And just like that…dirt. The trails are opening more every day. But wait just a minute, March, in like a lamb out like lion, yeah I know, that is backwards, but so fun! Then April, can we use the same poetic expression and backwards again for that month too? And now it is corn season but you will have to work for it. You have to get up high and you will need to climb to it (unless you can go to one of the resorts that stays open because they cater to skiers and boarders!), but it has been really good out there this spring. It makes me laugh when people kept saying, “It’s been a really weird winter, I just haven’t been out that much.” Hmm, we are at 100 percent of average, yes it rained a lot at lake level, which did suck, but it snowed nicely up high, uh except for January, but if you have been around here for enough winters, you know this wasn’t that weird at all!
I’m sorry I just had to rant a little bit, I guess that was a rant. So now we pull our bikes out. We have already seen quite a few at the shop that were ridden hard and put away wet. Well maybe not wet but pretty dirty. We see a lot of commuter bikes that got stored outside all winter, sometimes under a tarp, sometimes just under a deck or awning. I feel sorry for those bikes, they come in with immediate need of CPR (cycle pedal resuscitation).
Most folks though, with a nice quality mountain bike, road or gravel bike kept them in a safer spot out of the elements. I do love the ones that are like, “Yeah I keep my bike next to my bed.” So does that mean you live in a really small studio or you have better dreams with your bike nearby?
On the other hand, I cringe when I hear, “We took our bikes to the car wash to clean them up really nice before putting them away.” Yep, you got the outside all nice and shiny, but your bike is not a submarine, it can not keep all that water from getting inside everything, in fact your bike isn’t even like a car when it comes to dealing with that sort of water assault!
What happens, even with a garden hose, is the water always finds its way into your cables getting trapped inside the cable housing, it gets inside the frame through small welding vent holes or around the seatpost and head tube, this is more the case if your bike frame is carbon instead of steel or aluminum. The steel frames can start to rust on the inside, the aluminum ones will just get a different form of corrosion, you will never see either happening. That water is also going to remove the small amounts of lubrication on the pivot points on the derailleurs making them not shift as accurately.
Back to the frame. That water that gets inside the frame always goes to one spot, the low spot on the bike, the bottom bracket, aka the crank bearings, not good. Case- in-point. I had a customer asking why his cranks felt so tight, he explained he keeps the bike clean and isn’t an abusive rider. “Why is this happening?” he asks, well how do you clean it? What do you think his answer was? Let me show you something. With him standing there I remove his crank arms, then open the bottom bracket, A QUARTER CUP of water spills out, followed by his totally rusted/destroyed ball bearings, just the kind of thing I wish I could have videoed!
The moral of the story; sit down with a rag and some simple green (or similar), beer or wine, maybe just some bad TV and wipe it down. Only on the rare occasion with extreme mud, which we don’t get here, possibly if you went down to the Pine Nuts after rain or snow (silly) could you find that kind of garden hose worthy mud. I promise you, that bike you enjoy so much will be smiling, you can’t miss that! Don’t forget to re lube her up, more smiling!
There is more, I could go on but we have had a request to reduce the size of our columns here…so with that, I’m gonna go get some corn turns.