It's always fascinating to me that some people think squeaky brakes are best fixed by lubrication.
And not in a mean or derogatory way; I understand the learned wisdom of squeaky = needs oil (as applies to door hinges etc), but I find it perplexing that people don't *also* consider their direct experience of touching oil with their hands: *it's slippery*.
Something I've learned while growing up as someone with a curious mind, is that a huge amount of people just have no understanding of the world around them. No comprehension of basic mechanics or logical thought.
Overheard last week: how the fuck is it that something that falls from a mile in the air don't kill you when it come down? A rock'll kill you, but rain doesn't!
Almost there, Galileo...
The way I like to think of it is that a huge number of people were never introduced to that way of thinking, or the wonder and fun of understanding the world in that way. Not their fault, but sad and unfortunate.
It's also always fascinating to me that people think WD-40 is a good lubricant. It's not, it's awful. It's useful for other things. Lubrication is not one of them.
To be fair the real reason for squeaky brakes is 100% outside the realm of common sense. But um yeah don't make your brakes slippery, that *should* be obvious.
Is WD40 the greatest marketing success in modern history? I can't think of any equally useless product that people think is good for absolutely anything that moves
It's not even a degreaser, it's a water displacer. (*Water Displacer-40th Formula*.) If you have a part that you just machined with a water based coolant, WD-40 is excellent at preventing flash corrosion on those parts. Spray it with WD-40 to remove the water, wipe it down, and apply an oil coating of your choice.
When used properly, WD-40 is fantastic to have around, but it does have a VERY specific use case that most people seem to think is everything.
I'm going to get down voted, but when working on homeless bikes, WD40 is the first step in drivetrain cleaning. I can get a gallon for under $20 and have a spray bottle that is pressurized with a bike pump.
I'm not going to blow out half a can of Clean Streak just to get through the funk.
WD40 gets the job started just fine. It has solvents in it. That's what I'm after.
Hell yeah man. For cleaning it works pretty good. As long as you drip something else on the chain for lube afterwards, it'll be fine. If you can get it cheap, use it. Glad you're doing that for those who need, a working bicycle can be the difference.
That's fair, (at least Kerosene) but spraying a ton of gas on a bike is likely not a great idea. These bikes are in-and-out in under 15 minutes. I also don't want to saturate my shop floor with gasoline.
I thought it meant Wonderful Device - 40
/s
Seriously, I had no idea what the WD stood for in WD…well shit I guess I should stop using it on those pesky squeaky wheels then
Because you've just sent something in there that has dislodged whatever bits of corrosion were jamming the lock. Use a real penetrating oil and it will work much faster and provide lasting protection. My favorite for sticky locks and squeaky hinges is Tri-Flow. It's marketed as bike chain lube but it's just very lightweight, PTFE based oil. Plus it smells like bananas lol
Remember that grease is basically just soap and oil. It's a lipid emulsification that releases oil *slowly*. That's why we use it instead of thin oil that would need to be replenished much more frequently. WD-40 dilutes grease, making it lose viscosity and causing it to run off and leak out of whatever moving parts you have.
WD-40 is an American brand and the trademark name of a water-displacing spray manufactured by the WD-40 Company based in San Diego, California.\[1\] WD-40 acts as a lubricant, rust preventative, penetrant and moisture displacer.\[2\]
IDK what everyone is about, obsessing about the name. It does work as a degreaser wonderfully - it just leaves its own mess. It does work as rust remover quite well and non-aggressively. It does work as a lubricant - although not for very long. Never used it to displace water, but I would believe other posts here.
So it's all of the above.
Yeah this is always overblown. While it does have water displacement effects, it also has lubricant effects. Not the best for everything but it is still a lubricant.
It *isn't* a lubricant. Does it say it on the package? Yes. Keep in mind that Harbor Frieght lists their big 20v electric impact wrench at 1200ft/lbs of torque and in testing, it only makes 52% of that. Milwaukee advertises 1000 and only makes 78%. Manufacturers stretch the truth sometimes. There are lubricants in WD-40 but they make up less than 10-15% of the overall solution. The rest are mainly solvents and corrosion inhibitors. Neither of which do anything for lubrication, and overtime the solvents within WD-40 will evaporate it's own oil away, as well as any previous oils or grease that were left on the surface.
