Drivetrain maintenance on tour
 

We toured all summer, wiping/lubricating the chains regularly. As I now prep the bikes for transit, I am surprised by the amount of gunk accumulated between the RD jockey wheels (on the side facing the spokes), and in the cassettes, between the cogs.

What maintenance routine do you suggest? (what to do, at what intervals, using what consumables).

I check everything pretty closely whenever I stop for the day. Doing that has kept problems down to a minimum for me. Whether or not I wipe anything down depends on what the conditions are like. Sometimes I'll clean things more, sometimes less.

Rear derailleur jockey wheels, I use dawn dish soap and a tooth brush. Then disassemble and a bit more brushing, then re-grease the innards with Phil grease. If you do that, the upper and lower jockey wheel parts are different, keep them separate. I do one at a time so I can't possibly get the parts mixed up.

Cassettes, I have poured dawn dish soap onto a brush and then aggressively brushed the cassette with it. Wear dirty clothes if you do this, it sprays. When done, spray with garden hose. I do this in an area on the ground where I won't be walking in the near future, I do not want any dirty grease clods to get on my shoes and get tracked anywhere. I do not try to get the cassette spotless, only try to get 98 percent of the crud off and leave the 2 percent. Some cassettes can be disassembled by removing one screw that holds the sprockets and spacers together, I used to take them apart but I don't put that much time into cleaning them anymore. Alternatively you can use some cord to get in between the sprockets, but I never bother with that, my brush bristles are long enough to clean out the crud.

Chain, a local bike charity had some cheap KMC chains for $5 that it received as donations from a major bike manufacturer. When I got back from Iceland I decided to not clean my chain since I could put a replacement chain on the bike for only $5. It was not worth my time to put a lot of effort into the chain for that small cost. I think I might have spent almost an hour cleaning my chain when I got home from my Pacific Coast trip, but then I measured it and found it was stretched to the point it should be replaced anyway, thus I should have just measured it and chucked it first instead of wasting time to clean it.

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How did your super special USB charger work on your trip? Will you post a thread describing how you met your electric needs on your trip?

That sort of crud may be the result of excessive lube. Wipe every day, but once a week should be often enough to lube unless it is wet.

+1

Any reason for the specific brand? (Which may not be available where we tour). You carry a small bottle with you? I'm using WD40. Considering acetone as it may be the most powerful solvent available such that a few ounces/ml would do for a long time.

Great! We were able to navigate with a smartphone with minimal use of a power bank. The forumslader + Shimano dynohub were usually more than enough to keep the phone fully charged, except on very hilly terrain, when you spend most of your time crawling uphill at +/- 8kmh (and just a fraction at 40+), or when we were touring a large city. (Thanks again for suggesting dynohubs - lots of overcast/rainy days, solar panels would not have worked.)

Will post more. In a few days.

Could be... We used wet lube. I'll look into this.

OTOH, we were riding, rain or shine. And it's been a wet summer... Lots of wet sand/mud.

just need some rags....

at every chain cleaning, use a rag to wipe both sides of the
jockey wheels, and inside the dr cage.

clean your cogs whenever you wear out underpants.
with the wheel off, use the cloth to floss between
the cogs. pull your undies tight when you do this,
the stretched elastic band keeps the cloth from
snagging on the cogs.

I wait until I am home to do a good cleaning. Dawn dish soap is very good on petroleum, conservationists use it to clean wildlife that get contaminated with oil spills. I would recommend against acetone, it is a very good solvent, but it can cause some plastics to dissolve. When I was in college I worked part time in a chem lab as a research assistant, I tried to clean some coffee scum out of my coffee mug and my plastic mug started to dissolve. I would certainly not want to risk it on a plastic jockey wheel. I have no clue if acetone could damage your paint, but that might be another concern. If you want to use a solvent that can cut grease after you run out of WD40, if you have any gasoline or liquid stove fuel, that would be less likely to attack plastics. Around home I often use Coleman fuel for cleaning up bearings before I re-grease them.

