How To Clean And Lube Your Drivetrain | GMBN Tech How To

regular cleaning of your transmission and your full drivetrain is the key to working smoothly and lasting a long time it's also a really good opportunity for you to inspect those chain links make sure they're in good condition and of course make sure there's no damage to your sprockets you say get it done quickly and efficiently so first up is to assess the condition of your bike if your bike like mine isn't actually that dirty then you don't really need to give your bike a full clean you can just concentrate on a little stuff that works down here of course if you have been riding in muddy or gritty conditions maybe the sand of stuff then perhaps you do need to look at washing your bike fully because that sounded great can really work its way into the chain and make things quite hard to deal with now we use wd-40 products here they obviously make a pipe cleaner which is great for us because this particular one is friendly on paintwork and I can get any on my disc brakes without having to worry about any sort of contamination of course there are lots of different buy claims out there so just make sure when you're using whatever white willing to use to check that it is safe to get near your brakes and if it's not obviously don't get it anywhere near them now when your bike is sort of cleaner to start working on that transmission the best thing really is a dedicated chain degreaser like this one now it is really important to note that with a spray degreaser like this is very easy to overspray and get it new your disc rotors or also just near stuff like the bearings around your bottom bracket it's actually quite powerful stuff so you really don't want to do that so to start with I'm just going to put a bit of shop towel and weight it around this rotor at the rear there just to make sure I don't get anywhere near that and I'm only going to spray around the chain or I'm going to spray it onto the actual towel and put it where I need it and now to work the degrease it into the chain and a sprocket isn't it you're going to need some sort of selection of brushes there's various different ones out there on the market now for slightly different things these ones we have like the bendy wire in the middle they're actually best for just getting into nooks and crannies particular places may be behind the hub stuff like that so that's not necessarily the best one for this job now you might have seen some prices this sort of shaped before they've got a scrape if again in between the sprockets and the cassette they're really really useful and of course these bristles are really quite tough so don't I deal for scraping all that grime out between those chain links and of course they're three places you want to actually be working the degreaser rim there's a cassette area itself which obviously needs to be clean so it's good idea to have your chain about halfway up that cassette so you can get access to the smallest pockets and those large pockets obviously I've protected my disc rotor and a background so just take care if you are spraying in that area the next one is that upper side of the chain the best place to spray that there's actually on the lower parts of the chain here is it runs towards the jockey wheels it's a nice easy access place you can reach this whilst you're cycling the the cranks backwards so you can get a good amount in there and then for the bottom bracket area and around the actual cranks and chain ring you don't really want to be spraying directly in the area because of bearings whether it be your main pivot bearing or the actual bottom bracket barriers itself so you want to be spraying onto a rag or spraying directly onto the brush that you're using to clean it so also the rear derailleur itself can house quite a lot of muck especially around the guide and the jockey wheels there so you really want to make sure you start picking out some of those leaves and all the other stuff that accumulates there because it does add friction and of course holding onto a stuff's not good because it does pass through the chain as well so make sure you give them a bit of love and make sure that you've given us decent clean another point to mention is to not spray degrease it directly at those jockey wheels or the guide wheels some of them like in this case they've got little bearings inside some don't they're more like bushes or plates and spacers so not as bad but ones of bearings you will be flushing out all that grease which isn't a good thing and it doesn't mean you don't have to give them a bit of a service so you're best off just grinding away and they the muck that's in there with a firm brush or the sharp end of this plastics or cassette scraping brush now obviously the key to cleaning your transmission is a bit of elbow grease you could really get in there and be systematic of your approach you've got to work it around sometimes you have to rinse off a bit and then go back to again now these little fellows are really helpful sometimes there's a chain bath you fill them up with degreaser liquid and there's a series of rollers on the inside there that when you pass the chain back through there it does a really good job but they do use a fair bit of degreaser so if you're going to use these make sure the chain is absolutely filthy it's really worthwhile using it in this case I didn't need too much degreaser so the spray stuff is perfect for this job with a little bit of elbow grease just to get into the actual links and get behind the chain we teeth and where that sort of stuff okay so I'm fairly happy with that the jockey wheel and the guide wheels both look clean there the chain is looking clean so as the chain ring and the cassette looks great actually so it's time to just give it a rinse off make sure there's no more degreaser hanging around you don't want it to work its way into bearings like the balm bracket or the main pivot or even a change they pivot here make sure it's nice and clean and it will give it a bit of a dry down or leave it to drip dry and then we get up into a workshop and make sure it's fully lubricated and is everything is in good condition okay so now we've got a bike inside giving it a quick wipe down so it's not too wet now it's just a bit fine detailing and obviously inspection at the same time so what you're looking for or any sort of chain plate that Microsoft started separating assess the key to a snap chain of course in each chain you've got how to place that in a place the rollers and the pins to get through them and if those pins aren't connecting properly to those outer plates when you pedal hard your chain will snap at some point so just it's always give our deer just to focus on one area of the chain what should chain go by and just inspect it a good place to start is that master link follow it all the way around one full revolution so I'm just having a look making sure all those chain links look the same and there's nothing out of ordinary there no pins poking through no sort of damage no cracks on those rollers either so you doing a check upper and lower do the same way so happy with that and you can check the upper side as well looking pretty good to me now when you're looking at these rollers make sure you can't see any cracks because of course if there is a