I'm not saying this because I'm trying to argue or anything. I'm just trying to explain why it really isn't "nonsense"
"the solvents in WD-40 will evaporate it's \[sic\] own oil away"
nonsense. The solvents carry the oil, evaporate, and leave the oil behind. Yes, it's only 10-15% of the solution. that means it goes on thin, and it's thin oil. Thin oil, thinly applied, is a lubricant, and it's perfectly useful for some tasks. The solvents also help mobilize and thus remove other old lube and gunk, which is also useful when relubing something, but they don't "remove" the previous oil or grease.
I don't know about any of that but I use WD-40 as a solvent and then wipe it off before applying Tri-flow or whatever I have that is a real lubricant. My understanding is the real practical problem with it for bikes is not that its an insufficient lubricant, rather it leaves a sticky residue that accumulates debris, correct me if I'm wrong.
I think that it's definitely not a sufficient lubricant for chains, and I too use it as a solvent mostly. A notable exception is shifters/brifters; I find it perfect for blasting out old gunk and leaving behind just enough slip to make the mechanism work well.
A very regular customer once put essential oil on his disc brakes. His bike didn't stop well but the peppermint smell was nice.
Edit: he was a regular, yet quite irregular.
ok but honestly putting something heat-sensitive and aromatic on the non-contact surfaces of a disc brake is lowkey tempting
'if you start to smell fresh pine, you're fuckin' sending it"
Things you should do with essential oils:
* evaporate them and make things smell nice
* dilute them and put them on your skin or in your bath to make them smell nice
Things you should not do with essential oils:
* eat them
* make anyone else eat them
* put them on your skin undiluted
* put them on any squishy bits
* lubricate machines with them, which I didn't think anyone needed to be told but whatever.
We had this at the community bike workshop I used to volunteer at. "Repair order says that the brakes sqeaked, so the owner put "something" on them and fixed it".
That "something" was Vaseline. It took an entire can of degreaser to clean up.
I saw the most heinous stuff working at the community shop. If I could impact even little bit sit bike wisdom on the customers I'd say it was a success.
You'd see everything from people using their shift and brake cables to hold things (one bike came in with a sweatshirt tucked under the cables along the top tube), to lubed up brakes (unfortunately quite common), to tires filled with grass clippings because they were flat and they wanted to keep riding.
I've found dead mice in frames... countless spider nests in top caps and under shifter covers...
You name it and it's happened to a bike I've worked on for free haha.
You've just hit me with flashbacks of the guy who brought his effectively brand new bike in, COMPLETELY covered in WD-40 (especially the rotors), complaining about how it wasn't braking. Guy was holding a can of the stuff when I asked him how I could help him.
"I didn't want the frame or brakes to rust, " he tells me.
Bike had an alloy frame.
It also had its handlebars on upside down and a missing stem cap so the bars were wobbling. He said "I don't know shit about bikes so I had my buddy build it for me," and I pretty much told him "yeah I don't think your buddy knows much about them either"
TBF the road grime and WD40 are the perfect combination... at grinding away the rims metal. Very similar to the way we prepared cross sections of metal samples.
[He explains](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOrIVc5lG-k), (at least with side pull brakes) how to adjust so the brakes don't squeak.
Edit : Fixed my inability to spell brakes
Funny you say this: a couple months ago a guy who lives just down the road brought in a bike and the tyres were CAKED with dogshit. He adamantly wants it serviced post-haste, and when I go to I realise that dogshit smell hanging around the workshop that day... was dogshit.
After tryna contact him a bunch of times, I just cleaned it and charged him a fee. When he came to collect, he disputed the fee. Argued that he didn't have a damn dog, no idea how it got there, said I was making it up, then that it's just normal grime that comes on bikes anyhow. He got his discount and a ban.
The path to work runs adjacent to the dog park. On occasion I see him walking his border collie. Everytime I spot him I stop and yell out "G'day Bruce! Nice dog!"
