How to: Clean your drivetrain thoroughly!

Well here we go, I was cleaning a bike (not mine) chain and thought I'd snap some pics to share with you guys. A dirty bike train can make for a ton of noise, ugly shifting, and will cause very premature death of your components (derailleurs, cassette, chain, and crank). Keeping it clean something that you can do very easily with a very basic set of stuff (won't even call them tools), 1/2 hour of your time, and some good quality patience. I assure you that no one will spend as much time as your baby as you will so this is way better than taking it to the shop, plus you get to keep a few dollars in your pocket to buy other fun toys.

Time:
1/2 hour

Difficulty
I'd say 1 out of 5 on the scale I just invented

What you need
1 Rag
Paper towels
10 swabs
Chain Lube


Why you do it
Keep your bike running smoothly
Keep drivetrain noise down
Maintenance and ensuring your bike has a nice long life

When you do it
Obviously this is somewhat dependent on how much you ride and if you ride in damp conditions often or not. Some folks say every 1000 miles. I don' think that's often enough. I would tend to do this once every 2-3 months or whenever the chain looks nasty or it gets noisy

How to do it

Step 1: Getting Started
Get your bike in a position that you can work on it. If you have a work stand that's great, if you don't just flip your bike over. If you are flipping your bike over just take care to do it on a friendly surface if possible and take care not to smash your cyclometer if you have one

Here are the areas we'll be working on:

1: The front chainrings
2: The chain
3: The little plastic ring #1
4: The little plastic ring #2
5: The rear cassette (we'll be removing the rear wheel and working with it off the bike)

Step 2: Clean the front
One note: you can use a degreaser type product but I honestly just prefer to clean stuff dry with a rag. Don't be lazy. You have to touch each tooth to get stuff clean, there is nothing magic you can just spray on there and then lightly hit and assume it will be clean.

It's kind of a catch-22 here. We can work on the front chainring and/or the rear cassette getting them clean first or we can work on the chain. Either way, you'll likely have some contamination from the clean one to the dirty one. I like to go ahead and work on chainring/cassette (#1 and #5 respectively).

So anyways, start cleaning up the front rings. Whether you have a double or a triple, the outside ring and inside ring should be easier to clean since you can get in there and attack with a rag. Here's a picture to show you what we're cleaning. We basically want to clean the teeth on each of the chain rings. Now remember, we want to clean BOTH sides of each of these. Don't be shy. Use a combination of rags where you can fit it and then use the swabs for the outside of the middle chain ring (triple) or inner chain ring (double).

As you can see, we have a triple on this bike and the chain is on the middle ring (that's the toughest part to clean). Depending on your crankset there may be an easier place to get access. Do what works best. Don't forget that you can simply turn the crank pedals if you find a good spot and that you can shift gears to get the chain on the ring you are cleaning.

Step 3: Clean the back
Now that you've got the front all clean time to get on going with the back. In the rear we want to clean up the 2 rubber geared rings in the derailleur and the rear cassette. For the geared rings, I like to hold a rag on the exposed part (the part that doesn't have the chain on it) and then spin the crank set with my other hand to get all the gunk off. What's not shown in the image below is my other hand spinning the crankset so I can clean the whole thing. Once you remove the wheel, you can do the other side with more ease.


Step 4: Clean the cassette
Remove your wheel from the bike and set it nicely on the ground with the cassette facing up at you. What you want to do is take your rag and basically clean the teeth of each ring as well as clean in between the cassette rings. For cleaning the teeth, it's pretty similar to the front: rags + swabs. For in between, I like to take the rag and insert a part of it in between each of the cassette rings and then basically move the rag so that it cleans AND move the cassette a little bit. Keep doing it until the spun the cassette around a few times (hard to explain but I hope that makes it clear). Here's a picture:

Do this for each of the space in between. Before you know it you're cassette will be sparkling

Step 5: Dealing with the chain
Now that you're done with the cassette, throw the wheel back on the bike.

Cleaning the chain and then lubing it is the final step. This is pretty important because the chain is obviously a critical part with lots of little moving links. We want to clean the whole thing and the lube it up. What we don't want to do is lube the heck out of everything (front chain rings, cassette, etc, etc) because lube attracts dust and you'll be back at square 1.

Cleaning is pretty simple. You can buy a chain cleaning tool but, again, I tend to just use a rag. It's a 2 hand job. One hand holds a rag around the chain and the other spins the crankset to get the chain to move through the towel.

Depending on how dirty your dirty your chain is, you might need to keep finding clean parts of the rag. Keep going until she sparkles.

Now let's lubeeee it up
Lubing it up is pretty simple. I prefer lube that comes with a little spout as opposed to the aersol cans (yes this statement is hilarious). I like it better because it gives you more control and you don't just spray it all over the place and attract all kinds of dirt to your bike. Simple take the bottle and again with one hand apply the lube by squeezing the bottle gently while the other hand spins the crankset so you can lube the whole chain. Here's a picture (pretend the cap isn't on the bottle!)

After applying the lube, I let it sit for at least 5 minutes then it's time to remove the excess. We do that the same way that we clean the chain except this time, use the clean paper towels.

Run the chain a bit by pedaling with your hands and see how it sounds and acts. If it's still a bit noisy you can do the chain lubing again.

Voila, that's it. Make sure your wheel is on tight and your brake is now back on securely flip her over and get out there for some miles.