Get that muck-off! Our office bike gets dirty and we clean up…
For bikers, the downside of winter is muck; the ghastly grey-brown gunge that sticks to every part of your two-wheeled pride and joy. The sticky part of this un-holy cocktail is molasses – treacle to you – blended with the frame-rotting salt used to keep roads free from ice to stop it being easily washed off by rain. In rural areas you can add mud, manure and agricultural diesel.
Even a short trip leaves your bike covered in grot. But, choose not to clean it and, come springtime, metal parts will be tarnished, discoloured and pitted with value-sapping corrosion. Your cool summer bike will look like a wreck and will be worth less than it might have been.
Polishing the bike on a summer afternoon is one thing, but on a cold evening after work in January, it’s another. That’s no pleasure, it’s a chore. You need something quick, effective and with lasting protective qualities. After a day’s winter riding on the office GS, we put Muc-Off’s products to the test.
Even a short trip leaves your bike covered in grot. But, choose not to clean it and, come springtime, metal parts will be tarnished, discoloured and pitted with value-sapping corrosion. Your cool summer bike will look like a wreck and will be worth less than it might have been.
Polishing the bike on a summer afternoon is one thing, but on a cold evening after work in January, it’s another. That’s no pleasure, it’s a chore. You need something quick, effective and with lasting protective qualities. After a day’s winter riding on the office GS, we put Muc-Off’s products to the test.
1. It don’t look good….
It doesn’t take long to get the entire bike covered in crud… leave it there for too long and the damage will be irreversible…
 After 4 hours on the road, the new BM looks like last year’s bike. The first thing you need to do is get the muck, well, off. After that, it’s about driving out moisture, protecting against corrosion, and then polishing to look good and repel dirt and water. Finally we always give the brakes a quick clean, not only to keep them gunge-free, but also to remove any over-spray of cleaner or polish from the discs.
Thinking it through like that you realise that you need several different products, each to tackle part of the process. Having a specialised helper for each aspect actually saves time and results in a better job. 2. Choose your weapons…
For a rapid clean achieving all of the above objectives, we used five products; Muc-Off’s well known pink spray-on Cleaner, their water-repelling Bike Spray, the new Speed Polish, Muc-Off Disc Brake Cleaner and a Muc-Off Micro-fibre cloth.
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Conclusion
Turning our little GS from a winter hack into a nice new Beemer again took about half an hour – much quicker than it used to. Having the right gear certainly helps. There are many types of cleaner on the market and most of them do work. What we liked about the Muc-Off products though was that they were extremely fast in use. The Cleaner broke down the dirt rapidly, the Bike Spray got rid of moisture enabling us to polish the bike sooner, and the Speed Polish was fantastic – came off very easily and gave a good shine. No problems with over-spray unlike some others.
Total cost of the items used above was £35. The cleaner will do about 3 washes, which is not cheap, but the rest of the stuff ought to last a full season, if not more. It’s not much outlay considering how much you’ve probably paid for your bike. You can easily save the measly 35 quid anyway. For instance, the price difference between A1 and ‘Fair’ for our BMW F700GS at two years old would be £375… and that’s an savings to outlay ratio of 10 to 1.
Total cost of the items used above was £35. The cleaner will do about 3 washes, which is not cheap, but the rest of the stuff ought to last a full season, if not more. It’s not much outlay considering how much you’ve probably paid for your bike. You can easily save the measly 35 quid anyway. For instance, the price difference between A1 and ‘Fair’ for our BMW F700GS at two years old would be £375… and that’s an savings to outlay ratio of 10 to 1.
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