Sorry Michael, we made a mistake when publishing this by not marking it as an ad. This error has now been fixed. Hopefully you enjoyed the content in spite of this!
@@gcntech Remember, one awe $#!% replaces hundreds of great content. In other words, not much praise, but boy do you catch crap when you make a mistake. :-s
The ultrasonic waves actually cause cavitation in the cleaning agent. To simplify, it agitates the fluid so it produces regions of low pressure, causing the fluid around that region to "boil", causing bubbles. You can feel an electric kettle vibrate when it's boiling, right? Yep, those forces push cleaning agent into the nooks and crannies and also disturbs the contaminants, making the cleaning process much more effective. As for the problem of "needing so much degreaser to fill the tank", you can reduce the amount of degreaser needed by adding degreaser and the chain in a glass jar/plastic bag, placing it into the tank, and filling it with water. the water fills the unnecessary space, and transmits the waves into the glass jar/plastic bag and the degreaser inside it.
For £50 you can get one big enough for a cassette as well, I guarantee for the price Muc-off will charge you could get one that fits the entire drivetrain.
@@chuckmccracken4136 A lot of them are, like the model Muc-off are rebranding. If you want one look for the ones with knobs/dials on the front without a display, its the cheap PCB's in the fancy looking ones that fail and/or are crap from the get go. The dial type are relatively simple and have little to go wrong.
Quite the departure from when Si made a video of using WD-40 as both the degreaser before the wash and as the lubricant afterwards. Now we gotta buy these 2 liter bottles of cleaner and lubricant? As well as rebranded ultrasonic cleaners?
@@martinstaveley6525 tbh its a great way i use his tricks till today but the channel now needs like mechanics like jon comedians like matt ,and jpowers dan and si should be in more vids
Exactly what I was thinking! Don't get me wrong, these things will probably work fine, but the bike industry telling us that (as amateurs) we should clean our chains in ultrasonic baths is just absolutely bonkers. At that point you are spending more money / time on cleaning en detailing your bike instead of actually enjoying and riding it out there!
Can I recommend that you put the cleaning fluid in a plastic bag with the chain, and put that in water in the ultrasonic tank. The bag is transparent to the US waves You use less cleaning fluid, keeps the tank clean. Also, you can nip off any sediment with an elastic band and re-use the fluid.
I'd like to see them do this with a genuinely dirty chain to show how well it works, rather than starting with a borderline new looking chain to being with. A nice dirty black grimy chain that'd had muc-off wet lube on it for a couple of winter rides for example.
I own a ultrasoniccleaner and it really doesnt work all that well on properly filthy, mucky chain. I'm talking about the thick black kack that also doesn't really brush off, but really requires to be scraped off.
@@henkdevrjes9640 yeah, me too. Thought it was a miracle cleaner after their last "tech" feature using one (for the chain waxing). So I bought one and it barely made any difference to my normal used chain which was by no means manky ... its not been used since as a result (the cleaner, not the bike). I feel its only of use if you clean your chain as normal first and then use the ultra sonic if you want to get its the rollers. Otherwise would only work if you did it after every ride with a dry lube.
If one was really concerned about a handful of Watts lost in a bad chain meaning the difference between £40 runner up and £100 winner, one would use a hand prepared new chain for the event.
It works. I have one. However you only need to do it on a brand new chain. Then use paraffin wax as lube and never need to degrease again. Just use boiling water and a rag. No grinding paste in chain, no black gunk, and you have much slower rate of drivetrain wear. It's awesome
As others have said, this is just an advertisement thinly disguised as helpful information. Very disappointing from an increasingly disappointing bunch.
They have apologized for not flagging it multiple times above, and will likely apologize to you too shortly. something has to pay the bills or we lose the content. Have you considered the Black Friday deals... ;-)
Hmm ok I will just leave my bike out in the 30 degree heat here in Australia , put some degreaser on my chain and point my stereo at it playing AC DC for 20 minutes , then wash and put my fav lube on chain !! That should do it 😁
I've been using an ultrasonic cleaner for a while now. Works brilliantly. Initial outlay isn't huge (£70ish, for a 2 litre tank) but being able to clean drivetrain components to this extent is arguably very cost effective.
I've been using and ultrasonic cleaning sink for a couple of years now. It works great. When my chain is clean I prefer to wax it. I got a cosmetic wax pot and I use wax plus a little paraffin oil and PTFE in the mix for my chain lube. Works great.
I'm all for a clean drive chain. But it does beg a question 🤔. Would it work out cheaper buying a new chain ? Than buying all the equipment here and solutions etc.
The cheapest method is waxing your chain with regular paraffin wax. This video is an undisclosed advertisement for Muc Off trying to sell you their products.
