I’d say if you are going to buy one it’s nice to have one large enough to submerge chainrings and derailleurs.
We use the ultrasonic on at least 75% of the tunes we do and I’ve found the key really is to make sure the chain is completely dry (we have a drying rack with an old box fan) and then make sure you hit every link with enough lube that it actually works into the roller and pins.
Before @heath chimes in about waxing, I’d like to do it, but we just don’t have the time in the day to spend the extra time making sure chains are correctly prepped.
Its never crossed my mind to ultrasonic a chain pusher.
I’ll have to bring some beer to my dad’s one of these days and borrow his dental ultrasonic cleaner. My Force 1x sees so much dust in our dry Ga summers.
If you really want to geek out, remove the pulleys, bearing shields, and seals and flush the bearings out. Then take a syringe and put your favorite bearing grease in there. The clutch mech is so well sealed you shouldn’t have to fuss with that. I put a drop of tri-flow or Dri-slide on each of the pivots and bushing at the mounting bolt and send it.
I spent a bunch of money on a Wheel Fanatyk tensiometer to bring the stumpjumper wheels up to final tension, never used it, and have been riding the wheels anyway. Seems fine.
This is also (mostly) me. Excluding the ebike, the bikes that get ridden the most are all friction and two of those three are rim brakes.
The 10 speed rear mech on my SwissCross has never been able to shift onto all 10 sprockets.
I feel slightly better about this because
A: I never use the 11t anyway, and
B: I paid an actually competent mechanic to fix the problem and he couldn’t
I also don’t care about it, paid someone else to do it, then never rode that bike again and finally sold it. Next mtb will be hard tail if there is a next one.
For sure. Even with the ultrasonic, it’s quite a bit of prep time to get a chain fully stripped to take a wax treatment. Sram and Shimano factory lube is some tough stuff to remove. With higher-end bikes we’ll sometimes put a new chain through a cycle to break down some of it so it can better take a lube like RocknRoll Gold. But anything like the Silca supersecret lube or even Squirt will just roll off that stuff.
I have made many many mistakes over 30 years. The annoying thing is that I cant remember them all, and often repeat them… The wrong model manual for your rock-shocks is just one of them @Itsmattbb why cant they just use the same internals each year ?
This correlates with my experience. I have to do several passes with the ultrasonic to get the factory lube out.
I haven’t found the perfect bottle for this but Josh Poertner (of Silca) maybe used a plastic soda bottle and would shake the chain in it with degreaser 4-5 times maybe.
Yeah, it’s definite a big PITA the first time. Totally reasonable for a bike nerd that expects to use the same chain for years, but not so much for a shop that needs to bill for time.
Best case in a shop, I’d prep and sell waxed chains, only doing them in batches and they’d not be cheap.
And on that note I have a new chain I need to strip.
After the stripping process, between each re-waxing process I just wipe down the outside of the chain and toss it in.
the front shifting on my H/G has worked correctly for like 5 days out of the several years i’ve owned it. i just use the small ring. maybe i should just friction shift it like my other bikes.
