jralbert

So I've just picked up a relatively gently-used, white-painted carbon road bike for what I consider to have been a steal, and now I'm in the process of adjusting it to my requirements. One of those requirements is that the frame be spotless, because that's an important aspect of performance and usability that makes perfect sense to obsess over... Anyway, the previous owner had Jerry-rigged their compy and sensors onto the frame with an unholy alliance of zipties and electrical tape; and just as you'd expect, all manner of grime accumulated underneath those bits. Soapy water and the amount of elbow grease my spindly cyclist arms are able to manifest proved insufficient to remove many of the oilier patches, so my lovely white frame still has lots of grey-black blemishes which must be obliterated. What kind of gentle solvent/de-greaser/magic paste can I use to lift these stains without damaging the paint work or the frame?

rccardr 

Try rubbing alcohol first. If that doesn;t do the job, then denatured alcohol. Still gummy? Lighter fluid. Wear rubber gloves.

When clean, a good coat of high quality car wax, then touch up as needed with Pledge when it gets dirty.

I don't think any of those are aggressive enough to harm the carbon, but if you go into turp or lacquer thinner, do some research first.

mcoomer

Find some of the citrus based hand towels to remove that goo. We use a brand at work called Hercules and use them frequently to remove adhesive residue.

Mike

jimc101

Hope you never intend to use the bike, white bikes show up every bit of dirt & dust going, even if it's spotless when you start a ride, 5 minutes in, it will be dirty again

Booger1

WD 40 removes stickum.....

dabac

A mild rubbing compound, as in "deep conditioning" for cars. Can do wonder.

jralbert

Thanks everyone for the suggestions! I'll spend some time working my way through the defcon levels of solvent you've all recommended. Afterward, as per the other piece of advice in this thread, I'll spray paint the entire frame mud brown so as to avoid ever having to clean it again.

jimc101

Glad to be of help, and good choice on the color

AnkleWork

Sounds like you should try KY jelly.

Looigi

OMS. WD40. or just about anything else other than methylene chloride/dichloromethane (active ingredient in paint stripper)

Shepp30 

Another vote for WD-40...have been cleaning the frames of my bikes with it for years. Cleans scuffs off tile and linoleum flooring as well :-) Use rubber gloves though.

cyccommute 

AKA odorless mineral spirits. This works best on pressure adhesives from tape and sticker. It shouldn't harm the finish. WD40 is mostly mineral spirits but has other lubricants that are left behind.

Alcohol, soap and water, acetone, rubbing alcohol, etc. are pretty ineffective on the polymer that makes the adhesive. They are all polar, i.e. dissolve in water, while the adhesive is nonpolar, i.e. won't dissolve in water. It's the old old and water thing...they don't mix.

I find that just a dab of mineral spirits on a rag will take the adhesive right off.

sreten

Hi,

WD40 followed by silicone furniture polish. White is such a pain to
keep looking clean on my road bike, compared to my silk black folder,
which I don't clean, but white just looks crap if its dirty, nice clean.

Personally I'm lazy and just use WD40.

rgds, sreten.

Myosmith

+1 on WD40 on a microfiber polishing cloth. There is something about microfiber cloths that really helps remove sticky oily stuff without abrading the surface underneath. I bought a pack of microfiber shop towels that I use for washing and waxing my bikes and they work great. Once you are done getting the gunk off with the WD40, you need to wash the frame. My favorite wash is Simple Green 1:10 with hot water and just a squirt of Dawn dish soap. Then a little auto wax applied with a clean microfiber cloth and viola, spotless and shiny.

cyccommute 

I just don't get it! WD40 contains mineral spirits which is what is removing the adhesive in the first place. WD40 is just mineral spirits with mineral oil added as a lubricant. Why use a product that you have to wash off afterwards when you could just use mineral spirits which will evaporate cleanly and be done with it?

Spld cyclist

+1 on odorless mineral spirits. IMO, this is the best all-around solvent for bike cleaning and maintenance. Since appearance is important to you, you'll want to wax or polish the spots afterword no matter what solvent you use.

sreten

Hi,

Because I don't wash off the small amount of WD40 residue.
It helps with dirt not sticking the frame, and what is left e.g.
on the front derailleur and the cables does its original job,
i.e. stopping things going rusty.

rgds, sreten.

fietsbob

3M makes an adhesive cleaner.. more gentle yet , there is a cleaner for medical tape adhesives..

... For Long term care patients where bandages are changed daily , like my late father's wounds in his
diabetes numbed and very slow healing foot , changed bandages, for many Months..

Crankycrank

Another option is Kerosene. Cheap, doesn't harm paint, plastics or CF and is great for cleaning chains. Cuts through all types of grease and most gummy adhesives. If you go for mineral spirits make sure you get the real odorless mineral spirits, not the "green" version which is a completely different chemical and can be corrosive.

Fred Smedley

clay bar with detailing spray, it takes tree sap and hard water spots off my car hood , nothing, absolutely nothing shines better than a clay bar job followed my the new high tech waxes.

