There's a good reason why I don't like cycling by the beach, despite living at a beachy town: sand in the parts is not pleasant {no pun intended}. Salty water is in itself terrible, but sand is merciless. Sand mixes with oil or grease and create one hell of an efficient abrasive that eats out moving parts. I hate it more than anything.
Since today's objective was to do a very specific high effort training to test my endurance (read 45min to 1 hour of pain), I had to throw in the towel. After all, what better place for this kind of exercise than 240 kilometers of an uninterrupted stretch of rideable beach? More about the beach and the exercise in a future post. In this post let's concentrate into cleaning the cassette and rear hub while resting the mind/body.
Deep clean
Deep cleaning a cassette is not common unless riding on rough conditions (for example: at the beach, where sand and salty water can get in between the sprockets). Under normal conditions simply washing the bicycle is enough to remove dirt. Mine hadn't seen maintenance for a looooong time, thus I decided to go ahead and take it apart anyway.
Each gear-set manufacturer has a cassette and freehub extractor. If you want to get into servicing your bicycle and is in doubt, the best way is to ask a mechanic or search the web (plentiful of videos on Youtube showing each standard and the equivalent extractor). Mine, for example, is the HG standard used by Shimano and Sram.
In my opinion, it's well worth it having the tools and DIYing; extractors aren't expensive.
Addendum closed.
Satisfying
The best way for me to work is to lay everything together as neatly as possible. I remember always losing a bolt or nut when I was a young Padawan, all due to a messy workplace.
As I grab the tools, I realize that exchanging some Hive for bicycle tools is proving the best decision of last year's black friday — near zero maintenance costs, while also allowing me to peacefully work on a Saturday afternoon.
As they say... give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and
he won't have the damn patience to fishyou feed him for a lifetime
Anyways. It looks nasty inside the freehub. Do you see that sand? Let that go into the bearings and say good-bye.
Gross
I grab le toothbrush and kitchen de-greaser and head to the laundry sink. Mom doesn't particularly like me cleaning dirty bicycle parts in there, but until having my own space she kinda of accepts. I come back outside. My back hurts twice as before, which makes me think why don't they build home stuff for tall people. At least the sprockets are shinny and I manage to clean the freehub (bearings were fine).
Clean freehube
Shinny sprocket
Isn't it frustrating to clean everything knowing it'll get all dirty again as soon as going back to cycling? Goddammit! Should seriously consider road cycling; mtb is way too dirty.
The joy lays in putting fresh grease onto the parts and assembling the whole thing. Note: I need a torque wrench to properly tighten the cassette. Oh, the never end of needing more tools.
Done
Today's post turned out more of a diary. Some sort of warm-up for the next one, where I plan to show you a cool place at the beach that has never before appeared here {turn off click-bait}.
No, seriously... those adventurous story-telling posts take so long to compose that pre-introducing the thing won't hurt, will it?*
I hope that you've enjoyed this blog. God bless and Happy Easter!
Peace.
Disclaimer: The author of this post is a convict broke backpacker, who has travelled more than 10.000 km hitchhiking and more than 5.000 km cycling. Following him may cause severe problems of wanderlust and inquietud. You've been warned.
