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  • Haha guilty as charged on grubby chains. Its a running theme, all mine get ridden but carpeted upstairs 3rd floor flat with no garden or balcony makes cleaning oily crap a hassle. And I've been told off before, apparently washing bike in the bath/shower is not acceptable, who knew.

  • On rainy days pack an old toothbrush, spray bottle and simple green. Find a quiet place without peering eyes and Bob's your uncle...

  • simple green

    HELL NO

    I know plenty of people do it, but keep emulsifiers well away - you'll never get every trace out (in fact, heaps will stay), and then future lube will be contaminated with a substance which allows water to mix with it. Bad bad bad

    Only oil-based solvents. And if you point a big squirt at your chain, also bad bad bad - you'll just be flushing the grit into its guts. You want a nice soft rag, damp with solvent, and there's nothing for it - you just have to drag that chain through it. If there's a mile of gritty crap clinging to it, maybe try to sort of dust it off first, rather than smooshing it all in.

    At some point you can spray your cogs and rings (if you don't mind spraying bulk solvent around, that is; I prefer to be a bit less nasty and use more elbow grease), before returning to the chain.

    If you make sure to lube minimally and wipe off the excess repeatedly until there's bugger-all excess, all this is easy as just wiping the drivetrain with a solvent-damp rag, and it's not a big production.

    So many folks don't realise that too much lube can be almost as bad as not enough. Goldilocks that shit.

    Old mate Sheldon on the tricky problem of chain cleaning and lubing: https://www.sheldonbrown.com/chainclean.html

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