How To Clean and Lubricate a Front Derailleur

Don’t worry if you pick up grease with the brushes and smear it on the derailleur. The degreaser you’ll be using in the next step will strip it off. However, be sure to always clean your brushes before your next cleaning task. Remove dust, dirt, and debris by brushing them vigorously against a hard edge like a concrete step. If the brushes have grease on them, swirl them around in a container filled with a degreaser that you know is safe on plastics, like Finish Line Multi.

Removing your crankset will make it easier to access your derailleur. However, the wya you remove it depends on the make, model, and year of the crankset. The process can vary in difficulty from loosening a bolt with an allen wrench, to removing a bolt with an allen or box wrench and using a specialized crank puller to remove the crank, to pressing out a cotter pin with a specialized cotter pin press. If you don’t know how and would like to give it a try, most crankset and bottom bracket manufacturers now post their product manuals online. Your local bike shop would also be happy to show you how to remove your crank, especially if you bought from them tools necessary to do so. If you don’t want to remove your crank, shift the front derailleur to the smallest chainring, then lift the chain off of the chainring and let it drop in between the crank and the frame, ideally so that it’s resting on the part of the frame that holds the bottom bracket (the bottom bracket shell). Once you’re done with that, shift the derailleur back out to the largest chainring. This will eliminate the chain as an obstruction, and open up the derailleur body, allowing you to clean inside it, and also clean it from its underside.

Protect your bottom bracket bearings by draping a rag over the bottom bracket shell and the bottom bracket spindle. Although it’s powerful enough to break down the grease in a bottom bracket if it makes it past the seals, Speed Clean dries so quickly that it generally does not make it past the seals, or even into the bottom bracket cups. However, it’s a good idea to hang a rag over the bottom bracket shell in case you miss the derailleur while spraying it down, and end up spraying Speed Clean directly at the bottom bracket. When you remove the rag, it may be moist, and the bottom bracket shell, spindle, and cups may be moist as well. It’s nothing to worry about, because what you’re trying to guard against is not moisture, but the spray itself, and any degreaser that might drip off of the derailleur. This might also be a good time to give the bottom bracket spindle a couple of turns, either with the crank or without, and check for roughness, which could indicate that the bottom bracket might need to be adjusted, overhauled, or even replaced. Keep in mind that a loose bottom bracket will also compromise shifting, and make it impossible to adjust the derailleur correctly because of the lateral play that allows the chainrings to change position relative to the derailleur.

To make sure that you lubricate all the moving parts of your derailleur, begin by locating the spring and the part of the derailleur in which it’s housed. Although it’s not necessary to lubricate the spring itself, lubricate under it as best as possible, and lubricate the points to which it’s attached to the derailleur. Then look at the parallelogram from the left side. Lubricate the pivots at the four corners of the parallelogram by injecting Extreme Fluoro directly into the pivots. Then look at the parallelogram from the right side, and do the same. Once you’ve taken care of the pivots, shift down to the smallest chainring, then grab hold of the stainless steel shift wire that runs from the shifter to the derailleur, and tug on it so that the derailleur moves through its range of motion without shifting. If you watch the derailleur as it moves, you will notice additional points of friction. Lubricate these as well.

Shift through your derailleur’s full range of motion, as if from the largest chainring to the smallest chainring, and back again. Do this a couple of times. It will allow the lube to work its way into the pivots, and at the same time drive excess lube out of the pivots so that you can wipe it off in a clean, controlled environment before riding.