I dont know why those videos still exist. Wax your chain, never worry about cleaning again and enjoy the longer lasting and more efficient drivetrain that results from wax lubrication.
Alex.....really? Who has the money for all this , mate ? How about a practical way for a regular person to do this ? Thanks ...but , I don't work for Muc-off .
I guess that my thought is that with some of the ideas here (e.g. using a ziplock bag) we could save money and use the ultrasonic cleaner to save on the labor. My time is worth something.
2 mason jars… 1 with mineral spirit. 1 with denatured alcohol. Shake the chain in the mineral spirits first. Keep in there as long as you want. I’ve done a week. No issues. Then dry off, and drop into denatured alcohol. Don’t keep it in for more than 10 minutes, wipe off and let air dry. Then I’ll hot wax the chain with Molten Speedwax, but do your lube process after that.
Pretty much that's it. However I buy my own paraffin beads and PTFE. About 1/5 the price of MucOff or Molten Speed Wax. I will use my ultrasonic cleaner with the degreaser if I'm in a hurry. But usually I know that it's time to prepare a new chain a week ahead of time. I put the new chain in mineral spirits overnight, replace the spirits again overnight. Then overnight in alcohol. Air dry overnight. Immerse in wax the next day for 10 minutes (watch a RU-vid video), remove from wax, wipe with a rag, let it cool down for 10 minutes (watch another video). Put it on the bike.
I've been ultrasonic for years; no need to buy a branded tank or cleaners: Simply Green at 1:15 dilution, 20minutes in the tank; then a soak in denatured EtOH, and a rinse with acetone. Then the Oz Cycles' wax.
Not sure that I agree though I do not have direct experience. Seems like Jon Cannings suggested it earlier, and I have seen a number of online videos swearing how much cleaner you can get your chain using an ultrasonic cleaner. Most machine shops in the country have them as they are so efficient versus scrubbing with a brush. Surely your time is worth something. I haven't bought one myself just yet owing to the cost, but I see the clear advantages.
I use the gallon size of WD-40's food grade degreaser first to get all of the muck off with a Park Tool "professional" chain cleaner. Second, I use the gallon size of EcoTech degreaser in the same chain cleaning tool. Lastly, I spray it with a can of low residual Clean Streak degreaser. The gallon sizes are more economical, and helps to keep the cost down. Even using Squirt for my chain lube, I only get about 120 to 150 miles (about 3 rides) before I have to redo everything. Works really well, and it is cheaper than blasting it with a lot of Clean Streak. I have been considering heated ultrasonic cleaning with the same products (and possibly some soapy water with less cleaner) for a deeper clean, denatured alcohol (displace the cleaner/water and leaves little residue), and a crockpot with Molten Speed Wax (MSW), which supposedly lasts longer between cleanings and reduces wear on the chain. I got my inspiration for this from Jon Cannings (sigh). However, I would encourage everyone to see what works for them in their climate and riding conditions. Muc Off products may work very well for you, just see if you can find a larger container at a discount. Good luck or "Cheers" for you Brits. ;-)
I have a ultrasonic tank and I love it. I us simple green floor cleaner and water 4oz for 2 cycles of 4 minutes with hot water from the tap. I have put chains that are black with gunk and it comes out looking new. Rinse with water and dry and add some lube. 1 gallon of simple green $7 and it will clean 30 chains.
You can buy a heated ultrasonic cleaner for about 50 USD and it is amazingly effective. For people who wax their chains, it is not necessary to use ultrasound to apply paraffin by immersion. It is however VERY important to remove all of the degreaser before putting chain into the wax, or the wax will not adhere to the metal. Isopropyl alcohol alcohol works well. I usually let it air dry overnight. Edit added. People have noted that ultrasound doesn't work great for utterly filthy chains packed with wet lube. I wouldn't know, BECAUSE I use paraffin wax immersion. Consequently my chain never gets that bad. To be honest, though, I only use the US for the first cleaning when the chain is new. You have to get ALL of the factory lube off the chain or the wax won't adhere to the metal. If you succeed your chain will run smooth and CLEAN for a lot longer. Subsequent wax jobs, about every 300-400 miles, I just re-immerse the chain for 10 minutes and put it back on.
Awesome video Alex. I try to clean and lube every few rides or more often depending on the conditions. Just use the chain cleaning tool. I know a lot of these items aren't financially viable for some of us. Maybe an in depth video on how to use the chain cleaners and optional cleaning materials for those with limited budgets. Love the GCN series videos. Learn quite a lot from you guys. Keep up the great work.
Zero Friction Cycling have some awesome evidence based suggestions for cleaning and waxing. They have a website and RU-vid channel. No need to buy an ultrasonic cleaner or muc-off products.