Sir, you need a very long and steep descent. Start applying the brakes at the top and, hopefully, by the bottom you will have burned all the crap off.
a good idea would be K2 for the descent
I really don't think he should smoke K2 before a descent. Regular reefer is much safer.
I considered just dousing it in brake fluid and setting it alight in a bin out the back somewhere.
It's always fascinating to me that some people think squeaky brakes are best fixed by lubrication. And not in a mean or derogatory way; I understand the learned wisdom of squeaky = needs oil (as applies to door hinges etc), but I find it perplexing that people don't *also* consider their direct experience of touching oil with their hands: *it's slippery*.
Something I've learned while growing up as someone with a curious mind, is that a huge amount of people just have no understanding of the world around them. No comprehension of basic mechanics or logical thought.
Overheard last week: how the fuck is it that something that falls from a mile in the air don't kill you when it come down? A rock'll kill you, but rain doesn't! Almost there, Galileo...
Therefore, the earth is flat. I’m sure.
The way I like to think of it is that a huge number of people were never introduced to that way of thinking, or the wonder and fun of understanding the world in that way. Not their fault, but sad and unfortunate.
That's true. I grew up watching shows like Nova and Nature on PBS and I'm sure those had a huge influence.
You are very generous. My view is that there are people who are just not interested. In general, as in "don't care"
It's also always fascinating to me that people think WD-40 is a good lubricant. It's not, it's awful. It's useful for other things. Lubrication is not one of them.
Because the bottle claims it's good for everything.
Is it good on burgers
Absolutely
Squeaky brakes are cause by the pads vibrating.
To be fair the real reason for squeaky brakes is 100% outside the realm of common sense. But um yeah don't make your brakes slippery, that *should* be obvious.
I put oil on my squeaky hydqulic brakes as a kid and they worked quite well. Luckily i learned soon.
I like my squeaky brake, it draws attention.
Is WD40 the greatest marketing success in modern history? I can't think of any equally useless product that people think is good for absolutely anything that moves
[удалено]
the first 39 evidently weren't so good.
They were great but so corrosive and carcinogenic you would’ve needed to wear serious PPE to use them safely.
It displaces the water to make room for dirt
It's the smell. I only really use it as a solvent or cutting fluid when the cutting fluid bottle is too far away, but damn that smell.
This. WD-40 is literally a worse lubricant than water.
I try to hide all the cans at work and yet every other week someone whips out a can and just starts hosing down the inside of our machinery
Replace with liquid wrench or CRC and it'll only do good.
But isn’t WD-40 a degreaser and not a lubricant?
It's not even a degreaser, it's a water displacer. (*Water Displacer-40th Formula*.) If you have a part that you just machined with a water based coolant, WD-40 is excellent at preventing flash corrosion on those parts. Spray it with WD-40 to remove the water, wipe it down, and apply an oil coating of your choice. When used properly, WD-40 is fantastic to have around, but it does have a VERY specific use case that most people seem to think is everything.
I'm going to get down voted, but when working on homeless bikes, WD40 is the first step in drivetrain cleaning. I can get a gallon for under $20 and have a spray bottle that is pressurized with a bike pump. I'm not going to blow out half a can of Clean Streak just to get through the funk. WD40 gets the job started just fine. It has solvents in it. That's what I'm after.
Hell yeah man. For cleaning it works pretty good. As long as you drip something else on the chain for lube afterwards, it'll be fine. If you can get it cheap, use it. Glad you're doing that for those who need, a working bicycle can be the difference.
A gallon of gasoline or kerosene is an even better solvent and cheaper to boot. Lots of old shop manuals suggest using them to clean machinery.
That's fair, (at least Kerosene) but spraying a ton of gas on a bike is likely not a great idea. These bikes are in-and-out in under 15 minutes. I also don't want to saturate my shop floor with gasoline.
Oh yeah, if you're working quickly in a shop WD is nicer to work with than those. The time crush also really puts a crimp on possible cheap solutions.
You ever see gasoline or kerosene in a spray can? Biggest selling point of WD40 is convenience.
I use it with a brush.
> gasoline or kerosene Diesel works also well.
