bought the GF some nice new pink biking shorts…. thrid outing and she manages to smear the chainrings across her knee.

before giving up and taking them to the dry cleaners (which seems pretty decadent for pair of bike shorts) what can i do to get the oil out?

have tried to use some stuff that smells distinctly like petrol, but to no avail…

Massage some neat washing liquid into it (tip:use washing machine ball if you have one), leave for a bit, rinse and repeat. That got chainring grease out of my stair carpet..

I used a mixture of Swarfega and Ariel bio powder mixed straight onto stain and that seemed to work!`

in the past I’ve used Fairy liquid, rubbed into the stain prior to chucking in the wash.

Or some Swarfega if you’ve that lying around – that cleans anything 🙂

I use a blend of scud and frogs solution. Washing powder mixed with washing up liquid. The washing up liquid attacks the grease and the powder gives a scouring action. That said bike clothes should have chain grease on them.

washing up liquid has worked for me on clothes and the carpet!

Spray the stain with WD40, rub it in to solubilise the oil a bit and then put the shorts through on the hottest wash they will stand.

Stain Devils do a treatment. It’s works really well.

Swarfega here

start with the gentlest sounding option and work up – I’m betting that the pink gets partially bleached out too

I would advise WD40 initially, leave for a while, then add neat washing up liquid massaged into the stain. Leave overnight if you can, then wash in the machine as normal.

Try all of the above options at once. Then you’ll magically have the stain replaced with a nice big hole. At least you bought the right colour.

I’m betting that the pink gets partially bleached out too

That’s my worry….

Have dunked the Shorts into the sink with lots of Fairy. At least if they are totally submerged the colour loss should be equal.

If that doesn’t work I’ll attack them with Germany’s equivalent of Swarfega… And then perhaps WD40….

Cheers!

Some times it just won’t come out.

I’ve got a few casual short sleeve shirts for mountain biking, in various states.

Moral of the story, don’t buy expensive mtb clothes because they will get ruined. If you’re doing it properly, that is. 😉

i managed to lock myself out and had to wait in the bar for a few hours until the GF got home… the upside to this was that the shorts had an extra few hours to stew in the 50/50 Fairy/water mix and i’m glad to say that the oil is now (mostly) gone!

thank you!

I use WD40.

I put the straw on the stain with bog roll bunched around the base of the straw. The WD40 comes out of the straw into the stained fabric, dissolves the oil, then the bog roll soaks WD40 and oil back up. Then when it’s clean wash the shorts again normally.