles that my summer bike gets, but they've gone through about the same number of components. "What's your time worth?" is the question only you can decide. The increase in winter maintenance costs for me is still far cheaper than driving, so I don't get bent out of shape over it any more. (Well, mostly. I still have those moments of seeing it in the garage and cringing, thinking "you poor bike...!" But it's seventeen years old with over 18k hard miles on it and still works like a charm, so I'm not neglecting it too badly...)

Anyone else use clear nail polish to cover up scrapes on their steel frames?

I'd sooner buy another bike every winter before I will spend 2 hours cleaning off surface rust every 2 weeks or so on a cheaper bike, especially if the rust is not a safety or reliability issue.

All my bkes cheap or expensive are my toys. Its hard to consider them disposible. If I need to keep on top of the rust so be it. The front fork is a cheap 1inch travel 'chromed' vetsion and prone to rust. Luckily it scubs off prstty easily. Rustu drive trsins however are indicitive of poor maintance in my mind and drive me nuts. I think though this bike gets ridden in the rain, snow and all other conditions everyday and gets parked outside so a little rust may be unavoidable.

A good thing for bolt heads is clear rtv / silicone.... It is also cool for protecting parts from theft... Just fill the heads of the bolts with the silicone and when you need to remove a bolt you can just pick it out with a small Allen key or something. .. if a thief tries to steal your seat it's tough for them to be fast cause the bolts are tricky to get an Allen key in them

I just built this for winter grocery getting. Just need to get some fenders for it. There's $70 in it right now and it rides great. I hit some really rocky mtn bike trails with it today and it didn't break. I'll do my best to stay on top of the salt, but if it rusts, it rusts.