Transcription
Foreign, you need to stop making these mistakes right now because it's costing you money, it's wrecking other parts of your bike, and it's bad for the environment overall. In your chain will just pick up the dirt and turn into what can only be described as grinding paste. The temptation then is to follow the herd, spray some degreaser on it, wash it off with some water, and then override it again. Can you see where this is going? If you're doing this on the bike, the degreaser will be getting down into the hub area and the bottom bracket area and wrecking the bearings in there. Just while the bike is sitting around, you've just got to become the bike.
G'day viewers, my name's Ashley Malcolm, and depending on your age, I have actually cleaned more bikes than you've had hot dinners. I'm about to show you how I clean drivetrains in the workshop by taking all the components off the bike and not using any degreasers. You'll want to follow closely because there are more pro tips than you can shake a stick at for pulling your bike apart and putting it back together that will save you time, money, and frustration. And then at the very end, I'm going to give you four of my best tips for making your drivetrain last longer. So buckle your toe straps, let's get into it right now.
Okay, so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to get this into the two smallest cogs, smallest one on the rear and the smallest one on the front. And then we're going to get our chain cleaner. Got this Park Cyclone one here. I'm just going to clip it onto the bottom of the chain. It's between the uh rear derailleur and the cogs. Get some GT85 now. The reason I'm using GT85 is because it's the best thing I've found to clean bikes with without damaging them. We're just going to put some in now. We're not going to overfill it. I'm not going to fill it right up to the line that's normally on the side of it. It tells you how much liquid to put in there because that's just way too much for what we want. So I'm just going to put some in there and then I'm just going to pedal to change through it. Now, what I'm trying to do here is just get enough liquid on the outside of the chain but not actually get it so it's going into where all the rollers are. So we don't really want that much in there at all. And I'll show you afterwards how much I've actually used compared to what the line says and such a waste of product. Whatever you're using in there, it's such a waste of product. You really don't need that much. So I guess I'm going to do this maybe like 30 or 50 times. This doesn't say. It looks all nice and wet on the outside, which it does now. And then I'm just going to unclip the chain cleaner, put that to the side, and I'm going to get myself a rag and I'm going to get it all folded up. I'm just going to drag the chain through the rag. I'm going to do it so I'm holding it at the top and the bottom, so I'm cleaning it both horizontally. And once I've done that, I'm going to fold the rag over again and then I'm going to hold it by the sides and again, just back pedal it and drag the chain through there so it's just wiping off all the GT85 that we put on there and as much dirt as we can get off at the same time. I'll just do this a little bit more of a wipe down going backwards and forwards. Yeah, and that's got all of that off, looking reasonably clean actually.
So I looked at how much GT85 I put in this to get the chain wet enough for it to be cleaned, and I also did the same with some degreaser, and they were both the same, those 25 mils. Now the line on this chain cleaner, and I'm sure it's the same with other kind of manufacturers, it's just too much. So, so you're not wasting so much product and therefore you're not wasting so much money. Don't put as much in as it says on the line because the line is 60 mils on this one. That's more than twice as much. So save your money, save the product, and save the environment.
So next thing we're going to do is get a chain breaker, our master link breaker. I'm just going to pedal it backwards and get the master link down the bottom somewhere. Now the reason we're getting it down to the bottom is because we want to, just break it down there and then it won't just fly off the bike. Just grab our chain by the top and just pull it off the bike like that. Now the next thing you want to do is drop the back wheel out of it so then we can get the cassette off and we'll just put that to the side for now and then we'll come back and get that in a bit and get the cassette off. And then the next thing you want to do is, uh, clip the cable off the rear derailleur. Click the cable end off, undo the rear cable. Just do that enough so we can drag the inner out of the derailleur and then we're just going to get the five mil Allen key, undo the derailleur, get this off and pull the bike back. And then I'm going to just get this cable disconnected. You can do it by twisting it if you can't get it out. Now we're not taking the cable end off this cable because it doesn't need to come off to get the cable out of the derailleur and so we can just keep it at the same length later on when we're putting it back together.
