Review: PowerClean Chemicals Water-Based Engine Wash Degreaser

Recently, I had a fairly lengthy write-up on my procedure of bike cleaning – and I mentioned the use of degreaser. Unlike in the US or other countries, looking for a degreaser to clean your bike’s drivetrain parts with can be a chore.

“Degreaser? Anong degreaser? Walang ganyan sa bundok namin ma’am, sir…”

A 946mL spray bottle of Simple Green Multi-Purpose Cleaner next to a 1L bottle of PowerClean Water-base Engine Wash Degreaser. The simpler bottle is more than two times cheaper.

Technically, you could use dishwashing liquid in a pinch. Some of them advertise themselves as “grease strippers” and they do perform a fairly good job. I’ve used Simple Green Multi-Purpose Cleaner on occasion as well, but it’s not always available, and it can be a bit pricey at PhP175 for a 946mL spray bottle. There may be better, more dedicated solutions out there, I thought.

On the recommendation of our own Byron Villegas, I decided to pedal to a local branch of PowerClean and pick up their water-based Engine Wash Degreaser for use on the TCX SLR 2.

USE AND IMPRESSIONS

The orange liquid is very slightly viscous yet mostly free flowing as it comes out of the bottle; I was told by the PowerClean shop clerk that this can still be diluted if necessary. It’s mildly fragrant, too. Using it straight from the bottle in my Finish Line chain cleaner, I noticed how effective it was in removing the gunk from my chain and leaving it sparkling after 90 crank rotations. It works a little better than the lighter-weight, less viscous Simple Green in this respect, and it certainly sticks to the chain cleaner’s brush bristles better.

Simon Richardson shown here using an old paintbrush to “paint” degreaser onto a cassette. Photo is a screengrab from GCN’s “30 Minute Bike Wash” video – click on the photo to watch!

Here, Simon paints degreaser on SRAM Red chainrings. Photo is a screengrab from GCN’s “30 Minute Bike Wash” video – click on the photo to watch!

Following the advice of others on bike washing upon my further reading, I got a cheap 1″-wide paintbrush and used it to “paint” the degreaser onto my drivetrain parts – specifically the cassette and chainrings. After doing so, the instructions tell you to let the stuff sit on the objects being cleaned for a few minutes…which you can spend drinking your cup of morning coffee and/or gulping some breakfast.

When I came back after twenty minutes, I saw the cassette now sparkling clean, save for a few isolated greasy spots. A subsequent light coating of the degreaser and some light persuasion with the paintbrush pushed the remaining spots away. My chainrings are black, so improvements aren’t so obvious, but they came out just as clean, too.

With minimal work, PowerClean’s degreaser sure did a number on my cassette. Imagine what it can do to a car’s dirty engine bay?

This is the shiniest used chain I’ve seen in a while. The chainring teeth got pretty clean from the degreaser, too.

The degreaser effectively did the grunt work of cleaning up the drivetrain, which means you can ultimately use less of the stuff, expend less effort scrubbing, and save some money.

A caveat: Once done, you will need to make sure that you thoroughly clean it off the chain by using a hose with low water pressure and a rag. Any degreaser left over in the chain links will destroy any chain lube you apply inside the roller pins of the chain.

VERDICT: YEA OR NAY?

PowerClean sells their water-based Engine Wash Degreaser through its various branches (quite a number of them within Metro Manila) in either a one-liter bottle for PhP75, or a one-gallon (3.8L) bottle for PhP220. That’s a pretty good deal, and a one-liter bottle exclusively used for cleaning bikes should last a pretty long time. It helps the patriotic conscience no end that this, like the rest of PowerClean’s stuff, is made right here in the Philippines, too. Add to that the purported water solubility and green credentials of the product, and it’s a win-win situation in my opinion.

Highly recommended.

Drop bars and the joys of fresh handlebar tape

For road cyclists, there are few tactile delights as quick to transform and rejuvenate your bike as freshly wrapped handlebar tape. After all, it is one of the three primary contact points you have on a bike, and it is also arguably the one through which you communicate the most with the road.

HAVE YOU GOT OPTIONS

Bar tape comes in many different forms. Traditionalists and the truly old-school swear by classic cotton tape, with a layer of grip-enhancing twine wound on top and finished off by a protective brushing of glossy shellac. Nowadays though, many bar tapes are made up of either cork or EVA foam (for shock absorption), leather, or various rubbery materials that become tacky when wet. Some people even use butyl inner tubes as bar tape.

Common to all of them is that they will wear out with use, becoming knackered and tattered with time, so they do need to be replaced every now and then. (This is especially true for white bar tape!) It is usual practice to change bar tape at the same time you replace your brake and shift cables and cable housings, since these are hidden under the bar tape.

Selle Italia Smootape bar tape in white

Mine is the “Granfondo” variant

“Smootape” is so named due to how it supposedly avoids the lumps that form on wrapping and overlapping of the tape on itself

FRESH CABLES, FRESH BAR TAPE

It just so happens that I recently sent my Giant TCX SLR 2 to LifeCycle for brake cable replacement, a maintenance job I don’t yet have the tools for. While I was there, I bought fresh bar tape for me to install at home. It is a simple enough job, requiring only a pair of scissors and some electrical tape.

