Went out for a Christmas snow ride today as the weather was nice and mild (around zero C). I rode on roads with hard packed snow that had just softened enough for my tire to bite in nicely. Only had my tire spin out from under me once on some thick slush and was able to run out of the resulting upd.
The roads had been well salted, so when I got home I stood my uni over a large bowl of soapy water and sponged it down. Dried it with a clean rag and sprayed grease into the bearings. Any other thoughts on how to protect one’s investment from road salt?
Boeshield T9 is good for weatherproofing unicycles and guns. I take better care of my guns than the unicycles. Most rust that I’ve generated on the unicycles has been from sweat dripping off of me on the hot days. Boeshield is good for just general cleaning since it has a solvent that evaporates. You probably need to keep it off the bearings because the solvent could break down the grease.
Their websites have more info. They have waxes, etc. in their secret formula that are carried by solvent which eventually evaporates. Use of an absorbent (adsorbent?) cloth may keep much of the wax and only distribute the solvent. Just spread with a finger and let dry overnight.
Trickcyclist would be a good candidate for a sponsorship by them. It wouldn’t have any real value, just a coolness factor.
Personally I would avoid road salt having seen what it does to motorcycles. If you ride in road salt with any regularity you will end up with corrosion somewhere unless you obsessively wash and dry after each ride. Not the next day, right after you ride.
It will corrode any crevice it can work its way into. Like your spoke nipples, where your spokes cross, etc. But if you must, cleaning right after a ride and using t9/wd-40 on things like your spoke nipples and other crevices, and you should be alright. But even a day is too long to wait to clean. Right after you ride you need to clean that shite off.
Spraying t9/WD-40 and wiping it off will do nothing except to clean and disperse moisture (both good things). To provide protection it needs to ‘dry’ and leave a light coat to prevent corrosion. Hang glider pilots spray it in the inside of their aluminum tubes once to twice a year if they fly near the ocean. Iffn it was me I would be most worried about the spoke nipples. A small drop of gun oil on each one would also be good preventative measure. You can get gun oil at Wal-mart. And a drop on the flanges where they go through the hub. Gun oil/T-9/WD-40 will all do what you need them to do. Drip/squirt a little bit on the axle between the pedal and bearing. Look around and wash and dry or ‘treat’ ever little crevice you can find that you can’t wash well and dry after each ride.
The above is to keep your uni like new. Seeing some of the pictures of some peoples uni a little cosmetic corrosion is no big deal.
Riding a schlumpf in extremely salty conditions was a bit of a scary thing for me for the past month of training for unicon. I added a bit more grease internally to the hub, and sprayed the bearings with rust check, which is designed to keep your auto body from rusting out in the winter, it coats surfaces in a sort of goo and repels the water. I would wipe it down fairly often and check for rust every other day, so far so good.
If you pay attention and keep everything clean you should be fine. I rode my fixie 36 for a few winters and the bearings are trashed now, but I never, ever cleaned it out or did any maintenance on them. If I’d given it even five minutes a week and prepped the bearings for winter it would likely still be going strong…
every time there’s a hint of weather our roads get absolutely covered in salt, so if they are a bit more conservative in your area you can probably get away with it with a bit of upkeep…
I’ve never washed my Muni’s bearings, it’s at its second winter now, I didn’t have any problems last summer with it exept alot of noise for a couple of weeks, I just rode it alot and it stoped.
I’m never washing my Muni after my rides, I just take as much snow as I can off to bring it in my house but the wheel doesn’t rust, only the frame a little bit but it’s my old Torker frame witch I dont really mind about it anymore…
Happy “Wuni-ing”
I checked my rides. Two have drain holes on the lower bearing retainers, one doesn’t. This hole should be pointed down for storage. Otherwise have the split of the holders positioned so that water can drip out or the protectant can flow on through. Hanging the uni with the seat down might retain any remaining water.
