The Peaty’s Complete Bicycle Cleaning Kit has just landed on our doorstep and it is overflowing with bike-cleaning goodness.
Whether you’re after a self-contained travel kit, just need some new cleaning brushes and more bike wash or a gift for your favourite mountain biker, this kit from Peaty’s bundles all the basics and gives you a box to store them in.
The Box
The kit comes in a sturdy toolbox, made from recycled plastic. It has a fancy-looking aluminium handle, a bit of Peaty’s branding, and a removable small parts tray. It’s not much more than a basic toolbox, and it does what it says on the tin. It’s sturdy enough to sit on if you’re manning a feed zone and if nothing else, can also reduce the clutter on your workbench.
The Brushes
Included in this kit are a pair of wood-handled brushes — the Bog Brush and the Drivetrain Brush.
Reminiscent of the cleaning brush sitting next to your porcelain throne, the idea behind the Bog Brush is to remove the hard plastic back that clacks around your frame as you scrub. The long bristles have flagged ends to hold lather and are strong enough to allow you to scour without damaging your paint. With their afro-like spread, the bristles will fit into tight spaces around your frame.
It’s not often we get overly excited about cleaning brushes, but the Drivetrain Cleaning Brush is a REVELATION. If you’ve ever punched a cassette or chainring while scrubbing away, you will understand our excitement, and the angled head keeps your hands out of harm’s way. Looking at the bristles, the centre patch is short and stiff, so you can really give tough gunk some elbow grease, while longer bristles on either side reach down into the small gaps on your cassette and scrub the side plates on your chain
Finally, the pointed end of the brush has been shaped to fit into the gaps in your derailleur cage so you can scrape off any gunk that’s built up on your jockey wheels. This is one clever cleaning brush.
Both have handles made from waxed beech wood and laser-etched logos. While we appreciate the lack of plastic, they do absorb some water, and we wonder how they’ll stand up to years of repeated wet and dry cycles. That said, if they do begin to dry out, a bit of linseed oil should remedy the situation.
There’s also a Bamboo rag in the kit. It’s a soft cloth, and there’s really not much more to say about it.
Peaty’s Loam Foam
Peaty’s Loam Foam is safe to use on all surfaces on your bike — including suspension seals and disc brakes — and is said to be biodegradable. It has a minty, fresh smell, and the spray head has a hilariously effective foam and mist mode.
Peaty’s makes claims about organic gelling agents and active cleaning compounds, which we won’t repeat here. What we will say is the solution sticks to your bike well and does an outstanding job of making it look shiny and new with minimal scrubbing.
Included in the box is a 1L bottle, however, refills are available as concentrate and bulk containers to reduce the overall cost and amount of plastic.
Peaty’s Foaming Drivetrain Degreaser
According to Peaty’s, its foaming drivetrain degreaser is bio-degradable and is designed not to attack bearing grease. The brand even goes as far to say there are some wet lubes, which use waterproof grease as part of their formulation that you will need something stronger to dispatch. The directions say to spray it directly onto your cassette, cycle the chain up and down the gears until there is a good lather, agitate it a bit with a brush and then rinse off after a few minutes.
And by golly, it does a fantastic job!
We’re still a bit iffy about the claim it will spare bearing grease, so we’ll use the bearings on Colin’s wheels as a sacrificial lamb so you don’t have to — we’ll report back once he’s finished the bottle.
Like the Loam Foam, the trigger head has dual action mist and foam options.
Link Lube All-Weather Chain Lube
The final piece of the Peaty’s box is the All Weather chain lube. Made from a proprietary mix of oils and waxes, the chain lube is made of two parts. The clear stuff is water displacing oil, while the blue part that settles to the bottom is the secret sauce claimed to reduce friction and drive out all the garbage hiding inside the chain rollers.
We haven’t seen any independent testing from an outfit like Zero Friction Cycling to evaluate claims about efficiency and longevity, however, the Link Lube seems to last well in typical Aussie conditions (read: dry and dusty) and runs pretty clean. We’re big fans of the clear nozzle, as you can see as the chamber inside fills up before it drips out, meaning you can prevent it from ending up all over your workshop floor. Oh and it smells minty fresh as well!