I use an ultrasonic, and I use a citrus degreaser in a jar to keep the tank fluid clean. Every now and then I do my rear derailleur and it works wonders on that also.
I’ve been using an ultrasonic cleaner on my chains and cassettes for awhile now. But I use molten speed wax for my chain lube. Makes my drive train nice and quiet.
Everyone should have a Ultrasonic cleaner, it's so fun and useful for anything that's metal. I never thought however to use mine at work to clean bike stuff such as the cassette :o
Question regarding the Quick link removal. I think all chain manufacturers recommend to remove the quick link only 2-3 times during the life time of a chain. If this is true, you can use this method of cleaning only 2-3 times per chain?
Depends on your groupset. Not many Dura Ace's I suspect, but maybe a few more 105's. One thing I do know is that I get about 3 or 4 times the mileage out of chainrings and cassettes since I started keeping them clean.
@@chuckmccracken4136 I'm all for keeping chains clean and cassettes and chainrings and jockey wheels but I wouldn't go to the expense of acquiring all this advertised equipment to do it. I run Campagnolo but my budget doesn't extend to Super Record. But even if it did I'd still find cheaper more cost effective ways to clean my equipment.
Ludicrous is utterly expensive. Not sure it is that much better than the other oils, that you can justify spending that much money on a bottle. Maybe good for races. But for everyday training, I use a cheaper oil. Besides I have used an ultrasonic cleaner for several years - from before Muc-Off started using them. And it was basically because of being lazy and not wanting to mess about with the dirty chain, a toothbrush and a bucket of dirty cleaner.
The only problem with that is that you will probably be buying new cassettes and chainrings that often as well. I took Jon Cannings advice and keep my squeaky clean, and I get 750 miles or more on my chains and a couple of thousand on my cassettes and chainrings now. Much cheaper in the long run, more efficient and pleasurable rides, and I save money overall. Just got to find a cheap degreaser and a way to minimize both time and money.
I do not have an ultrasonic cleaner. When I want to deep clean my chains, I put them in a large jar with solvent - seal it and shake vigorously. You can repeat the process for lube.
I know I'm going to get flamed for this, but...I use petrol. Now, hear me out. It is a superior solvent and does a great job removing the toughest grime from a chain. I have 4 labeled jars and have petrol in each. Step 0: Perform this process outside! Step 1: Place chain in jar 1. Shake and let sit for a couple minutes. Step 2: Repeat this for jars 2, 3, and 4. Successive jars of petrol will be clearer and clearer. Step 3: Remove chain from jar 4 and wipe clean with rag. Lubricate chain with preferred lubricant. Done. DO NOT THROW AWAY 4 Jars of petrol! Reuse OVER AND OVER AND OVER. I get over a year of use out of the jars. Recycle petrol once the 4th jar has too much debris. Again, you shouldn't have to do this but once a year. I understand the environmental concerns here. But consider that I am not using up any product except for a relatively small amount of petrol that I safely dispose. You can easily perform these steps without breathing while you put the chain in the open jars of petrol. Total cost of cleaning chains for 1year = cost of about 2 liters of petrol.
2 tanks, $$ raising, crazy. So much easier to have water in the tank and then put the solvent and chain in a glass or plastic container. The tank never gets dirty and you can use the one tank for cleaning and waxing. Ado this that compressed air and or steam are a good way to pre-clean chain for ultrasonic stage. Ultrasonic best for the last bit of cleaning not all of it.
I clean my chain very similar as you do. Any trick ....used a glass container filled with degreaser into the ultrasonic cleaner full of water. So you will waste only a few degreaser and you will be able to use new every cleaning. Also in another glass container with your favorite lube submerge chain and the glass into the ultrasonic cleaner to fully lubricate. You will need only one machine. And best lubrificaron is when chain is hot, more if you are using any wax based. Also I made my own wax chain lubrificaron, but this is another history.
@Mily Banily Could you please give me tour receipe of Wax lub please? Obviously i have wax and ptfe powder with a ratio of 1/10. Do i need more stuff to add in the lub ?
@@tchignleang7227 hi there ! I used same mix for the initial bath of the chain and first bath after fully cleaning. Also this mix with isoproplic alcohol will be fine to maintain chain every 100 kms or so. I rub the hard wax surface with a Kiev and drop this into the alcohol. Just to get a milk like consistence. And this is all. Enough to get the chain working 15K kms. Regards
very clever trick. Just that i understand it right: You put your chain into an old drinkinglass i.e. filled with cleaner and than you put that into the us-cleaner filled with tapwater?
Or you can start waxing the chain and you only have to deal with cleaning once and only once, when you buy a new batch of chains. Paraffin wax is super cheap and environmentally friendly.
