Corrosion protection for winter riding.
 

How about a thread where folks can share info on products and methods to reduce corrosion from road salt?

what are folks using and how? Steve

A friend keeps a lawn sprayer handy, fills it with warm water and hoses the bike off once a week. It's aluminum. Has worked well but disc brake and derailleur hardware suffer.

My solution was a cheap used Al hybrid, convert to 3spd nexus, and realize that after ten winters, it's time to get rid of it and start over. I rinse off in spring and put away til November.

If steel, use frame saver or boeshield. Would not use a frame I care about.

Keep everything well oiled. Don't use any degreasers for washing your bike because degreasers wash all the oils out. Oily greasy crud is good and will protect against rust. If you have a steel frame you can spray some rustproofing oil inside you frame. You can buy small can of a rustproofing oil at any auto parts store.

If you are able to, wash/rinse your bike after a snowy/slushy ride, and then lube and spray parts with WD40.

Getting a winter beater that can be sacrificed to the salt is also advisable.

After wet road rides I will rinse with a bucket of warm fresh water from top down to remove all the salt.

Dan

add Pledge spray-on furniture wax to your maintenance.

I tend to use whatever I've got on hand because I'm trying to reduce the amount of lubes and fluids in my house by using them up. I'm also trying to stop using sprays, because the overspray tends to get on my garage floor. Probably the most protective stuff I've used is chainsaw oil, which is really thick and sticky, applied with a little brush. I've considered varnish or linseed oil. I don't go on long recreational rides during the winter, so my speedy bikes are put away, and my winter bike doesn't need to be clean or pretty.

I figure, if it's oily, then it will repel water and whatever salt is dissolved in water. If it's sticky, then it will stay put for a while. That's about how much thought I put into it.

Perhaps it depends somewhat on where one lives, but in my experience here in SE Michigan, where we salt the roads, the threat of corrosion is easily managed with just simple, regular cleaning.

Although I used steel bikes for winter commuting from ‘88 (at university) through to the early ‘00s, often running the same bike (a few Bridgestone and a couple of Trek) for trail riding, I’ll focus my example on my longest-serving winter bike, which I still own— and rode in the snow yesterday, in fact— after 15 years, an aluminum Novara Buzz.

Of those 15 years, it did 8 years of winter commuting before switching it to utility duty, which meant fewer winter use days, but it remains the bike I ride in the winter for errands.

Throughout the 15 years, the bike was garage kept, so it had a chance to thaw and melt usually (garage was not heated or insulated, but attached to the house), but received only chain lube and component WD40 spritzing regularly, and thorough cleaning seasonally, in Spring. The components are mostly original still, and the bike looks pretty good still...aside from the dings and scrapes of a bike that gets locked up in front of bars downtown!

Nothing on it has been changed due to corrosion. I’d pull and lube the cables in spring, but even those are original, IIRC. If I’m forgetting and they were changed, I didn’t do it more than once. I recall repacking the rear hub, but the cassette body is original, too. Pedal cage bolts are rusty, and I probably couldn’t unbolt the toeclips if I wanted to, but the pedals are 15 years old, nothing special, and otherwise fine, too.

My takeaway about winter riding, just from that one bike, is that you want slush to melt off, you want to lube moving bits, and you want to do spring cleaning, but no exceptional measures are needed and your bike is not going to corrode to bits.

One handy thing I did just discover a few weeks ago was mentioned upthread: the garden sprayer! That little, pump-pressurized jug makes winter washing a snap, and while I use it for cleaning off my fancier, more precious bikes after winter rides in the comfort of my garage, were I commuting still, I’d give a warm water rinse regularly to the commuter with that, for sure. I got a 2gal HDX brand one from Home Depot for $15, and the neat thing is that it can also be used to seat tubeless tires! Just swap the sprayer wand for the pickup tube, which fits perfectly over a valve stem, and you can pump up enough air to get the tire beads up; I needed to continue with the track pump to get them snapped in fully. Kinda neat, IMO, although I won’t lie like all the pumping wasn’t exhausting!

Unless you are commuting....an indoor trainer works best for protecting your bike in the winter.

If you are concerned that riding indoors is just not the same as outdoors, you might want to give smart resistance rollers and Zwift a try.

Titanium.