Hi,

I’ve seen a few posts suggesting that if you clean your bike with washing up liquid and hot water you should avoid getting any on the discs. Yet I’ve also seen a few posts suggesting hot soapy water is the best way to get discs clean.

So which is it???

Washing up liquid’s fine, just rinse it off, I use car shampoo without the slightest problem.

I wash rotors with soapy water all the time with no ill effects. It’s not the way to give them a deep cleanse (get rid of proper contaminants for example) but it doesn’t do any harm either and is fine for getting the normal muck off.

Just don’t ever get wd40 on your disc or pads!!…..it’s just as bad as cutting the hose…no brakes but loads of noise

Soap is not the same as fairy liquid.

I otoh would not use car shampoo as they often contain wax…

Washing up liquid contains salt, however I have no idea if this is good or bad for the discs

I’ve been washing my bikes with warm water and fairy liquid, then rinsing with clean water, for many years with no ill effects

I will always clean my disc brakes after washing using a bike specific disc brake cleaner, which removes any contaminants and returns the brakes to top condition

Washing up liquid contains salt

you wash it off straight away. It contains so little anyway, it hardly matters

i just wash my bike with water? am i missing something??

(discs don’t exactly need to shiny clean as they are self cleaning by design….)

They don’t self clean when there’s oily crap on them. Sometimes is an issue if your trails are used by MX bikes, quads, tractors etc or your roads are used by cars, trucks and so on.

fairymuff, but i find when pads are contaminated they need a burn off to be restored and not just some soap and water??

I wouldn’t have thought washing up liquid would be a big deal. Got to be careful with a lot of stuff, I wouldn’t go near my discs with most things. Household mutli-purpose cleaners for example, tend to leave a slippery film. But washing up liquid doesn’t seem to leave any residue that I’ve noticed.

It does contain salt as mentioned. Just make sure you rinse everything properly afterwards.

Turtle Wax car shampoo used on my brakes (and the rest of my bike) for many years without the slightest problem, any residue (real or imagined) will be gone after the first application of the brakes.

I think there’s some thinking that some of the pad on the disc acts as a key for further breaking and cleaning it off isn’t helpful.

I’ve used washing-up liquid plenty of times and haven’t exploded yet.