Just undo this front derailleur clamp. Next thing I want to do is get the cranks off. Again, I'm just going to take the bike out to make it a bit easier for me, a bit more ergonomic. The first thing I'm going to do is undo these clamping bolts, then I'm going to get this, uh, tension bolt tool and just squeeze it in there and just undo it. Now, if you can't undo it, you just get an Allen key in the back of an eight mil Allen key and get it off like that. Right, there's a little tab on this type of crank that needs to just be popped up. Just wheel the crank off. I'm just going to give my mallet and what I'm going to do is I'm just going to whack this off with the mallet. Don't use your hand because you'll hurt yourself and don't use a hammer because you'll hurt the bike. So you just want some sort of soft mallet and if you haven't got something like that, maybe put a piece of wood over it and then tap that with the hammer. Thanks off. It's just a good time to check the bottom bracket bearings and make sure they're okay because if they're not, you might as well change them now.
Okay, let's just go and get this cassette off and then we're ready to get everything over to the cleaning area. My tools of choice to get these bits all cleaned up, uh, some GT85, a rag, two different size toothbrushes, and just a paintbrush that you'd get from the local hardware store. Cleaning area where we clean up all the parts in our workshop. There's an old kitchen sink, but before anyone loses their shazzle, it's not drained into the water system. We drain it into a five-gallon plastic tank and then we dispose of it responsibly. Now, this is probably a step too far for the occasional drivetrain cleaning at home, but you could do this quite easily in a big plastic storage box. Please be mindful and dispose of any waste from cleaning your bike parts responsibly and be good to the environment.
Okay, let's get the extractor fan on. The easiest and the quickest way to do this job is to do it as part of a process, and the first stage of that process is to spray all of the components with GT85, and this will make getting the muck off much easier. Now, the main reason I use GT85 is because it gets the muck off really easy and brings everything up nice and shiny again, but it also means I don't have to re-lube the components when I put them back on the bike. This kind of degreaser costs more than twice as much as this kind of GT85, and you'll still have to wash it off with water, and no matter how hard you try, you won't be able to get all the residue out, and that will just break down any lube that you put on the chain afterwards. So now I'm going to loosen up all the muck on the components by using my two toothbrushes and this paintbrush. I've got for getting into all the fiddly bits. I learned this process 30 years ago, and what you should do with the parts washer where we were using paraffin. Now, it didn't take me very long to work out that the paraffin was actually wrecking the components. It would literally make the silver anodizing go dull in front of my eyes, but you know, the problem runs much further than superficial aesthetics. What you're actually doing by using heavy solvents like degreasers is you're washing out all the factory-fitted grease from the pivots and all the moving parts of the components, and this just can't be replaced. Always remember that the more expensive your bike is, the shorter its functioning life will be if you treat it badly, and this includes over-cleaning it.
Now all the grime's loosened up, it's time to make these components nice and shiny again. As you can see, spraying GT85 on the components just washes all the muck off them and they come up nice and shiny. Okay, I'm just going to give this chain a little bit more of a scrub with the toothbrush and some GT85, and I'm going to blast it off one more time. I'm now just going to leave the components to drip dry for a while until most of the liquid's off them. GT85 has Teflon or PTFE in it, so not only will it clean your bike and leave a protective film on it to protect it from the elements, it'll make you cut through the wind faster. I'd just like to point out that I don't have any affiliation with GT85, nor am I getting paid for mentioning them in this video. I just love it.
The last stage of this process is to get a nice clean dry rag and dry all the components with it. Getting the excess GT85 off. You don't really need to get all the residue off, and if there's any residue left inside the gear mechanisms or around the back of the cassette cogs, that won't cause any harm at all, and it'll also just make the parts last a bit longer and re-lubricate them from the inside.
