I know some of you out there are going to say, "I've already been doing that for years!". I just wish someone would have told me sooner. On that note, I thought I'd just put this here, hoping it will help some of my fellow gun owner-bicyclists with their bike maintenance too.
So as I have been sharing on the forums occasionally, I've been trying to shed some weight this summer by riding the bike. I've ridden about 2400 miles since I started at the end of May. I've wiped the bike down a few times with a wet rag, but now the bike was due for a good detail level cleaning. Granted there isn't a whole lot to cleaning a bicycle, that is until you get to the gear cassette on the rear wheel.
I noticed mine was filthy and had a lot of dirt mixed with grease way down in between the gears. Not an easy place to reach because of the small clearance between the gears (mine is a 9-gear cassette, some of the higher performance models have 11 gears or more). So I started tinkering around with some different makeshift tools to clean down in there. Pipe cleaners, they just push the dirt around. Paper towels just shred in 2 seconds flat and get stuck between the gears. Strips of old t-shirt material don't work too bad. But none of those get it really, really, clean, the way you want it when you clean your guns.
That's when it dawned on me to clean it like it WAS a gun! So I opened my gun cleaning cabinet and grabbed my Birchwood-Casey Gun Scrubber. A few good sprays, a few light wipes between the gears with the t-shirt material, and that gear cassette is as clean as new. Sometimes being a gun owner has advantages I never even realized before.
I wish I had taken some before pics. I didn't think to do that, but here's the after pics:
So as I have been sharing on the forums occasionally, I've been trying to shed some weight this summer by riding the bike. I've ridden about 2400 miles since I started at the end of May. I've wiped the bike down a few times with a wet rag, but now the bike was due for a good detail level cleaning. Granted there isn't a whole lot to cleaning a bicycle, that is until you get to the gear cassette on the rear wheel.
I noticed mine was filthy and had a lot of dirt mixed with grease way down in between the gears. Not an easy place to reach because of the small clearance between the gears (mine is a 9-gear cassette, some of the higher performance models have 11 gears or more). So I started tinkering around with some different makeshift tools to clean down in there. Pipe cleaners, they just push the dirt around. Paper towels just shred in 2 seconds flat and get stuck between the gears. Strips of old t-shirt material don't work too bad. But none of those get it really, really, clean, the way you want it when you clean your guns.
That's when it dawned on me to clean it like it WAS a gun! So I opened my gun cleaning cabinet and grabbed my Birchwood-Casey Gun Scrubber. A few good sprays, a few light wipes between the gears with the t-shirt material, and that gear cassette is as clean as new. Sometimes being a gun owner has advantages I never even realized before.
I wish I had taken some before pics. I didn't think to do that, but here's the after pics:
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