5 Minute Bike Clean - No Tools Required

I use a toothbrush to deep clean my chain and cassette. It works well but tastes bloody horrible afterwards.

One tip: use a hand-pumped garden sprayer. It outputs just the right amount of water and is very convenient to use.

Big respect for mentioning car products vs "bike specific" products and the savings that brings 👍

This is really a 15 min bike clean, but still, glad I started doing this last summer - boy howdy was my drivetrain in terrible shape, so after a marathon cleaning session, then it was only "5 for Francis, 15 for me" cleanings that kept my bike in much better shape. :)

General bike maintenance videos like this one would be great!! New to cycling and need to learn all the secrets🧐👍🏻

There’s just something so satisfying about giving your bike a good wash. Time consuming but well worth it. Great video Francis snd Jimmy 🤗 🇨🇦

You forgot two things: Van Halen CD in the boom box, and ice cold beer post cleaning. Thanks guys!

I use a paintbrush for the drive train and keep the other brush for everything else so as not to put grease onto the matt paint next time. If you don’t have a hose then a water bottle filled a couple of times rinses all soap off too. I’d love to hear why i should buy bike specific degreaser too (the price is mental) because I might’ve bought 5L of degreaser from screwfix which cost a fraction and works perfectly!

Floss your cassette. Now that's a new one for me. Glad to see you had some help in the beginning. Take care, Al

Thanks! It seems so simple now, but before I watched this video, I was worried about doing something wrong and hurting my bike. Now I feel I can clean my bike with confidence. I will watch your other video too. Just cleaned one of my bikes after watching this in the way you suggested, and it does look like a much better job than I have been doing. I need to clean it more because my bikes are my transport since I have no car. I sold the car and got a bike. Never regretted it. 🙂

Use a different brush on your drive train than on the frame. I use a toothbrush on the drive train, the firmest I can find. Never brush oil grime into your frame. He showed a rag with oil on it. You are putting that on the frame you use the same brush. Truth be told this video is nice and gets me pumped. Who knew I would love cleaning my bike.

I use a nylon bristle wheel that goes into a pistol drill for cleaning my cassette, work a bit of degreaser in first with a small paintbrush and then use the wheel to work it out. comes out spotless (do it outside though or the gunk will be over the walls)

Bloody grateful for this. It always seems like a mission to clean a bike but this is a great reminder ot can be quick and simple. Cheers lads

A pump up foam sprayer is an excellent bike cleaning tool. I use an IK Foam 2 but have also used a foam cannon on a small electric pressure washer. There is nothing wrong with using a pressure washer to wash your bike but you have to understand the tool. If it is held at a distance that’s safe enough for you to spray it into your hand without hurting, you can use it on the bicycle at that same distance or greater distance. It’s when you go close and get into the high-pressure zone that it becomes dangerous for your bicycle. Plus if you choose the right nozzle, such as one with a wide fan spray, it is much safer than a narrow, pinpoint or rotary turbo nozzle. By using a foam sprayer to soap the bike and a pressure washer at a safe distance with a wide nozzle to rinse the bike, you can greatly reduce the amount of water necessary to wash your bike. Never use a cotton towel or paper towel to dry your bike as it will scratch or damage the finish especially if it is a matte finish. Always use a bicycle detergent or car shampoo as anything else can dull or damage the paint. When drying, use a microfiber cloth to get the bulk of the water off the easy to reach areas. Then follow up with a small blower. I use an 18v Ryobi but I started with a small electric blower. If you have put a ceramic coating or polymer coating on the paint finish, be sure and use the right type of soap as you can damage these coatings by messing with the pH. Traditional automotive wax is even more fragile but as it’s SO much less expensive, it is more of a sacrificial coating than either the poly or ceramic coatings. Soft paint brushes are excellent to reach into those hard to reach areas like cleaning the bottom bracket in the area between the front derailer and chain rings. If you’re going to use an aerosol degreaser that contains any petroleum, distillates or any other type of oil to include citrus based degreasers on any part of the bike, take the wheels off and remove the brake pads (disc or rim) before spraying it. Keep those parts far away from the spray and overspray. Always use pH neutral cleaners or you can damage the finish on anodized parts.

Top tip. After washing/degreasing the drive train. Get a kettle with boiling water and while pedalling backwards, pour the boiling water onto you chain. Washes more oily stuff out and helps it dry more quickly.

I upgraded to the muc off pink stuff - dunno what they have in it but the degreaser works better than fairy liquid and don't really need to brush anything, just hose it down after a couple of minutes. Even if you are using fairy liquid one of those squeezey bottles with a mix of fairy liquid and warm water is more efficient than buckets. Park tool chain cleaning tool to clean the drive train with some of the muc off stuff in it (diluted seems to work fine even though they say use it undiluted for chain). Hose the bike down afterwards and dry and lube the important bits, WD40 a few things, SRAM butter on stanchions and shock and do some bouncing to get that butter into the seals. Back to doing this every ride until the sun is back in about 9 months, yay mud and rain! 😢

Cheers Francis and Jimmy, great tips. I ride on the road, and some very light gravel. I prefer Aldi baby wipes. No hose necessary. Just wipe down every couple of rides. I've been using drip wax lube, which also cleans with baby wipes. Again my riding is road and in the dry, mostly.

I prefer a micro fibre cloth as my weapon of choice for the initial wetting and soaping. Instead of a brush. No matter how soft your brush is, I can't imagine it's very good over time for your paint finish. But yeah, definitely a bathroom stiff bristle brush for the cassette and chainrings. And yes, moo up the excess water and dry off the bike before taking it indoors to dry out fully. And then buff (with or without some wax polish) with another clean micro fiber (to remove any watermarks).

My preferred solution to a dirty bike is to keep riding. As long as you're on the bike, you can't see the dirt.

I wash my bike after almost every ride. Even when it is dry and sunny outside. And I live in Rome so most rides are in dry weather. So most times I wash it quite fast similar to how you did here. And i also use something like the MucOff Bike Protection on a microfiber cloth after drying off the bike every now and then. Makes it so much easier to wash the bike.