So cleaned and dried off, you can see how sparkly they've come up. Let's get this stuff back on the bike. Gonna start by getting a bit of grease into the gear hanger, you can add rear derailleur and just screw that in pretty firm, and then I just wipe the grease off the back. Okay, now we've got the derailleur on, let's get the cable fitted. So I'm just going to put that up a bit so we've got a better angle. Just grab our cable and slot the outer housing into the frame stop and slide through the barrel adjuster. It's down underneath the pinch bolt and just drag it through and get the outer casing seated into the derailleur cable adjuster. Pull that nice and firm, just nip it up. I fitted a new cable because the other one was too short to refit, so I'm just going to poke that through there for now, and then later on I'm going to show you when I tidy this all up what the advantage of doing that is. All right, so we'll just leave that as it is there at that angle. We're going to get our chainset. I'm just going to get a bit of grease on the axle. Let's put a few stripes on here and get a bit around where the spline is where the left-hand crank goes on. This will just help it not corrode, but also what it'll do, any kind of excess, we'll just slide up against the edge of the bottom bracket bearing and kind of help waterproof it. You know, it doesn't have to be too much, just a good amount. Get that on the bike and I've got a left-hand crank. I'm going to just, uh, pop that on. Get the tension cap or compression cap, whatever you want to call it. Basically, just tightens the cranks onto the bottom bracket and firms it up so it doesn't have any play in it. With the Shimano ones, you just want to screw it in quite tight by hand. That little tab there that we pushed up earlier pushes back down, and that's just located onto the axle. There's a hole in the axle where that locates, and then we're just going to get the five mil Allen key on the extension bar and just give that a bit of a tighten. Go across the other one and just tighten that one in as well, and then what you want to do is go back to the first one again, give it another little nip up, and the other side again, just give it a nip up. It's about 12 to 15 newton meters, but I just do them up tight.
I'm going to get our front derailleur. Get our bolt back in. I've already put a little bit of grease on the thread of that and just screw that up. We want it about two mil above the highest teeth on the chainring. Just check it's straight. Just needs a little tweak. All right, so that's in line with the outer chainring, the outer plate. Let's just nip that up. We can do any other finer adjustments when we're actually setting the gears up. Next thing to do is get this front gear cable connected. Now, there's a little cutout it has to go through underneath the pinch bolt washer, so I sometimes just lift it up with a little screwdriver and get it in there. So we've got that underneath there. I need to pull these ones pretty tight, nip that up, not fully, because we might need to adjust it later on.
Okay, so let's, uh, get the cassette back on the wheel and then we'll get the wheel in the bike and get the chain on. Now, the way I like to do it is I just pass it through over the cassette and behind the seat stay, and I get the chain on the bottom sprocket, and then I go up towards the front here where the chainset is, and I just drop the chain in, and hopefully we can just catch it on the, uh, on the inner ring. I'll try and do it like that so I don't have to get my hand in down with the teeth of the derailleur and maybe hurt myself. So I then just pop it underneath the, uh, the front jockey wheel. Now, make sure that you run it over the top of the tab, line the chain up with the jockey wheel, and put it all the way through. Once it's done that, get our joining link, let's pop it in each end of the chain, and then just put them together and join them up. You want to do this at the bottom because that means the chain might just fall off. Now, don't try and pull it back and lock it together down the bottom because if you slip, you will hit your hand on the chainring and it will hurt. So what I do is I just spin the wheel back until we end up with the joining link at the top. There we are. Now, just make sure it's still together properly, and I'll just hold the back wheel and I'll push the crank down, and it just clicks straight in, nice and safe.
Right, this is ready to set up. So let's get that done. That's all set up and ready to give back to the customer. Now, some of you might be wondering when I'm going to put some lube on it. I'm not going to put any lube on it. I just cleaned it with lube. So you would have seen earlier that I had tucked the rear gear cable up through the parallelogram of the rear derailleur. The reason I've done that is because you can leave the cable longer than the prescribed amount that Shimano say that you should do. And the reason they say to cut it off at three centimeters is so that it doesn't go into the wheel or into the chain. But by tucking it up through one of the holes in the parallelogram, you can actually leave six centimeters of cable there, well, five and a half is what I've left on this one. And that basically means that you can cut the cable off more times, saving you time and money in the future whenever you need to take the cable out for servicing or cleaning your bike. This is a really neat way to tuck the cable away as well, so you can't actually see it.
