A clean bike is a happy bike! Keeping your bike clean is an essential part of bicycle maintenance ensuring better performance, increased safety, easier repairs, increased life of all parts of the bike, and more fun on your next ride! Check out our Bike Wash Guide: Complete Cleaning and Bike Wash Guide: Quick Wash & Lube to learn the proper techniques and make your bike look and run like new.

Read on to learn more about these two important types of cleaners.
Bike Wash: Used for general purpose cleaning of the entire bike.  Bike wash is designed to remove dirt, dust, mud, road salt, and other general grime.  However, bike wash will not remove oils or grease (see degreaser).  This makes bike wash safe to use anywhere on the bike without risk of accidentally washing away important grease.  Using bike wash frequently will make each cleaning easier and your bike looking like new.  Pedro’s bike wash is called Green Fizz.  Bike Wash can also be used to clean drivetrain parts, but as mentioned above, will not be effective as a degreaser to remove oils.  That said, if you don’t plan to use a degreaser, bike wash will be better than nothing.

Degreaser: Used for heavy-duty cleaning of drivetrain parts (gears and chain).  Degreasers are designed to be very powerful allowing them to remove grease, oils, and tough grime.  Many degreasers achieve their cleaning power with solvents.  Many different types of solvent ingredients are used from naturally derived citrus solvents to other common solvents such as mineral spirits.   Because of the solvents, most degreasers are considering hazardous and require care to make sure they are used only on metal parts and not plastic, paint, or rubber.  Pedro’s had always used as little solvent as possible in its degreasers.  Our Oranj Peelz degreaser was developed more than 20 years ago and contains less than 30% solvent content; far less than our competitors even today.  Oranj Peelz’s secret sauce is actually in its non-solvent ingredients and we’ve recently used this knowledge to develop our first fully solvent-free degreasers: Degreaser 13 and Pig Juice.   We’re proud to say, they are the best degreasers we’ve ever used, and can be safely used on any material.  That said, because of their cleaning power, they can still potentially remove grease and oil that you might want to keep, so care should be used when applying to your bike.

Oranj Peelz and Pro J are designed for drivetrains specifically. However, they can be used on other portions of the bike for stubborn grease and grime, but need to be rinsed well with water within 5-10 minutes of application to prevent damage. Pedro’s recently introduced two new solvent-free degreasers, Degreaser 13 and Pig Juice, which can safely be used on any material or finish and are better choice of degreasers for use on non-drivetrain parts.  Green Fizz bike wash is also a great option for risk-free cleaning on any material.  If Pro J or Oranj Peelz or Pro J comes into contact with non-drivetrain parts unintentionally, rinse well with water as soon as possible.