crack that's the time you're going to get some sort of damage occur like a chain break now something to know where those rollers is they should be fairly free-flowing the whole point of them is they rotate on their own and lubricant also and to that if they don't rotate then your chain simply will not work as smoothly now as you're working through the chain you're going to find a few areas that you maybe missed when you were going through with the degrees outside so you obviously want to make sure that that stuff does come off and a nice little tip for that you spray a little bit wd-40 on a rag it's better to spread on the rag them directly onto the chain in this case because it obviously you can apply it to the exact area you need to and it's not gonna actually soak into the chain as much make sure you wipe off afterwards because you don't want it to affect the lubricant you get a put on afterwards that's pretty good that looks like almost a brand new chain in fact now one of the reasons you should be inspecting your bike when you're cleaning and not just hosing it down and leave them to dry is he find little minor niggles and problems that can later lead into bigger ones although it's not biggie here my cable end cap has come off in the cable is all frayed so it's a bit of a mess so I'm just gonna try and twiddle this round as best as I can and I'm just gonna trim the end of it and put fresh and cap back on there to make sure it doesn't get any worse okay so with the chain fully clean is running nice and smoothly then if you're left to do is of course lubricated now you've got a few options here and now this does depend on where you're riding and a time of year that you're actually doing this in the UK I tend to have a dry lube and a wet lube and also a spray loop of various different reasons if I'm on a dhow and my bike in the back of the car or carry spray Lube with me because I can run it through the whole transmission it also acts as a bit of a water displacer as well so it's kind of like a well multi-use product so it's really useful for that however it's not a sparing as using a dedicated chain lube so you're going to use more of this but I just spraying it on so retain lubes you get two types to get wet lube and a dry lube now the wet lube self-explanatory is a thick wet lubricant designed for use in adverse light so wet growingly conditions the idea is it's quite thick so as well as penetrating into those rollers and on the inside of those links to do its job you actually get a bit of coating on the chain or helps keep water a bay and helps keep that lubricant in place now the disadvantage of a wet lubricant the exact point of keeping in the lubricant on the chain can also attract dust and other stuff that can wear out your chain so you don't really want to be using this in dry conditions hence having a dry lubricant now a dry lubricant is aimed at using in dry conditions and is still a wet lubricant when you apply it to the chain but the idea is it's a wet lubricant and the wet stuff in it is literally just a carrier to get those lubricating particles in to the chain now because it's summertime I'm going to apply a dry lubricant because I don't want to attract any of that sort of excess dust and stuff to my chain now you want to make sure you apply to the inside of the chain links you have to see people applying chain lube to the top side here by the cassette all that does is put loads of lubricant all over your cassette and actually although it does go into the chain it's doing the wrong side of it you really want it on that inside to help get it in the right place so I'm just going to cycle it backwards hold on a rag underneath there just to catch any excess it's gone into the right places now it's also important to note that you only just leave this for a minute especially the dry lube so wet lube obviously it stays wet so you might want to just immediately wipe away if you've got a massive excess of it but the dry lube actually it uses that wet stuff as a vessel to get those sort of lubricating particles into the right place so if you can just leave it a minute or so make sure it works its way in and then you can wipe up the excess now another handy thing with dry lube is is actually really good on pivots on the rear mech because of the fact that it stays dry and has its own little film to it so it's really good to just apply onto a parallelogram give it a bit of movement just to make sure it works this way and again leave it and give it a wipe down afterwards now finally there's a couple of other things you should know about chains and lubricating them some people often want to ask how much Lube should they use and my advice is just enough to coat the chain you don't want to use too much because a it's gonna be a waste and B you can end up wiping some of it off anyway and C it's obviously going to attract too much sort of debris mud mark all the stuff that wears it so in my opinion you definitely want to do little and often so just pay attention to what's going on your transmission apply what you need you'll get more out of your Lube you're getting more out of your drivetrain but what you don't want to do is just keep putting more Lube on top and more Lube because the bad thing about that of course you get this big donkey drivetrain you're gonna start getting miss shifts it's gonna attract loads of additional mud and stuff to it it's basically up to you to monitor it depending on how often you ride now this sort of thing is a really good thing to do post you don't be doing it pre right the idea is you come home from your ride you clean your bike you give it a bit of TLC that needs lube it and it's ready to go next time you want to go riding don't it be one of those guys at the start of the ride everyone's waiting for you where you leave your chain pump up your tires change your clip those pedals back on do it after the ride now there you go that is all you need to know about a quick and efficient way of lubricating and cleaning the drive training transmission for a couple more helpful videos click down here if you want to see the deep clean version of this video that's where I take everything off do a full clean with heavy duty degreaser and brushes and stuff you want to do that sort of thing once a year just to make sure everything is running smoothly now click up the top here if you want to learn a bit more about the different types of greases that are out there where their suspension greases or lithium greases and all the different assembly compounds thread locks and stuff that you might need for assembling and working on your bike of course as always click on that round globe to subscribe to the channel tell everyone about us and of course if this video is helpful for you give us a thumbs up

Channel: GMBN Tech

Views: 490,069

Keywords: gmbn tech, mtb tech, bike tech, mountain bike, Bicycle (Product Category), MTB, gmbntech, GMBN, Global Mountain Bike Network, mountain biking, clean drivetrain, lube drivetrain, drivetrain, chain, cassette, derailleur, groupset, how to, maintenance, downhill MTB, XC MTB, mtb skills, mountain bike skills, bike, gmvn, doddy, andrew dodd, Ҙ, ssc15, scbpgmbn15, 1k, 1o, 1r, 1t, Ӫ, Ҟ, ҩ, Ҧ, ҭ, Ҳ, Ҵ, ҵ

Id: 1x0baWOzPzw

Length: 12min 6sec (726 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 02 2018