Banzai

Stupid salt. It's the only bad thing about winter cycling.

That is all.

Viich

huh, yea. The reason my winter bike is a free frame & drivetrain (less bars, controls, and saddle) , with no plans to ever more than 7 speed for the winter. The 7 speed stuff is cheap and replaceable, and I don't see any way to make stuff last in the winter.

CliffordK

Fortunately, we get plenty of wet stuff during the winter, but the state doesn't use any salt.

I've built up a cheap Litespeed frame for winter riding... so the frame is pretty impervious to all, but other parts on it would still be subject to rusting (couldn't go full titanium for all the other bits).

dh024

Two things every cyclist who rides through a lot of salt must have:

1. full-wrap fenders

2. https://www.homedepot.com/p/HDX-1-Ga...1HDX/207202420

rumrunn6

I do like that sprayer idea. but I've been using a mop bucket & some brushes. yeah this time of year has a few drawbacks. sure beats not riding tho

Viich

I may try a sprayer - have to bring it inside afterwards though, or wait until April for the ice to melt.

John Nolan 

I just use an old car snow brush to knock of the worst of the slush. I do try to keep things well oiled, butr not clean..it will just get slushed up tomorrow. I'll clean in the spring.

GrainBrain

You won't regret the cheap sprayer, works awesome. Others on the forum have mentioned adding some winter washer fluid to prevent freezing if you leave the bike outside, though I would worry about the environmental impact. An old towel would work well to quickly dry critical areas, along with a little shot of WD40 to the drive train.

Banzai

I have both of these things. There's a big salt stain on my garage floor from using the sprayer.

Last week I neglected to spray the bike immediately after the ride. A week later the results were fairly horrific.

dh024

Me too. Stupid salt!

fietsbob

Our here they spread grit, gravel, on the icy patches.. Location, .. such that most winters it is coldest when there is no cloud cover,

Maritime.. Fog-drizzle rain-squalls..

Ghazmh

Horrific looking or horrifically damaged? Just curious. I often park my hybrid in the garage after riding amongst the salt and it's covered with salty briny crust that I clean and lube about once a week. I've noticed some surface corrosion on fasteners but nothing overly concerning yet.

Banzai

Horrific looking, with definite rust on the cassette, and a few sticky links along with surface rust on the chain.

I'm pretty fastidious, and give at least the drivetrain a quick rinse with the garden sprayer (usually) after each ride. So to me, this was horrific.

_ForceD_

When the bike is sloppy, post-ride...before the crap has a chance to dry...I douse the bike (outside) with a bucket of hot water....concentrating on the brakes and derailleurs, and chain. I wipe it down when and where needed. Then re-lube the chain and cogs to displace the water and hopefully prevent rust. I put it in the garage to dry. AND...I set it to dry in a slightly different position every time so that the water doesn't sit in the same place on the frame/components every time.

Dan

rumrunn6

last spring (3/25 & 3/26 2017) I broke down & used the hose early!

Ghazmh

Yesterday I went to my local home center and bought one of those $8.00 sprayers. I should have done that years ago. My cassette and chain sometimes get some surface rust but it doesn't seem to last beyond the next lubing. I used the sprayer to dissolve the dried on salt stains and road sand.

79pmooney

Full fenders with a good, low hanging front flap - yes!

The other approach to cleanliness, one that I used for a few years and both Boston and Ann Arbor winters. Ride a bike you don't have to clean. I rode horizontally dropped steel frames that I stripped and painted with brushed on two-part epoxy paint. (The paint flows as it sets up and looks surprisingly good and professional - as long as you don't touch before it is cured! At that flow stage, it is remarkably sticky and anything you do will make a permanent mess.)

Once painted, I set the bike up fix gear (hence the horizontal dropouts) and lubricate all threads and bearings with boat trailer hub grease aka marine grease (available at any auto parts store). Likewise all close fits - seatpost, stem.

It's been a few decades since I rode those salt roads, My wheel approach then which worked well was to ride cyclocross tubulars with a diamond point tread on cheap 400 gram rims. The low pressures and deep potholes meant the rim was approximately square by hte end of March, Good weather comes and I cut out the spokes, lace on a new rim and ride in style through the next New Year.

The huge plus of running fix gear - very little maintenance required. Chain doesn't have to be remotely clean, pretty or even smooth running. Nothing has to be done until two links have frozen up. You then want to lube the chain and free those links before you get to three frozen. (Each frozen link "shortens" your chain. You just loosen the hub nuts, ease the wheel forward a touch to get proper chain slack back and re-tighten. Yes, your bike's efficiency goes down. Chalk this up to winter "training" and you are good.)

This approach is not for anyone who has any need to look stylish or has any obsession with cleanliness. But if you want a bike that works with a minimum of maintenance, that does not require a shop, running water, good workspace lighting or much of anything else (including trips to and from clean living spaces), this approach can work well. One winter, that bike lived in a barn with no water and was used for a 24 mile round trip commute. No car, no feasible public transportation. Other winters it lived on carpet runner in apartment halls and stayed so dirty it was only touched to pick up and carry outside or the reverse.

Mounttesa

The chain stays on my beater is in really rough shape with exposed metal all along its length on the drive side. So before taking it into the salt for the first time ever this winter, I decided to rub it thoroughly with car wax. Just regular hard carnauba wax.

Well guess what... the exposed metal bits of the chain stays are still silver. On the other hand, I'm finding a few spots of tiny rust bubbles underneath the paint on the top tube near welds (where presumably, paint adherence isn't great.) Next winter I'm waxing the whole dang bike.

One winter of riding has done more damage than literally over a decade of pre-bike-educated neglect.