Keeping Your Motorcycle Clean

I will admit, I am not a fan of washing my bikes. I know that we need to but it is just so time consuming. Washing a car is easy. With a bike, you cannot use a presure washer, you need to be careful of all the electrics on the handlebars, you cannot get water in the keyhole, and the list goes on.

I ride my bikes a lot on the road but also off road, The road is bad enough. All the bugs. When I hit the dirt, its mud and dust. There are so many nooks and crannies where crud lies. I try to get it clean but afterward, it always seems ther are places that are too tight to scrub.

Well I had an epiphany the other day. I have a steam cleaner that I use in the showers, etc to clean. I wonder how it would work on the bikes? I decided to give it a test. No, I did not wash the whole bike but decided to just give it a try on one area where I have trouble getting the bike clean to see how that steam cleaner works.

I had just completed a bit of maintenance on one motorcycle and decided to give the steam cleaner a try. The steamer I have is a cheap knock off but gets the job doen. Fill the steamer tank, plug it in, wait 60 seconds and the wand is ready.

Looking at the bike, I try to find an ares that is the most difficult to get clean. I decided to give it a try on the hand guards. The guards themselves are plastic and are surrounded by and metal cage. Scurbbing these are extremely difficult to get clean. And given they attract a lot of BUGS, they are always crusting and dirty .

Not only are the bugs stuck on there good, getting behind the hand guard is tight and just difficult to get clean. This will be a good test subject. So I fired up the steamer and decided to give it a try to see if it can help with this one trouble spot.

Once the steamer was ready, I let it rip on both the hand guard and the mirror (another trouble spot). Man was I surprised! It knocks that crud right off! I let the steam to the work. Once I hit it with steam, I just wiped with cloth and the bugs were gone.

Now how easy it that. The next time I wash the bike, I am definately going to use steam ALL over the bike. It knocks that stuff off like melted butter. All those crevises that are hard to reach, I am going to just hit it with steam and the mud and bugs should just fall off.

So if you are like me and want a clean bike but hate having to scrub and scrub all those tight crevises, give steam a try. No more trouble spots for me. Cannot wait unitl I have time to give the bikes a good washing and let the steam do most of the work.