The finishing strips in this case are basically long stickers, not electrical tape

The box of bar tape itself usually includes everything else that you’ll need:

• Two rolls of handlebar tape (obviously)
• Two extra strips of handlebar tape
• Bar end plugs
• Finishing strips – these can either be tape or stickers

WRAP THAT BAR!

Now, there are a great many ways of wrapping bar tape, and each one has its fans. The method I’ll share today is just one of them, and notably it doesn’t make use of the two extra strips of bar tape that come in the box. These are normally used to cover up the clamp band on the brifters. As a general idea, I will be wrapping the tape from the outside in, then transitioning from back to front as I move to the bar tops.

We begin by first folding back the brifters’ brake hoods and stripping the old bar tape off the handlebars. Doing this exposes the cables and cable housings; make sure that they are securely fastened to the handlebar with electrical tape. The old bar tape may leave some adhesive residue on the bar itself; you can clean this off with some alcohol.

My bars with the old bar tape

Brake hoods pulled back

Undoing the electrical tape at the end

Unraveling from the bar tops

As more of the old tape unravels the brifter clamp band gets exposed

Old tape off

Bare aluminum alloy handlebar

A quick inspection of the engraved markings shows that this drop bar is made by Satori for Giant as an OE item. Width is 400mm.

I start wrapping at the bottom edge of the very end of the drops. Place the tape so that half of it is on the bar, and half of it hangs in the air. Then, wrap one full turn around this initial bit of tape, toward the outside in, while pulling and keeping tension on the tape. Keeping this tension is important; this is primarily what keeps the bar tape wound around the handlebars, with the underside adhesive performing only a secondary role.

The underside of the bar tape has either conventional adhesive or a tacky rubbery layer; this is an example of the latter and it’s usually better if you want to reuse or re-wrap the bar tape

Beginning the wrap

The initial full turn of half-overhanging bar tape

Wrapping at an angle or bias upward from the end of the bar

IMPORTANT: Keep tension applied on the tape as you wrap

After this initial turn, I start to wrap diagonally along the drops, going up toward the brifter, while overlapping some of the tape upon itself. You can use the adhesive strip on the underside of the bar tape as a sort of guide to determine how much overlap you want. The amount of overlap will tend to vary as you go along, especially around curved portions of the bar, where you want smaller overlap on the inside curves. Remember to keep that tape under tension!

With half the bar tape’s width remaining from the brifter clamp band it’s time to think about the figure-eight

Approaching half the width of the tape to the clamp band of the brifters is when we perform the figure-eight bend that will cover up this area in lieu of the two bar tape strips. The trick to this method is to look at the brifter from the side as a fixed point of reference.

1. First, feed the tape along the underside.
2. Then pull the tape upward, wrapping once around the same plane as the brifter hoods.
3. As you pull the tape downward, wrap it once around the back underside of the brifter lever, then wrap around the front. This is your chance to cover up any exposed clamp band or bar.
4. Wrap once around the same plane as the brifter hoods again, as in #2. This is also the final chance to cover up any exposed clamp band or bar.
5. If you did the figure-eight bend correctly, after clearing and wrapping the bar tape around the brifters, you should now be continuing your wrap from back to front.
6. Remember to keep that tape under tension!

To begin the figure-eight, wrap behind the bar to cover the clamp band, then go over the brifter hood body

Next, go back under the bar to cover the brifter clamp band a second time, then wind the tape forward to cover the bare bar underneath the brake levers

Finally, wind the tape to the back again and pull upward on the outside to continue the wrap and finish the figure-eight. Done correctly, this should mean you are now wrapping back to front

For the bendy bits of the bar, tighten the overlap on the inside of the curves, but maintain enough overlap on the outside to keep the bar covered up

After varying the overlap for any remaining bends, you should be thinking about how to finish off the bar tape wrap as you approach the stem. You do this by scribing or lightly scoring the bar tape with your scissors at an angle, so that the end of the wrapped tape lines up straight. Once satisfied, you can cut the excess tape off. Remember to keep that tape under tension!

Scoring the final bit of bar tape in preparation for the cut – do this at an angle and it should leave you with a straight finish

At this point you should have your roll of electrical tape ready. Wrap the final bit of bar tape, then stick the electrical tape directly on top of it, some way behind the very end of the bar tape. Do not stick the electrical tape to the bar itself as this just makes the finish sloppy and the adhesion uneven. The electrical tape is nowhere near as elastic as the bar tape, so ideally it should be put under just a little tension, relying mainly on the adhesive to keep it in place – wrapped around itself. Wrap the roll of electrical tape around the bar tape three or four times, then cut so that it terminates on the underside of the bar, making it invisible.

Terminating the bar tape

Stick your electrical tape a short distance before the bar tape terminates, then start wrapping

Three or four turns of electrical tape should suffice. Cut the tape so that it terminates on the underside of the bar

Finally, to finish the job, roll back the brake hoods and return to the drops and the start point of the bar tape wrap. Fold the hanging bits of bar tape into the hollow of the bar. As you keep the bar tape inside the drop bar, take your bar end plug and push it in to anchor the bar tape in place.

Fold the hoods back over the brifters to ensure no amount of bar is left bare

Return to where you started to finish off the wrap job

Push all the overhanging bar tape inside the bar

Finally, take your bar end plug and push it into the bar to anchor and tidy up the excess bar tape

You should now have a bike that feels significantly newer and fresher – just from swapping out bar tape!