How-to: Use the Right Cleaning Product

If you want to know the best cleaning product is for a particular job on your bike, ask a race team mechanic. Why? Two reasons. One, because they get the stuff for free, meaning they won’t steer you down the path of a cheaper product that’s not as good for the task at hand. And two, because mechanics use these products every day of their lives and know them inside out. As much as mechanics (sorry, ‘race technicians’) will let you think their working lives are all about improving engine performance or tweaking factory suspension internals, the truth of the matter is that these guys actually spend much of their time cleaning bikes and their components.

If you’re anything like the average bike owner, cleaning is a chore best done with a big ‘stick’. Y’know, a pressure washer that’ll tear through plastic, a melt-everything-in-its-path degreaser, and a bucket’s worth of industrial-strength brake cleaner. Until of course you realise that these products – if used on the wrong parts and materials – can leave your bike looking decidedly worse for wear. Using an ‘overkill’ product can dull plastics and perish rubber.

So, when it comes to cleaning individual components that are made from different materials, when should and shouldn’t you use Brake Cleaner? And what’s a far more effective product to clean things such as your bike’s wiring harness or plastic parts before fitting a graphics kit or stickers?

We’re glad you asked because former KTM Enduro Race Team mechanic, Harrison “Harry” Norton, is one of the most fastidious blokes you’ll ever see in a workshop, and he teamed up with us a couple of years ago for this short video explanation of the critical difference between two Motorex cleaning products – Quick Cleaner and Power Brake Cleaner – and where they’re each best used on your bike.

By the way, Harry moved to Europe shortly after shooting this vid with a couple of Transmoto buffoons, having scored a plum role as Tom Vialle’s mechanic on the prodigiously successful Red Bull KTM Factory Racing Team. And just last week in Italy, Tom Vialle – with Harry at his side – was crowned 2020 FIM MX2 World Champion. That means Harrison Norton now joins fellow Aussie technicians, Ryan Deckert and Wayne Banks, who’ve won world MX titles with Pauls Jonass and Jeffrey Herlings, respectively.

For more information, check out Motorex’s website.