Myosmith

Nothing against straight mineral spirits, they work great. I keep a gallon in my shop and use it for a variety of tasks, including degunking painted surfaces. WD40 is a popular product and it also works very well for the purpose described by the OP. I've never done a side by side comparison but I wouldn't hesitate to use either for this application. It often comes down to which one is in easier reach at the time. Certainly nothing to beat your head against the wall over.

I keep a spray bottle of my Simple Green and Dawn solution in the shop for general cleaning and would still dampen a shop rag with it and wipe the area after removing adhesive residue using either mineral spirits or WD40. I keep a bottle of Meguiar's Cleaner Wax in the shop as well and use this on painted surfaces anytime I have stripped existing wax using solvents.

cyccommute 

Think about it. If you have a frame without oil and grease on it, the dirt has less to stick to. Spray oil on something and you provide a vehicle for the dirt to stick to.

KenCarlson

I'll throw in my 2 cents...

I like to use a citrus-based cleaner to get the sticky gunk off.

After the sticky gunk is gone, if there are any light abrasions that won't clean off (such as what can happen when grit gets under the zip-ties), I use 3M's Finesse-it, same stuff that I use on the car.

-Ken

sreten

Hi,

Take two MTB's. Scrupulously clean both. Coat one of them with WD40. Let dry.
Get them both dirty and then try cleaning them. Mud doesn't stick to oil half
as well as it does to a clean degreased surface, you will soon find out.

As it is my bikes not liberally coated with WD40. Its white and is forever getting
black marks on it from the chain oil and picks up road dirt usually only in the wet.
I have zero problems leaving the residue of cleaning with WD40 on the frame,
after all that is what the stuff is designed to do, protect from water.

Stuff sticks to it less, not more, except fine dust perhaps, but that is not
an issue, it comes off easy enough the next time I generally wipe it down.

rgds, sreten.

When I can be bothered literally everything gets the
WD40 treatment. Its really good for spokes for example.

cyccommute 

Go ahead. Try it. I'll wait.

Meanwhile, let's start with a couple of issues. First WD40 doesn't "dry"...at least not in the short term. Roughly 75% of WD40 evaporates which is exactly what the mineral spirits do because that 75% is mineral spirits. If you look at the MSDS, you can see that around 50% is aliphatic hydrocarbons and another nearly 20% is LVP aliphatic hydrocarbons. The LVP stands for 'low vapor pressure' which means that it evaporates easily. The other 25% is petroleum based oil which is probably a long chain aliphatic hydrocarbon much like the mineral oil found in baby oil. This won't "dry" under the temperatures you are likely to experience on a bike. You may be able to get it off with copious amounts of water but, generally, it's not water soluble.

The other issue is that this is the material that the dirt, grit and just about anything else can stick to. The minerals in dirt are primarily polar molecules which means that they don't have an affinity for the oil, i.e. they won't dissolve in it. But they will physically stick to it. A clean paint or metal surface offers nothing for the dirt to stick to. Some dirt may adhere..."dirt" is a rather broad and imprecise term...but it will wipe off relatively easily. A layer of oil will make removal of the dirt much more difficult.

Have you done your experiment yet? I have. I have a titanium mountain bike that had a leaky shock. Shock oil is just about the same material as the oil in WD40. Since I hang my bike up on a hook in the garage, the oil leaked out of the shock and ran down the downtube to the bottom bracket. After an off-road ride, the bottom bracket area was a royal mess. The grit had stuck in the oil and simple wiping wouldn't remove it. A degreaser was required to remove the oil and the dirt that was stuck to it.

After I fixed the shock and cleaned the bike, the dirt that is stuck to the frame slides off the frame with a simple brush of my hand. I know because I just did it.

Want further examples? Look at a suspension fork or a rear shock on a mountain bike. All of them have a tight fitting seal around the moving shafts of the shock because they live in a constant cloud of dirt being hurled at them. This is a wiper seal to keep the dirt that stick to the thin layer of oil that coats the upper leg from getting down into the internals of the lower leg. Dirt wandering around in the lower leg will cause all kinds of problems and is generally considered bad so they are engineered to keep as much dirt out as possible. But the legs also have to be lubricated to move freely, thus the wiper seal.

Although that a different discussion, I don't use chain "oil" on my chains. I use dry lubes for many of the same reasons that I don't use WD40 on my frames which is to avoid providing a vehicle for dirt to adhere to. My chains don't make black marks on anything because there is no oil to serve as a grinding paste in my chain to make the emulsion of ground up dirt, oil and metal shavings.

There is also a good reason that any bike picks up more road grim in the wet than in the dry. The water that falls on an asphalt road and then is sprayed back on your bike isn't really pure water. Asphalt has all manner of materials adhering to it from grit that is ground to a nanoparticle scale to oils from the cars that use the road to the asphalt itself. Asphalt is the "bottom" of the distilling process and contains longer chain hydrocarbons than oils but it does break down with sunlight and ozone. Asphalt roads are well know to be slicker with a little bit of water on them. That's because of the oil released by the water on the surface of the blacktop. All this gunk gets thrown up on your frame as you ride in the rain.

Finally, here's another experiment you can try. Butter a piece of bread and don't butter another. But both down in a bowl of sand. Just lay them on the sand. Now take a bite of each. Which one has more sand on it?