I can’t remember if the upper bearing holder has a hole where water could get into the frame. Anyone?
If you don’t have holes in the lower retainers, you might drill them.
I get the worst corrosion down here in the tropics
Half a block from the sea, it was 70ish today, and yes, my garden is doing great, though the tomatoes are still green. (they won’t grow over the summer, they die of sun burn).
I haven’t had time for my uni’s to turn crap. Only been riding for 2 years, and I wash them off a lot with a hose.
After about 10 years of riding in warm salt, the inside of my alum motorcycle rims turned to white powder. It’s as bad as rust, only white. I have also had to replace a swing arm, that rotted from the inside.
Anyway, my advice, to you northerners, dealing with road salt, is to use the cold to your advantage. Metal mixed with damp salt is like fresh fish. It rots fast if you bring it inside and keep it warm. Keep it in your froze garage, it will last a long time. Unis are the same. Keep your salted uni in a cold outdoor shed. Then in the spring, deflate the tire, pop the rim seal, and soak the uni in a tub for an hour or so, to get the salt out of the rim and spokes. Don’t worry about the bearings, a little fresh water won’t hurt them. Don’t spray wd40 at the bearings, it will dilute the grease.
Warm weather + salt inside the tire = the inside of your rim turning into alum oxide. Cold slows this process greatly, just as it retards other chemical reactions. So if you have a choice, keep it cold.
I have a seatpost that’s rusted onto the frame, due to Vermont road salt. I guess I should have greased it. The only way to get it free now would be hacksaw.
I generally avoid riding on the road in the winter as they go nuts with the salt up here in Vermont. The sidewalks are even worse, as the sidewalk plow dumps piles of salt everywhere. I try to stick to the bike path, which the city has been plowing (with a sidewalk tank) but not salting. I agree with the other posts here - the stuff gets everywhere, into every nook and cranny, and keeping it cold will help prevent the salt from “activating”.
I have yet to put the studded tire on my 28" uni, but I have been enjoying my full suspension bike (Haro X7) with my new Nokian Freddies Revengz tires. 336 studs per tire. You have to work at it to get it to slip on ice, the grip is totally amazing. My next uni is definitely going to be a 26" so I can enjoy the vast selection of studded tires available for that size.
Anyway I need to get that studded tire on the uni, maybe I’ll do that today and get out on the local ice rink!
I heard that a long time ago as well. That rust/corrosion only happens in certain temperature range. Maybe five years ago I tried to find some info on the web to back it up but didn’t have any luck. Must have to do with moisture. Too cold and no moisture (cold dries things out) and too hot and moisture evaporates… This keeping uni in cold garage sounds like good advice to me.
Saltwater fish tanks deal with what they call ‘salt creep’. The salt migrates similar to how crystals grow, something gets wet and evaporates and leaves slight residue. Next time it leaves a little more. Even just the salt in the air from surface agitation (bubble wands, etc) is enough to cause salt creep.
Although this is probably difficult to relate to unicycles, gun cases are typically insulated for bringing a gun from the cold outdoors to the warm indoors. The gun should be left in the insulated case for many hours until it is at room temperature. The case keeps the air off of the metal and therefore the resulting condensation. So on a unicycle it may be the condensation from the warm air. Warm air has a much greater capacity for holding moisture. A tight fitting insulated case for a unicycle doesn’t seem practical.
That salt creep sounds like the research by a couple of scientists who figured out the formation of coffee stains. If I remember it right, the surface tension at the edge of the puddle changes the vapor pressure and the evaporation is higher there. More solids get transported to the edge and get deposited. Yes, they applied for and received a grant for the filth in the bottom of their coffee cup. Musta been physicists.
(Haro X7) with my new Nokian Freddies Revengz tires. 336 studs per tire. You have to work at it to get it to slip on ice, the grip is totally amazing. My next uni is definitely going to be a 26" so I can enjoy the vast selection of studded tires available for that size.