"Inclimate Weather Maintenance"

I was thinking last night around 11:00 PM, when I began to maintain my Bicycle that I should display to everyone the importance of bicycle maintenance after riding in inclimate weather. Now this could be muddy days on a mtn. bike, rainy days on a road bike, and wintery snowy days on the road and/or mtn bike. The reason that I want to let everyone know the importance of this topic is that I am "Truly" a mountain biker at heart. I use the road riding to increase my physical fitness levels for mountain biking. As a mountain biker, if you have great technical ridiing capabilities you need not ride the mountain bike everyday. But you must ensure that you have the fitness levels to play with others. In any case having said that, in mountain biking "Maintenance can make you or break you". If you dont take care of your mountain bike it will not take care of you. The same stands true for a road bike, however the rate at which it deteriorates is far less. But the basics remain the same. With a mountain bike and all those moving metal parts, dirt is like sandpaper on a way different level. It gets in everything and everywhere, ultimately wearing out parts extrememly fast. So here are a few post inclimate weather riding maintenance tips that should ensure your longevity of your road bicycle.

When you are finished in crap weather, you should always rinse off the dirt and make sure your chain has a light coat of something (WD-40, Tri-Flow, White Lightning, etc...). Your chain is your lifeline, without it your bike is useless. To clean the chain you can use a rag and run the chain through the rag in your hands. The best way is to back pedal the cranks, while running the chain through the rag. You will have to continually change spots on the rag to you can see what you are removing. And in doing so you will see that the amount of black gets smaller and smaller as you go. You can purchase a chain cleaner, found most likely on most webs for gear and what not, but this is the cheap way. Once you have cleaned it really well you may then re-lube it. Chain cleaning tools do the best job because they have wheels with brushes on them that get in between the links which you wont be able to get with the rag unless you are extrememly meticulous like me. Any dirt on the chain accumulates and thus wears the chain out fast. Now this is not as fast as it is with a mountain bike, but since it is not ensuring that is clean will keep your chain in good standing for a lot longer.

The second important cleaning issue with inclimate weather is your brake pads. When you are out on the road and all the dirt and leftover from winter salt (there is probably still some, and in the new wilmington area who knows what else) gets into the grooves on the pads and on the face and acts almost like sandpaper on the rim surface. What does that do, well it reduces the amount of material on the sidewall over time. My father is 6'3" and had raced mountain bikes by my side for almost as long as I have raced. He also has a bit more weight than most of us due to the height, and was always under heavy braking. Well like I said in mtn bikes wear happens much faster. We we warming up for a race one morning in southern ohio and about a quarter of his rim just blew right on the rest of the wheel. This made his 6 hour drive to race absolutely worthless. So you can see that over time, the damage can be rather significant. So clean them brake shoes/pads. Household soap and water does the trick, you need not use any solvents or anything really corrosive or whatever, if it is tough......go to "walmart and get some ELBOW GREASE".

The other things are the front and rear derailleurs (the things that shift your chain for you) and the rear cogset. If you use some type of scrub brush and soap and water you can do the trick for getting these two things clean. You want to keep them clean and the cable that attach to them to ensure that things are shifting properly. Since there are little moving parts in there it is important for them to be clean. The rear derailleur has two pulleys (the little wheels that guide the chain) that must be clean as well. The can get an accumulation of grease on them which collects dirt and dust and yes sometimes the "poo", which will get back on your chain and cause the wear again. The same holds true for the teeth on the chainrings on the cranks. As far as the cogset is concerned you can clean this with a scrub brush as well but you wont get all the grease and grime. What you may do to accomplish a thorough cleaning, is to use a straight section of rag and run it back and forth in between the cogs to get it all. Once again using a clean section constantly to determine how long or how much you have to do this. Make sure that you go in between every cog. Now you may be thinking what about the teeth on them, well it is difficult to get them all, usually if you use a scrub brush you can get most of it off.

I am not sure that anyone will have the time to read all this, wow its long. O.K., as far as the rest of the bike is concerned, that is just up to you. I like my bike to be clean, but if you dont at least you know now what parts are important to keep clean. There are others, but without writing a book on this, you should be o.k. for the most part. When I do a thorough cleaning it usually takes me about three hours. To do what I just told you about usually takes me about 1/2 an hour or 45 mins, it just depends on how I want to treat my baby. Yes I can call it my baby cause I dont have any children and I spend most of my time with it.

I hope that this helps you all out in maintaining your equipment and helps you avoid any future issues that you may have. If any of this seems too intimidating and you dont want to do it, you can have a shop do it, and I can probably guess that it will come to you at a significant cost. If you let me know what that cost is and you still dont want to do it, I will beat that cost and do it for you. I am not trying to create a business for myself I just want to help everyone out and understand that you dont always get what you pay for. I had a friend that came to me once and asked me to go over his mountain bike. He told me that someone asked him, "why don't you take this to the shop?" He said, "if I take this to Jason, he is going to go over this bike like it is his own, and they will not do that at the shop!"

Parting Note: In inclimate "new wilmington" weather, you dont want to forget to wash those water bottle too. The poo, regardless of whether we eat the meat, corn, or whatever that they use that Manuer (sp) for, is something that I dont think is really ideal for consumption.

Rember to "Pimp Your Ride"

take care,

Jason