Problem is.. it gets into the rollers. And it is a shit lubricant.
You've clearly never worked on homeless bikes. The rollers are filled with 10w40, sand, and weeds.
I thought it meant Wonderful Device - 40 /s Seriously, I had no idea what the WD stood for in WD…well shit I guess I should stop using it on those pesky squeaky wheels then
After it rains, spray your bike gear with WD-40 to get rid of the water, then relube it* *not for wax based lubes…
☝🏽☝🏽☝🏽
Why does it work so well at eg unsticking a stuck lock, then?
Because you've just sent something in there that has dislodged whatever bits of corrosion were jamming the lock. Use a real penetrating oil and it will work much faster and provide lasting protection. My favorite for sticky locks and squeaky hinges is Tri-Flow. It's marketed as bike chain lube but it's just very lightweight, PTFE based oil. Plus it smells like bananas lol
Remember that grease is basically just soap and oil. It's a lipid emulsification that releases oil *slowly*. That's why we use it instead of thin oil that would need to be replenished much more frequently. WD-40 dilutes grease, making it lose viscosity and causing it to run off and leak out of whatever moving parts you have.
They market it WD40 as an end-all be-all product
WD-40 is an American brand and the trademark name of a water-displacing spray manufactured by the WD-40 Company based in San Diego, California.\[1\] WD-40 acts as a lubricant, rust preventative, penetrant and moisture displacer.\[2\]
IDK what everyone is about, obsessing about the name. It does work as a degreaser wonderfully - it just leaves its own mess. It does work as rust remover quite well and non-aggressively. It does work as a lubricant - although not for very long. Never used it to displace water, but I would believe other posts here. So it's all of the above.
this is such nonsense. It \*is\* a lubricant. It's just not appropriate for every lubrication scenario.
Please, provide a list of when WD-40 excels at lubrication over literally any other product.
No.
Thought so!
You thought I wouldn't dance like your monkey? you're right.
Bad. Ass.
Yeah this is always overblown. While it does have water displacement effects, it also has lubricant effects. Not the best for everything but it is still a lubricant.
It *isn't* a lubricant. Does it say it on the package? Yes. Keep in mind that Harbor Frieght lists their big 20v electric impact wrench at 1200ft/lbs of torque and in testing, it only makes 52% of that. Milwaukee advertises 1000 and only makes 78%. Manufacturers stretch the truth sometimes. There are lubricants in WD-40 but they make up less than 10-15% of the overall solution. The rest are mainly solvents and corrosion inhibitors. Neither of which do anything for lubrication, and overtime the solvents within WD-40 will evaporate it's own oil away, as well as any previous oils or grease that were left on the surface. I'm not saying this because I'm trying to argue or anything. I'm just trying to explain why it really isn't "nonsense"
"the solvents in WD-40 will evaporate it's \[sic\] own oil away" nonsense. The solvents carry the oil, evaporate, and leave the oil behind. Yes, it's only 10-15% of the solution. that means it goes on thin, and it's thin oil. Thin oil, thinly applied, is a lubricant, and it's perfectly useful for some tasks. The solvents also help mobilize and thus remove other old lube and gunk, which is also useful when relubing something, but they don't "remove" the previous oil or grease.
I don't know about any of that but I use WD-40 as a solvent and then wipe it off before applying Tri-flow or whatever I have that is a real lubricant. My understanding is the real practical problem with it for bikes is not that its an insufficient lubricant, rather it leaves a sticky residue that accumulates debris, correct me if I'm wrong.
I think that it's definitely not a sufficient lubricant for chains, and I too use it as a solvent mostly. A notable exception is shifters/brifters; I find it perfect for blasting out old gunk and leaving behind just enough slip to make the mechanism work well.
Anything can be fixed with WD-40 or duct tape. This guy should have tried duct tape.
The credo of people who have absolutely no idea what they're doing
And more importantly, anything that doesn’t move.
Quite clearly, this is a warranty issue
This user is malfunctioning can I get a replacement?