When I travel, I carry a small bottle of woolite soap for laundry. Did you bring any laundry soap? Shampoo that does not have a conditioner in it might also work well to cut oils, after all it is designed to cut skin and hair oils quite effectively. Shampoo however is likely less concentrated than laundry soap. I do not know which would likely be stronger, laundry soap or dish soap. But if you are traveling, you probably would want to discard any brushes you use on a cassette afterwards.

I usually use 3 oz bottles for my laundry soap, shampoo, etc. Although I usually pack it in a checked bag, sometimes I carry it in a carry on and with the TSA rules on liquids, ... ... you know what I mean.

Washed the chain with WD-40 three times..Wiped, dried, then lubed with White Lightning.

WD 40 is pretty good for cleaning off gunk. Acetone is nasty stuff and definitely can remove paint.

This was after riding for 3 months on a tour with 400 miles of dirt roads and trails, and 35 days of rain. My wife just took a shortcut through freshly mowed grass. That RD was "cleaned" about 2-3 weeks prior to the picture. I would have cleaned it, but we only had a week or so to the end.
http://i783.photobucket.com/albums/y...derailleur.jpg

I like White Lightning Epic. It tends to stay clean a little longer but needs applications during wet weather.


I clean the bikes as often as I can when on a long tour. I use dish detergent. There is something in some shampoos that really does bad things to anodized aluminum.

http://i783.photobucket.com/albums/y...2232138742.jpg

This is my oil kit: White Lightning Epic, and Triflow in a small syringe, which will last a long time.
http://i783.photobucket.com/albums/y...40b0e46b6f.jpg

Check out "Pro Towels". They're impregnated with an oily "Citrus-Solve" type fluid. Just run the chain through a folded towel or 2 until it starts coming clean. They come in a big tub for home & individually packaged towels for use on the road. At home I make extensive use of compressed air to get the crud out of tight spots. A few times while out on the road, I've run across auto & bike shops that have let me use their compressed air hose for that purpose.

(PPS, should start with, I hope the family enjoyed it and it went well.)

too much lube and not enough rag wiping.

I know I know, the far side of jockey wheels can get overlooked cuz we dont see them that much, but regular careful wiping of both sides of the jockey wheels is the best method to not have to waste time with gunk buildup.

Same with rag "flossing" of cassettes.

Its like those tv ads for changing the oil in your car regularly, the mechanice saying, "you pay me now, or pay me a lot more later...." with bikes, its time you save (and some wear of course)

I recently did a big cleanup of a friends bike where it was a gunk fest. He just doesnt care or pay attention to it, thats ok, but it ends up being waaaaay more time later to clean it. His cassette was so gunked up that I had to remove it and dissasemble it to get all the toothpaste+sand gunk out of all the crevices and holes in each cog.

like I said to him, I'm a lazy son-of-a-gun, so doing the regular quick but proper rag wipe of chains, chainrings, jockey wheels, and sometimes a rag floss of a cassette saves me loads of time compared to dealing with ultra gunkfests.

its up to you how you want to spend your time, and or if you care.

I'm not saying this is you, but often people who dont care will complain about how their drivetrain stuff wears out quickly.....

ps , the flathead screwdriver trick works a treat on the far side jockey wheel, hold it against wheel, turn, and the vast majority of gunk gets scraped off real fast, then a quick wipe--done (remember, I like to minimize time on this stuff, I too have many family bikes to do all the time, so I'm efficient)

Wasn't there a recent thread re: what to do with worn out underwear? ;)

Thanks. And yes, fabulous. No mechanical problems. Kids loved it.

This is what I now realize...

I do not think that it was bad enough to cause any damage, but I'll certainly do things differently.

I am willing to invest time. Question is how exactly.

1. Drivetrain maintenance on tour must consider the fact that one must carry tools and consumables, and on longish tours, consumables may be difficult to find.

2. I have to learn the basics of maintenance and this is complicated by the fact that there are several different approaches.

3. As of now I'd think that WD40 is an interesting option, which emphasizes cleaning over lubrication. I am also interested in Finish line 1-step.

4. Also curious as to how rags and flossing ropes (as my undies last more than the expected length of our future trips ;) work with various "systems". (This summer, our rag progressively became saturated by oil and black residues - washing is not a convenient option. Buying rags underway barely better).