I waxed my chains for quite some time. Unfortunately, I did not find a 110% reliable way to lube them for a 300km / 200 miles ride, maybe with some rain. They tended to squeak at the end of long rides.
@@ralfmimoun2826 300km is long even for dry lube. If waxing lasts that long it's a pretty good result I would say. But yea, it's not a miracle thing but neither is regular dry/wet lube, it has its advantages/disadvantages. But for me the advantages override the disadvantages. I think everyone at least should try it for a season or two. You should re-wax the chains as often as you would degrease, clean and re-lube the chain before you started waxing. The time-saving aspect mainly comes with using several chains you swap between and then re-waxing them all in one batch. I get ~250 km before I switch to a newly waxed chain but I also don't ride in the rain if I can avoid it. I have six chains I rotate between so I only re-wax when I've used up five of them, after around 1250 km. Re-waxing takes an hour in the wax bath and then hanging to dry overnight. When I'm out touring for weeks at a time I bring with me a bottle of Squirt wax lube (but any water soluble wax would work) and brush off any dirt and do a maintenance waxing when needed. Also wax doesn't work good in freezing temperatures, for those of you who ride in those kind of conditions. I think there is special below-zero wax but it's not something I've tried, I just use regular paraffin.
@@mangethegamer I use wet lube almost every time - too mich risk of rain right here. And I will not swap chains that often. SRAM flattop chains require chain locks you can only use once. They are not cheap enough do throw away one every week. After about 10.000 with waxed chains on my old bike (Shimano 9 speed, reusable lock), I switched back to standard lube.
Word of warning, paraffin wax is an excellent water repellent, but a lousy lubricant, for that you need oil or a coating of micronised PTFE, as per dry lube. Micronised PTFE is an ecological time bomb once in the waterways, I reckon we should stick with wet lube !!
Apart from the fact this is not the cheapest way, it is also not environmentally friendly. Please take care what kind of chemicals you use to clean and lube your chain. Less is more.
Dramatically it's very useless. just quick and almost completely free solution for you; put the chain and very hot water and degreaser to a cab. chain hot water about one spoon degreaser in order to deep clean, brush the chain again and again. after this replace water and degreaser with the clean one. Repeat this 2-3 times max. you can do this 2-3 times (2 times is enough) after that you can even lick your chain. thats it.
#askgcntech: I have a long-term project called "The Torture Bike", which would be purpose-built to be as difficult and unpleasant to ride as physically possible. What features would you want to see on such a monstrosity? I might start by taking a fixie, then slapping a coaster brake on it. Then I'd give it reversed steering, and put some kind of device to prevent the handlebars from ever going in a perfectly straight line. But so many other things are all up in the air.
Try ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-xRPKL4qTT3U.html but there isn't much detail on joining the two. Another shows them using a paper clip bent to pull the chain closer together (think small chainring and small cassette sproket), but both did not show joining the two. Simply make sure that you attempt to join two inner links replacing one outer link with the quick link. Slip the pins through both sides, and place the slotted open ends on the groves in the pin. Then put pressure on the chain (a tool is great but not necessary to snap the groves over the pinch point. Probably other better videos if you look.
Whilst I'm not certain this should be marked as a paid promotion, I do have to agree that this sort of video is pretty poor; it's not environmentally friendly to use all this stuff just for a chain and I don't think anyone was crying out for any information Alex had. You can definitely do better guys.
I don't mind the sponsored product endorsement but as others have said it would have been useful, and a whole lot more authentic (IMHO) to actually use a dirty chain! Otherwise it's just a commercial/advert and not overly helpful. OK - there's fine line between advert and 'paid promotion' endorsement - I accept it's a tough call in creating content - but sometimes it can get overly commercial in my view.
Sure there is product placement but we intelligent adults know how to look through that, right? And GCN need to make money somehow, we watch the channel but wouldn't spent a miserly dime to be able to.
This is absurd! Could buy 3 new chains for the cost of all this! Never mind the time wasted! Don’t reuse quick links (chain makers advice - and they should know).
II would think that you would still need to clean your chains or replace your components with your chains. I get at least 1500 miles out of components (i.e. cassette, chainrings, etc.) and 750 miles out of chains by keeping them clean and lubricated.
Only if you have a low end groupset, and what about the extra wear on the other components? I get about 3x the mileage since taking Jon Cannings advice from a previous video and keep my chain clean and lubes, though I do not use an ultrasonic cleaner.
Does anybody reuse the quick links? I remember that the 9 speed versions were advertised as being reusable but with the 11 and 12 speed versions the manual suggests that you should use a new one every time.
Oh, absolutely. Ask anyone on RU-vid and they will tell you that the major engineering companies who manufacture chains have no idea what they are doing. Back in the day, a few spots of 3 in 1 oil every so often was all it took to keep a chain going.