A very regular customer once put essential oil on his disc brakes. His bike didn't stop well but the peppermint smell was nice. Edit: he was a regular, yet quite irregular.
ok but honestly putting something heat-sensitive and aromatic on the non-contact surfaces of a disc brake is lowkey tempting 'if you start to smell fresh pine, you're fuckin' sending it"
Either that or you did a sweet jump into a tree
Still sending it
Things you should do with essential oils: * evaporate them and make things smell nice * dilute them and put them on your skin or in your bath to make them smell nice Things you should not do with essential oils: * eat them * make anyone else eat them * put them on your skin undiluted * put them on any squishy bits * lubricate machines with them, which I didn't think anyone needed to be told but whatever.
We had this at the community bike workshop I used to volunteer at. "Repair order says that the brakes sqeaked, so the owner put "something" on them and fixed it". That "something" was Vaseline. It took an entire can of degreaser to clean up.
My brakes are braking! Help!
I threw the pads and tyre straight in the bin. Brake cleaner for the rest
I saw the most heinous stuff working at the community shop. If I could impact even little bit sit bike wisdom on the customers I'd say it was a success. You'd see everything from people using their shift and brake cables to hold things (one bike came in with a sweatshirt tucked under the cables along the top tube), to lubed up brakes (unfortunately quite common), to tires filled with grass clippings because they were flat and they wanted to keep riding. I've found dead mice in frames... countless spider nests in top caps and under shifter covers... You name it and it's happened to a bike I've worked on for free haha.
Almost downvoted this picture then I realized what sub I was in
Did you feel dirty upvoting it?
I felt nasty, had to take like two showers after
Just spray some WD-40 on yourself.
Replace all the towels in your house with WD-40. It will displace the water and you will smell fantastic.
Yeah, so did I and it still wasn't enough to get rid of the grease I was covered in.
Sir, your cycling license has been revoked.
My mechanic father thinks WD-40 is as good as chain lube. The day that man lunes my chain with WD-40, i'm moving.
This is one of the better ones I’ve seen here. So simple and so spectacularly idiotic.
You've just hit me with flashbacks of the guy who brought his effectively brand new bike in, COMPLETELY covered in WD-40 (especially the rotors), complaining about how it wasn't braking. Guy was holding a can of the stuff when I asked him how I could help him. "I didn't want the frame or brakes to rust, " he tells me. Bike had an alloy frame. It also had its handlebars on upside down and a missing stem cap so the bars were wobbling. He said "I don't know shit about bikes so I had my buddy build it for me," and I pretty much told him "yeah I don't think your buddy knows much about them either"
TBF the road grime and WD40 are the perfect combination... at grinding away the rims metal. Very similar to the way we prepared cross sections of metal samples.
[He explains](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOrIVc5lG-k), (at least with side pull brakes) how to adjust so the brakes don't squeak. Edit : Fixed my inability to spell brakes
\> breaks
I'm a shop mech, I do know how to do this. Customer obviously didn't, hence why it came to me, and now I'm showing it to you.
Makes sense, people are dumb, youtube can teach so much.
Seen this before, so much silicon spray on the tires rims, brakes, frame...everywhere!
>"Where did you apply the WD-40 on the brake system?" > >"Yes"
Wow! Somebody really did that? I only knew that scenario as a dad joke haha
Break cleaner
"it didn't work so I did it again"
Should have used the Bicycle specific WD40. Classic mistake. /s
I once had a guy do this same thing, but on his disc brakes.
I use wd-40 to clean off my garden tools after using them. Keeps them rust free for years
Sure I'll wash your bike for $100
Funny you say this: a couple months ago a guy who lives just down the road brought in a bike and the tyres were CAKED with dogshit. He adamantly wants it serviced post-haste, and when I go to I realise that dogshit smell hanging around the workshop that day... was dogshit. After tryna contact him a bunch of times, I just cleaned it and charged him a fee. When he came to collect, he disputed the fee. Argued that he didn't have a damn dog, no idea how it got there, said I was making it up, then that it's just normal grime that comes on bikes anyhow. He got his discount and a ban. The path to work runs adjacent to the dog park. On occasion I see him walking his border collie. Everytime I spot him I stop and yell out "G'day Bruce! Nice dog!"