Well the most important thing here is that they had a fun time, memories for a life time.
Felicitations!

+1

Also, be careful when using a garden hose with spray nozzel to clean and/or rinse, try not to use too much pressure as I've seen more than one hub and bottom bracket ruined with water getting inside those seals

As mentioned before do a lot more wiping after lubing the chain. I'm not commutting as much as I used to but for three years through rain, snow and sun I eventually moved to using the wet lubes because they were less likely to rust overnight when the bike dried out but it took a lot of wiping to remove the excess that came with one drop per link. For a few years I did a no cleaning routine and simply changed the chain every year.

I watched a cyclocross race a few years ago.

No, acetone isn't "nasty stuff". It won't harm most modern paints nor powder coats. If your bike has been rattle can painted, it probably won't stand up to acetone as well but you can always by more rattle can paint.

Acetone is a really crappy solvent for grease and oil, however. It's too polar and doesn't really remove the oil that well. It's also not that cheap.

On the other hand, WD40 is a pretty crappy solvent as well. It dissolves the grease and oil okay but it's 25% mineral oil which just sits there serving as a dirt trap.

Stove fuel (aka white gas) is actually a good solvent if you happen to be carrying it. It's similar to mineral spirits, cuts grease and oil well and evaporates cleanly. Please don't use gasoline. While white gas and mineral spirits have flash points that are in the "safe" range (~70°F), gasoline has a flash point that is -40°F. It can be ignited at just about any temperature you'll encounter while on tour. It also contains a fair about of benzene which is carcinogenic. Not a good solvent to mess with.

Alternatively, you can skip all the mess and use a dry lubricant. Although I'm not in the habit of taking pictures of my drivetrain, this is what my drivetrain looked like after 500 miles including about 200 miles of dirt roads in Ontario

http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r...psis8sbhb3.jpg

And this is what my drivetrain looked like after 1200 miles including the dirt roads of Ontario, part of the Erie Canal and a whole lot of riding on the Delaware and Hudson canal tow path.

http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r...psdcng589x.jpg

The entire bike was not cleaned on a 5 week trip other than one quick spray in a car wash in Bensalem, PA. And the chain which I installed at the beginning of the trip lasted 3500 miles with one cleaning...when I installed it. That's fairly typical for all my chains. In fact, here's what the chain left on my fingers near the end of it's service life (I swapped the chain onto my commuter bike when I got home).

http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r...pskr2dnquj.jpg

You really don't need to have a filthy chain for it to last a long time and work well.

I guess I'm the only person who carries a small can of paraffin (plus other goodies) and heats it on a stove to dip my chain while on tour. I justify the small weight penalty by knowing that the dirt and such from my many off-pavement legs isn't sticking to every surface. Also, I get to ignore the thing for about 400 miles at a time between dips.

My unfortunate experience trying to light an Optimus 111B stove when it was minus 36 F indicated that the flash point of that batch of fuel was somewhat higher than minus 36, but my experience lighting stoves with white gas is that the flash point is clearly well below zero F, as I could always get the puddle of fuel in the priming cup to light.

I think mineral spirits has a flash point comparable to kerosene, above 100 F.

I always have a little bottle of laundry detergent with me when touring, I use this for cleaning my drive train too. It seems like laundry detergent is a bit stronger than most others so it works pretty well on oil. Almost as good as any petroleum based solvents in my opinion. I form a little cup with my hand, pour some detergent into it and rub the liquid into the chain. It might take a couple of treatments to get things clean dependent of how gunky they are, but I do take care not to over lube my drive train in the first place.
As others have mentioned, an old tooth brush is nice to have for cleaning cassettes and jockey wheels. A cheap small and perhaps modified paint brush would do the job too.

Laundry detergent? Washing away the lubricant from the inside with spirits or whatever just doesn't make sense, you are making a lot more work for yourself.
Regular super fast rag wiping means little build up, chain has lube where it's needed, easy peasy.
Wipe chain and other stuff if needed before applying lube, wipe chain afterwards, ride. Wipe again at some point, it takes 10 seconds tops to get rid of excess. Heck, wipe every day for excess, it's so fast and saves you time.

Or not.