Bike Cleaning on a Budget

One of my favorite things to do is come up with inexpensive ways to do things. In reality I’m cheap and most of the time broke. So that forces me to rely on my meager resources of a few bucks in order to do something.

So with that in mind, one of the things that we’ll all have to deal with is a dirty bike. Cleaning it is a normal part of owning one. But you don’t have to spend a grip of money on bike cleaning products such as degreaser, brushes and polish.

Here’s what I did. I went over to my favorite store, The 99cent only store. Grabbed a few items.

Got me some degreaser and detailer. I’ve used the detailer before, and all you have to do is spray it on your bike, and wipe off. It leaves your bike feeling like it just had a wax job…nice and smooth.

Then I got one of these fat brushes to scrub off dirt from my tires. Yeah I like to wash my tires. I used to give Jeremy a hard time about it, but now I do it myself. So consider this my formal apology Jeremy…sorry.

I also got one of these wheel sponge things. This will help with getting in between suspension linkages and cleaning the hub.

I didn’t get a picture of it, but I went ahead and got some cloth diapers to wipe down my ride. There you have it, for less than $6, you can have some of the basic pieces to your bike detailing kit.

In a future article, we’ll go over how you clean a bike after a ride.