If you feel like you're getting benefit from this video, please share it with someone else who you think would benefit. Okay guys, thanks for getting this far, and here's some of my top tips for making a drivetrain last longer.
When you have a new chain fitted to your bike, it's got the factory grease on it to protect it, and most people just want to degrease the chain or oil the chain and get it dirty so they have to degrease it. But what you should really do to keep your bike tidier, cleaner, and make the whole drivetrain last longer is not do that. You want to wait till it squeaks, maybe give it a little wipe off of some lubricant, but only a very tiny amount on a rag, just drag the chain through it. And if it does squeak, it's usually not the chain, it's usually the jockey wheels, so that'd be the first thing I lubricate. Now, when I clean the drivetrain on this bike, I didn't do this part because the jockey wheels weren't that dirty, but I get bikes in here that when I'm pedaling and when I put them in the stand, honestly, they feel 5 or 10 or even 15 percent more resistant than they otherwise should do. And a lot of the time, it's just because people have let their jockey wheels get mucked up. So what you want to do if they are mucked up, and this just makes the cleaning process easier as well, it's just get yourself a plain headed screwdriver, a good size one, and then just put it in the jockey wheel and then pedal the bike backwards. You just hold the screwdriver up against the jockey wheel, and you're doing different places on the front and the rear of both of them, and they'll just scrape the muck straight off.
So a good tip to make your drivetrain last longer is not use it in the big big, because that's when the chain is under the most tension and the bike really doesn't like it. It stresses the derailleur, it wears a chain out, it wears the cogs out. Now, because of the angles and how taut the chain is, now the chain is quite happy when you're in the big chainring and you're somewhere down, you know, the middle of the cassette. You can see because it's quite easy to push the actual jockey cage, but as soon as you get it up to the top, the chain's all stretched out, the jockey cage hardly moves at all, it's really tight, and the chain takes nearly a straight line through there, which really isn't good. And you know, it's okay if you're just going over the top of a hill and just doing it for a minute, but if you're riding around in the big big all the time, you've got to ask yourself, have I got the right ratios on my bike? Why am I putting a bigger cog on the front or a smaller cog as my top gear on the rear? You know, you should be using the big chainring, the small chainring, and all of your cassette. And also, if you run bigger cogs, it rolls better, so it feels better when you're riding it, but also because there's more teeth, it'll last longer.
The next bit of advice I can give you, and this is really important, is get yourself a chain checker. Now, you may have seen this in one of my other videos, but it's worth mentioning again because it's so important. If you change your chain before it's really, really worn out and started wearing the cogs and the chainrings out, then you won't have to replace those parts. The chain is the strongest and the cheapest part of the drivetrain, so you might as well change that out before it wears out and wears out the expensive bits. If you haven't got a chain checker, get one of these. There's different brands, it's a roll-off one, but you want the ones that measure from one point to another and not the dial ones, because these are more accurate and just give a definitive measurement to whether the chain's worn out or really worn out and had it. And the way you use that is just by popping it into the chain, and I do it when it's in the two biggest cogs or two of the biggest cogs because that's when the chain's at its most taut and when all the rollers pull apart from each other and show what the gap is between them from where they're actually worn out. So you just pop this in the chain. Uh, I'm going to go for the point one side, which is the longest side, and that one goes in on this chain. So this chain has definitely had it and should have been changed ages ago. And if you have a good look at the teeth here, you'll see that they're starting to wear out as well. So this needs a new chainring, new chain, new cassette, and this could have been avoided by checking it before it was actually worn out and swapping it out for a new chain.
Okay, I'm off to give my hair its daily wash with this high-quality degreaser, and then I'm going to put this slab of butter into it to revitalize it, and then it'll be all ready for me to do it again tomorrow. If you haven't already liked and subscribed, please do that now. Picture. [Music]