We have had an incredibly snowy winter so far. Hell it finally stopped snowing a few days ago for the first time since Xmas. The city has tried to keep the roads clean by spreading tons of salt and sand. It’s like the beach out there.
My commuter chain has not fared well. I tried to keep it clean with liberal applications of White Lightning and cleaning with a rag and Pedro’s Oranj Peelz but it has been too much for my poor chain. I thought before dropping more money on chains I would try an ultrasonic cleaner. I mean just the concept intrigued me, you know, cleaning with no effort on my part.
I purchased a Harbor Freight Ultrasonic Cleaner (coupons always available for 20% off in Popular Science). It is tiny, they had larger models that you could probably put a cassette in, but this will fit only smaller parts pedals/chains/maybe a derailleur.
The chain before cleaning.
After cleaning:
Now some details, that took a lot of cleaning. I thought I’d drop it in and run it one time and be done.
I filled it 1/4 with citrus degreaser and 3/4 with water.
After one run it looked like this.
So I ran it maybe 10 more times to finally call it quits. And man it cleaned up nice. Sure its not 100% but there is no grit in the chain at all, most of the surface rust is gone and it went from being rusted stiff to smooth as silk.
In fact the chain was so grit free and smooth that I used it on my cross and road bike chains afterward. They felt like new chains. I am impressed.
Your chain looks off the chain!! 🙂
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That looks great! I'm guessing you just used the same lot of degreaser/water when you ran the cleaner another 10 times. No problems cleaning up the cleaner afterwards. Thanks for sharing too! 🙂