I'm old-school with some things, some have even thrown around the word 'luddite'. Granted, I ride a high-tech carbon bike with ceramic bearings everywhere, but when it comes to cleaning the bike, I've always been the 'bucket of hot, soapy water and a toilet brush' kind of guy. Between scrubbing with the Dawn-infused water and healthly doses of not-so-Earth friendly solvents and cleaners, the drivetrain usually got pretty clean. Skip forward a few years and we are in the here and now. I've seen those chain cleaner thingies in the mags and catalogs, but always thought they were hokey and a waste of money. Well, I'm man enough to admit that I was wrong. Way wrong in this case. I bought a Park Tool CM-5 'Cyclone' chain scrubber the other day. It came with the mailman today and I couldn't NOT try thing the out. My chain was somewhere between clean and still dirty. Not having any of the tree-hugger approved solvents, I used straight-up, peel your skin off, un-watered down Simple Green.
I followed the directions, ran the chain through the machine for a minimal amount of time and SHA-ZAAM...the chain was cleeeean. Frankly, I was a bit shocked. It took all of the crap out of the inner and outer links, cleaned the rollers and made the chain look borderline new.
$25 well spent...
Oh, and my back is feeling much better. I'm not riding tomorrow night, but I may come out with #1 to watch. I'll be out Thursday though...
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