Rainy Sunday Afternoons

Kind of a cold wet day and just before jumping on the trainer for a 90 minute spin I thought I would spend a few minutes catching up on some bike maintenance. The chain on the LOOK has not been cleaned in a while and I wanted to do a little more experimenting.

Since the KMC chain started off new and went through an initial extensive cleaning and then waxing and then re-waxed later after a few hundred miles without cleaning I wanted to try something different. This time I used the ultrasonic tub with boiling hot water with dish detergent. With a quick swipe on the dirty chain I was happy to see very little grit transferred to my hand. I was still very nice to handle this chain without latex gloves or having to worry about traditional black mess. However, I was surprised at how dirty the water became and it took two attempts to clean the chain. From there it went into a bath of alcohol and then into the crock pot and hot wax. Here are a few pictures of how much dirt was in the chain.

Not too bad considering the amount of miles on this chain

Getting there......

Other things done today were dipping a couple air cartridges into Plastidip paint. It kind of puts a nice coating on the Co2, which when used the metal can get very cold and it kind of kind of hides the ugly metal housing. I have mine mounted on Co2 brackets.