Bonneville America Forums Forums Technical Forums General Tech Keeping stainless parts shiny

I live near the ocean, and the humidity, combined with salt, is terrible for any steel parts.

I am pretty sure the chrome will stay as it is for a long time, but the forks and other tidbits have already showed signs of staining/rusting.

One of the locals here said to smear a thin film of oil on the parts to protect them, but it "glues" dust like flies on sugar!

So far, I have wiped the forks with a silicone (spray bottle on a rag, wiped the parts). Silicone is not as sticky as oil.

Any other products I could use to protect the steel on my bike?

Try Simichrome maybe?

Well, you don't have that many stainless parts on your bike (fork covers). If you did, they weather very little. It's the aluminum you have to watch after, primarily the fork sliders. Any aluminum polish will work (Mothers, Meguiars, etc.) I usually put a little wax over my polished aluminum bits. No problems here, but I don't have that kind of salty air. They do make a protective coating for polished aluminum, Caswell sells it, probably Eastwood as well.

The chrome bits will weather pretty fast too even far from your salty air I have to keep at it. Stainless will not weather much at all and is easy to keep up as long as it's quality stainless. I have had a particulaly tough time keeping the chrome tube in front of the cyl. in good shape. Al is right about the aluminum, that will weather fast, along with any unprotected steel (not stainless) parts.

So, I guess that my idea with silicone is not the best.

I will try to hunt down some metal polish that leaves some protective coating. I remember finding a shop selling Autosol.

Also found a tube of Simichrome on the local Yahoo auction site. I guess that will be my best bet.

Thanks!

Don't use Autosol on chrome or polished stainless... it's an abrasive polish that'll dull them. It should be fine for aluminium though.

The "better" cookware stores carry various specialty cleaners for stainless pots and pans. It works great, just wipe it on, wait and wipe it off.

I should stay away from stuff like "Brasso" right?

I believe I remember cleaning up my mom's copper pans with it a while back, and I believe it left some scoring circular marks from my "elbow grease".

look for stainless cleaner. most i've seen is in a spray.

Staintune Pipes supply a special Stainless Steel spray cleaner but I'm not convinced yet it is any better than anything else that can remove the grime without scratching.

Just as important I think, is the cleaner leaving some sort of protectorant (is that a word) so cleaning is easier anyway.

In other words soap and water will clean S/S very nicely and I haven't actually used the spray much anyway. I've also used kero on my pipes to wipe off excess oil from the chain and then used soap and water etc etc.

So IMHO there's no magic special formulated product for S/S. My pipes are just the same as when I bought them using all sorts of standard cleaners.