How often do you clean you car?

Powerwashing a bike was always a big no-no, forcing the grinding dirt into the chain rollers & wheel bearings where it does the most damage. A bucket of warm soapy water does the job, ideally with 5L football or TMS on to pass the time, and from time to time a full strip down to its component parts with a full clean, lube & rebuild to get it just so again. Like a Fraim.

As Iā€™ve never washed a muddy bike before, a pressure washer was simply the first thought that came to mind, being quick and simple, and how I clean cars if I do at home (maybe not more penetrating than heavy rain with 50mph winds?) But if a bad idea I wonā€™t do - itā€™ll stay muddy. My MTB, the muddy one, cost me Ā£45 in an auction, plus Ā£15 or so for a different stem. My current road bike was expensive, at about Ā£850, being the only bike I have ever bought new. It hasnā€™t had a wash yet in 10+ years (Ā£13k+ miles)ā€¦

However I fear that when I get an electric bike after retiring Iā€™ll have to go considerably more expensive - but it will be an investment for many years to come.

You can use a garden hose to wash your bike of mud and debris, but with a low pressure head, kind of like what you might use to wash the engine bay of a BMW (I used to drive a M3).

I like to keep my bikes clean. They last longer and are much easier to maintain that way. Bike shops might charge you less for repairs if you present a clean bike. Thatā€™s the case with mine, since it requires less labor.

My most expensive bike is my gravel bike, but it gets much dirtier than any of the others (even more than the mountain bike), but I stay on top of keeping it clean. Gravel dust destroys stuff faster than anything else.

We donā€™t mountain bike here when the singletracks are muddy. Thatā€™s a big no-no. During freeze-frost in the winter you have to get out early if you want to ride the trails.

Thanks for the tip,

I thought half the fun of a mountain bike is mud and water - or so the group that I joined last year tell me! The past couple of months have been particularly, erm, interesting, some trails more like rivers and bogs than the trails they are supposed to be! The one weather condition I never cycle in is ice.

Here in eastern Missouri, we have a great organization that builds, stewards, and maintains trails. With volunteers they spend a lot of time curating and improving them. When people ride them when muddy, they get rutted, effectively runing them for regular biking and hiking use, and requiring much time to repair and restore where that labor could be used to improve existing and build more singletrack.

Riding our singletracks when wet and muddy is frowned upon, considered bad etiquette, and often not even allowed in public parks. Sadly, the local equestrians donā€™t really care and regularly ruin trails with deep hoof ruts, even though the mountain bike community does all the investment and labor and the equestrians contribute nothing at all.

Where I live there are roads and a few non-road gravel paths (trails?). They get puddles but not mud - but those are not the ones to which I referred. The ones I do on the mountain bike are forest trails designed for bikes, with bends, some banked, dips, tree roots, humps, elevated ā€˜boardwalkā€™-like sections over particularly swampy sections, etc. They are maintained but include mud and puddles (more like ponds at the moment), erosion being part of them but managed over time. They would be rather tame if completely dry and gravelled.

Yeah, we do gravel roads in all kinds of conditions, but I wasnā€™t referring to anything with gravel; rather, forest trails of dirt, rock, and root singletrack. We just donā€™t ride them when muddy. Weā€™d rather spend time building out more singletrack than repairing exusting singletrack rutted by people riding them in poor (i.e. muddy) conditions. They certainly arenā€™t tame when dry. The technical challenges vary widely from beginner to advanced, and none need mud for the challenge of them. Gravel is a different matter entirely, and we have plenty of that, in addition to all our singletracks for mountain bikes. Personally, I see nothing alluring or beneficial riding in mud, be it gravel or singletrack.

We should probably start a new thread about it. Iā€™m sorry to everyone else for the thread hijack.

I charge clients Ā£300 an hour, so I am quids in.

Where I live (deepest, darkest Devon) between two or three farms there is little point in cleaning the car from an aesthetic POV (or any other, really). Clean it, drive a couple of miles and youā€™d never know it had been cleaned. Pointless exercise. Now if someone could come up with a paint that is the colour of our local mud, Iā€™d be interested.

My first car was pretty good - it never really looked dirty, just an awful beige colour whether freshly cleaned or filth! That must have been the reason for beige paint, as surely no-one actually likes the coulour on a car?

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