SHINY SAUCE

Over the last few years the great bike cleaning minds have been looking at a one-stop solution that’s both friendly to the environment and your hands/appendages, as well as nasty to the accumulated crud and detritus that is thrown at your bike. Nigel Coulson is one such expert. He came up with Shiny Sauce, an all-in-one-bottle, environmentally safe, biodegradable, phneutral, water-based, general-purpose cleaner, which will cut through mud, mould, algae, bird fouling, sticky pollen, dead insects, traffic film and light grease and oil contamination with ease. It can even clear baked on carbon/soot and brake dust deposits – so it says in the blurb… I’ve been using this stuff for about six months now and I love it. One tough, winter ride saw me on a previously pristine H2 SX (that’s a modern bike) and a pre-xmas jaunt saw the thing absolutely covered, wheel-to-wheel in salt and gawd knows what. With me safe in the knowledge that it could be applied literally everywhere without issue (no, I avoid brake discs…), I gave it a liberal dousing and a few minutes later hit it with the pressure washer. Yes, I’m careful to avoid any sensitive areas. The bike came up very clean indeed – I won’t say pristine, because the anal amongst us then want to go at the wheels with cloth and cleaning products. But saying that, the slung-off chain lube on the wheels had pretty much disappeared. On the whole the bike was clean and smear-free. Closer examination showed that all the road salt, dead flies and mud was off the bike. Marvellous! It’s now my go-to trigger pack of choice when it comes to my weekly bike cleaning ritual.