the_twin wrote:Place in Birmingham charges £25 for a deep clean polish and lube job. Yes, that is for your bicycle.
Not everyone has access to a place where they can give the bike a vigorous washing down. Can't see this being easy if living in a block of flats for example
There's an episode of the GCN Show where the notion of jet washing destroying bearings is tested. It proved very difficult in fact to get water to penetrate the seals and grease. Worth watching on YouTube.
I haven't seen that video but I had a mediocre bike some years ago that I used to clean hard with a hose connected to a mains tap with a nozzle on the end adjusted to a powerful jet. Maybe my preloading was too slack but my front wheel bearings (cones and loose bearings - nothing so fancy as a sealed unit) needed regreasing almost every wash! I'm sure that this experience was more anomalous than the norm and I've never had such issues before or since (I've never used a hose on a bike so vigorously before or since either) but the memory sticks with me and I'm always shy near bearings even with a hose attached to the tap. The grease I was using was some 'generic' stuff that I got from work at the time and wasn't the best - certainly wasn't waterproof.
