Deep Clean Your Mountain Bike Drive Train GMBN Tech How To

Keeping the transmission in your bike nice and clean and lubricated is the key to a, making sure your gears work correctly, and b, the longevity of that expensive transmission. Now, although we clean our bikes on a fairly regular basis and give your drivetrain a little bit of love, it's important, perhaps annually, to have a proper deep clean, and that means taking the gear off your bike. This is how you do it. First question you might be asking is why would you take all your transmission off to wash it Now, of course, there are simple things like a can of degreaser and a firm bristled brush, like an old toothbrush or this car wheel brush, for example, that you can use on the bike. Now, this does work really well on a day-to-day basis just for general cleaning, but when things do get a bit grimier, you're going to need to step it up a bit and go a bit further. Now, a chain bath is excellent for this. You fill these with degreaser to the line. They've got rotating brushes inside. You cycle the chain through it, and it does a really good job of cleaning that drivetrain. However, all that dirt and muck that really gets into the nooks and crannies of the bike, it won't clean that stuff out, and sometimes when washing the rest of the bike, once you've got your clean chain, that stuff can find its way back in and you'll still have a gritty-sounding chain. And of course, if it sounds gritty, it's going to be wearing faster than it would be if it's not. So the best solution, really, is to take the stuff off the bike and treat each individual component as a separate thing and give it a deep clean. And when doing this, it also means you can inspect parts of the bike you can't normally get to, like all around the bottom bracket, the back of the crank, and stuff like that. And this actually presents a really good opportunity to do a full service if you're comfortable doing that. So depending on your particular bike and orientation of your gears and stuff, you're going to need the correct tools for the job. So first up, you're going to need some Allen keys. In this particular case, I'm going to need a five to remove the rear mech, a three millimetre for the jockey wheels, a five millimetre for the cranks, and of course, a Shimano tool to remove that, and a four millimetre on the chain guide. Again, this will vary bike to bike. Next up, you're going to need a chain whip and a cassette tool. In order to remove the cassette from the bike, you're going to need some generic sprays, lubricants, that sort of stuff. So first up is a decent quality chain lube for lubricating that chain afterwards. Some spray grease. I'll show you why, but that's going to be useful in some of the smaller parts of the bike, like the rear derailleur. Spray degreaser and some just generic, heavy duty degreaser. Ideally, something that's biodegradable. Now, because you're going to be working with degreasers and solvents, you're going to want some safety gloves. So some nitrile gloves are a good idea. Some clean rags or some shop towel for making sure that stuff is nice and clean, along with a selection of various sort of hard bristled brushes. I like to use some old clear plastic tubs. It's good so you can monitor how clean the stuff is getting when you leave it in there. And they're obviously reusable for afterwards. Now, some people like to use a water bottle or an old jam jar for cleaning the chain in. I'm going to demonstrate that to you as well. So first things first, it's time to remove the chain from the bike. This is also a beneficial way of doing it because you can put the chain straight into solvent whilst you're also removing the other parts for cleaning. Now, make sure before you remove the chain, you've got a method of rejoining it safely afterwards. I always like to recommend using a fresh joining link each time. You can reuse some, but it's never going to be as good as using a fresh one. So ideally, make sure you've got one of those first. So to make the job easier, the first thing you need to do is turn the clutch off on a bike if your bike has got a Shimano mech. And then I recommend using a little third helping hand made from a bit of bent spoke. You can use that to just hook into the chain and give yourself a bit of slack, which means it's easier to work on that particular link Now, there's various different ways you can split this link. You can do it manually by hand. It's quite hard sometimes. You can pinch the links together like this and use a set of pliers. Or what I like to do is use a dedicated set of chain link pliers. Now, okay, so they're not the cheapest thing in the world. You can get cheaper models than this, but it's a buy once tool and you'll get to use this forever working on your bike because they fit all chains. So now I'm just going to pull it backwards through the derailleurs there. And there we have one filthy chain ready to be cleaned. So as I said earlier, I like to keep some of these little plastic tubs. You can use Tupperware tubs, old ice cream tubs, even stuff from Chinese takeaway. All really useful to keep for this exact purpose. I'm going to soak this in degreaser and I'm going to get to work on this with a brush a bit later on. But soaking in degreaser now means all the stuff that's on the inside is built up and congealed and stuff in the chain. That's going to soften and be easier to get out. And it allows me to work on the rest of the bike at the same time. So next up, you want to get the cranks off the bike. And in this case, Neil's got a chain guard on the top here. So I'm just going to loosen that off. Also going to take that off and give that a bit of a clean as well, just because the chain passes through there and you do get a bit of chain residue and build up on there. Now it's just a case of pulling the crank off. Sometimes you need a mallet just to tap the non-drive side, just to get it out of the frame. In this case, it slides straight out. Now the eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that Neil's bike is pretty filthy. And why aren't I cleaning his bike? Well, it's not important at this stage. We're just going to clean everything to do the transmission. The rest of the bike is quite happy to work when it's dirty. And of course, why should I clean this bike? So now it's a case of remove the rear wheel from the bike. And then we're going to take the rear derailleur off and then the cassette off the rear wheel. Just undo that lock nut and then you want to remove that from the cassette. And then taking your next spare tub, I'm going to put the cassette straight into this tub. And that is where it's going to be cleaned and degreased. So I've just got some degreaser here onto the rear cassette itself. So that's just going to start breaking down the bad stuff on there. Again, I'm just going to leave that to soak. Some people can do this overnight, but I'm obviously in a bit of a hurry with this to get Neil back riding again. So with the rear derailleur, you want to take the jockey wheels off before you actually expose this to degreaser because sometimes they have bearings, sometimes they have bushes. Either way, they can be damaged by the degreaser. So you're best off cleaning those separately. So just using a three millimeter Allen key, I'm just going to undo the jockey wheel retaining bolts and remove those before putting the derailleur itself in with the rear sprockets. Okay, so now it's just a case of making sure every single component is clean. Now earlier on, you saw me take the chain off and put that straight into this tub and get some degreaser on there. Now some people like to use a water bottle or an old jam jar for this, in which case you can drop the chain in, seal it up, give it a shake and leave it to do its thing. But I do find that most degreasers now are powerful enough to not have to do that. So again, it's just been sat here. And if you look at the colour of this liquid in here, you can see the amount of grit that's just come off it. So I'm just going to give it a good scrub as well with the fine brush. And I'm going to leave that again to continue degreasing itself. And I'm going to move on to the cassette and the rear derailleur. I basically systematically work my way through all these parts until they're really, really clean. Of course, it does depend how gunky they are, how long it's been since you've done this previously. And it's going to vary the amount of elbow grease you're going to have to put in. In this case, it's looking pretty good already. So check this out. You can see all that residue and all the gunk that's come off it. So it's nice to just work the stuff into the chain links. Flip the chain over, of course, to make sure you're getting all of it done. You can really see the colour of the degreaser. It was just a yellow fluid to start with. You can really see the muck coming off in there. And bit by bit, you can start seeing the chain starting to assemble a new chain again. Same process for the cassette. Just get stuck in. Really give everything a decent scrubbing. By the time you're done, this thing's going to look so clean. You'll be really surprised, actually. It'll look almost new. Now, if you like the idea of giving parts like this a deep clean, but you don't like the fact that you've got to get involved with a bit of elbow grease like I'm doing here, get yourself a parts washer. You can get them quite cheap. They can sit on the top of your workbench in your workshop. You can get them for as little as $40, $50, roughly the same in pounds and euros. You plug them in and they cycle degreaser over the stuff. It actually helps you do this. You can leave them to do their thing as well. They work really, really well. Of course, you might not want to spend that money, but it does mean this sort of job could be virtually hassle-free. Now, with the rear derailleur itself, notice that I'm obviously scrubbing this with degreaser, but you don't really want too much degreaser to get inside the actual clutch mechanism. We're going to have a look at it afterwards and show you how to just get some fresh grease inside there to make sure that continues to work well. You still need to make sure all that horrible grease muck buildup you get from the drivetrain is removed. Now, over to the chain set and the chain ring. Now, you want to give the cranks a real decent clean. Make sure the splines have got all the grease sort of taken off and all the nasty stuff. When you're putting them back on the bike, you're in effect doing a fresh install. The idea of that is that any sort of grit and stuff that's worked its way in there over the winter's riding or your last year's riding, that's not going to create any creaks when you reassemble the bike. Now, in this case, the back of this chain ring is absolutely filthy, so I'm actually going to remove the chain ring from the crank just so I can make doubly sure there's no grit and stuff on the back of it. Again, on your particular bike, it might be different. You might have a direct mount chain ring that goes straight to the crank. This one has got a spider with four chain ring bolts, so I'm just going to remove those. As you can see, this chain ring is really, really clean now. You just want to be inspecting the teeth for any damage, missing teeth, anything that's overly worn. That sort of runs true for your chain, your cassette, anything that you've taken off to inspect. Just as I mentioned before with the jockey wheels, it's a good idea to take these off because, as you can see, under these little covers, they've got actual cartridge bearings in there. Now is the time to see how they feel. In this case, they feel really good. You can do that ghetto hack that I showed you with the headset video, where you just peel off the top seal, flush it through with some fresh grease, and pop that seal back on, and you'll get loads of use out of those. As you can see, there's all this horrible black gunk that just collects. It's especially guilty of collecting on these jockey wheels or guide wheels. It's that unknown black muck that just seems to come from nowhere. Now everything is fully clean. I've rinsed it all off, so there's no degreaser residue on there. Just use hot water. Now, ideally, you want to leave this all to dry before reinstalling on the bike. I've heard of people using hair dryers before, or even heat guns, just to speed things up a bit, but we're just going to leave these aside and then start putting the bike together when everything is dry. Now, some people like to lube their chain while it's off the bike, just to make sure some of that lubricant gets into the rollers and the pins of the chain. Give it a wipe clean, then install on the bike. Personally, I'm just going to install everything dry and clean, with the exception of the rear derailleur. Now, as for the rear derailleur itself, it's fully clean on the outside. There's no grit remaining in there. I'm happy with that, but with Shimano derailleurs in particular, you can remove this cap over the clutch. I'm just going to take that off and just check the condition of the grease that's under there. Now, these are pretty waterproof. They do stay in place quite well and do resist the elements, but it's worth checking while it's off the bike. If I think it's going to need a squirt of grease in there or even a clean, it's a perfect chance to do that. As you can see, this particular one, you can see how the clutch operates there with this lever. It's absolutely fine. It's working in there, but I'm just going to maximize on it being open. I'm just going to put a little bit of spray grease just on the inside. It's not as thick as traditional grease, so it's not going to congeal or thicken over time. Now, it's time for reassembling everything on the bike. Most things are self-explanatory because you've already taken them apart, but the crank in particular and the rear derailleur just require a little bit of attention. In terms of putting the jockey and the guide wheels back on, let's just check this because the upper one is a guide wheel and the lower one is a tension wheel. They're slightly different. In this case, the slightly rounder looking one is the lower one and the more defined one is the upper one. That's the one that guides the chain where it needs to go. Just make sure when you get the orientation right and they go on that you also include some thread lock on those little bolts. Now, the rear derailleur is back in working order. Before I put it on the bike, I'm just going to spray some all-purpose lubricant just into the pivots and stuff, just enough to let it soak in. If any drips out, I can still just wipe it clean and give it a wipe down. It's time to reinstall to the bike. As with reinstalling any of this stuff, I would recommend just a tiny drop of thread lock just on the hanger bolt. The only reason for that is that just subject to vibration, it literally just has to be a drop, no more. Now, just repeat the same process with putting the chain ring back onto your cranks. Don't forget to put it in the correct orientation for your particular crank set. Use some thread lock on those bolts and then just reinstall everything back onto the bike. Now, just don't forget to use a fresh chain link on that chain just to make sure it's safe and secure. All you've got to do is index your gears and you're ready to ride. There we go. That is Neil's bike back together with a spectacularly clean drivetrain, if nothing else, so it seems. Hopefully, this video has been helpful for you. I'd like to know what you think in the comments below. If you want to see a couple more really helpful videos, if you want to know about installing a new inner cable, how you flush out the shifter housing, all that sort of stuff, click down here. If you want to find out everything about indexing and setting up your gears, click down here. As always, click on the globe to subscribe because we're making new content for you on GMBN Tech every single week. Of course, if you like the video or found it helpful, give us a thumbs up.