Finally bought my first Harley today 2000 softail heritage and after a ride in the trailer from sydney up the coast its covered in shit.  my question is what do you guys use to clean your bikes, what polish do you recommend and any little cleaning tricks you have found along the way. The beer fridge is full so i have no excuse for not spending tommorrow cleaning my new toy ( unless i fire it up and piss off for a few hours 

autosol,or mother's for alloy.
mr.sheen for everything else. 500 ml tigger bottle better value than the aerosol. (purple plastic tigger bottle).
cotton cheese cloth
or chux super wipes.
cotton bud's . all supermarket stuff. all those fancy auto type spray's are over priced . marketed to the non thinking people. cleaning is cleaning right?
one of ya granny's plastic flexable knitting needle's.
the knitting needle, is so you can wrap the rag on the end, spray with mr sheen or , metal polisher's mentioned. to gett to the hard to get to places.
ipod/mp3 player, so ya can annoy the nieghbour's with ya crappy singing ability.
 

have fun, grumpy.
 

"ÏN THE DAY, MY DAY, AND BY GOD IT STILL IS MY DAY"

A little while ago I bought a pressure cleaner, just a cheaper Karcher one from Bunnings. We have a few cars & 6 bikes, so lots of cleaning is required now & then.

 I use the "truck" wash liquid from the service stations. they all seem to sell their own brand. Bunnings sell a huge variety of various shaped brushes, you could clean every nook & cranny on you & your bike with at least one of their brushes. I use the pressure cleaner to spray on the wash liquid (it has a little tube you put in the container & it sucks & mixs the detergent), do some brushing if you need to. Then pressure clean the bike. But be careful to not hold the nossle close to anything that may get damaged by the pressure, like bearings, fork seals etc. Then I wipe off with a rag & the bike looks great again.

It is quick & easy to do so. if you do it often it does not take much to do & the bike always looks clean.. But be real carefull these pressure cleaners can do damage. I bought the cheap one so that it does not have too much pressure, so when the wife does it even if she is not too careful (which she won't be) then she cannot do much damage. If you hold the nossle at least half a meter from anything you should be ok.

Here's what I do. It's a little overdone (I have anally retentive road king obsessive compulsive disorder), but the results are pretty spectacular.

Obviously every step is not for every person, but like all things on here, you pick and choose that which is applicable to you...

1. Rinse well with a garden hose under low pressure. The wetter the bugs and dirt are, the easier they'll come off.
2. Spray all engine areas and grime with "Auto Glym Motorcycle Cleaner". Wait 30 secs or so for it to penetrate (it acts as a very mild degreaser).
3. Using a lambswool mitten, wash the entire bike using a capful of Meguiar's Nxt Generation car wash in a bucket of warm water. You may need to use a sponge for the engine, so that your mitten stays grit-free. Rinse off using the hose.
4. Spray the wheels and tyres with Armor All Wheel Cleaner and allow to penetrate. Brush the wheels/spokes/hub with a wheel-cleaning brush. Repeat with a sponge/carwash if necessary.
5. If you have whitewalls, rub them with a brillo pad. Use as much Armor All Wheel Cleaner as you need to, particular for built-up dirt. Be careful not to rub your wheels with the scouring pad or they'll scratch. When your happy with the result, rinse off.

6. Blow-dry the bike with an "Air Force Blaster" heated & humidified blower/dryer. You could use a clean leaf blower or just chamois it though - up to you.
7. Using a microfibre cloth, dry any bits that the blower might have missed. Your bike must be dry before proceeding to the next step.
8. Using a little foam applicator pad, apply a sparingly thin layer of "Meguiar's Motorcycle Liquid Wax - Wet Look" to all chrome surfaces. Do not do this in direct sunlight. Polish off with a microfibre cloth. Obviously this will be a labour-intensive task, but your chrome will sparkle.
9. Using a different applicator pad, apply a sparingly thin layer of Meguiar's Nxt Generation Tech Wax Paste. Polish off with a microfibre cloth.
10. If your whitewalls are still grubby at this stage, use an old rag dipped in thinners to dissolve the grime.

11. Use tools at your disposal for hard-to-reach areas. Cloth over the end of a knitting needle is a good idea. I personally use a chopstick.
12. Wipe any glass (mirrors) or Lexan (windscreen) with a good window cleaner. I prefer the Meguiar's product. NEVER use Rain-X on Lexan; it will cause an irreversible cloudiness on your windscreen with repeated use.
13. Dress the leather or vinyl on your saddle bags with a good quality leather product. Harley's version is very good, as is RM Williams saddle dressing.
14. Free up 3 -5 hours of your time to accomplish the aforementioned, allowing for several beverages to be consumed throughout.
15. Ride the fuck out of it and have a nice day...

FWIW, I'm with robo61 - I would never ever use a chemical like Mr Sheen on paint. And even if you think that all of the above steps are a wank, then as a minimum you owe it to your investment to remove those bugs asap after a ride. Their guts will damage your Harley's finish.
 

Yep ... horrible shit .
 

Dohh!!

For sale: 3 tins of top shelf Mr Sheen

If you have a Deniem Black bike like I have, heres what I do.

1. Fill a bucket with hot water, as hot as you can handle.

2. Wash bike in with hot water and a micro cloth, no detergent required, do a section at a time including the chrome,

3. To aid drying I use a micro or 2 to wipe of all moisture and this includes the chrome.

4. Polish chrome if desired.

Very easy to maintain these Deniem Black bikes as no polishing is required

Have a read on this site...........whether you buy their product or not, the info is invaluable for the fastidious owner (or should that be obsessive compulsive)
www.bowdensown.com.au          I will be at their open day on March 7 and will post some pics in the gallery.

Riders in the US of A would be interested to hea about MrSheen farkin your paint job..... they have been using "Pledge" for years which is the same ch1t as MrSheen....

I use MrSheen for interim cleans, but wen it needs a wash CT18 truck wash (ph neutral and bio-degradable) in a spray bottle does the job. Spray on, leave on for 10 minutes (or as long as you want to up to 24 hours) and hose off, followed by hi volume air blow dry, then wipe with chamois in a few spots to get water spots off. Takes about 45 minutes including the 10 minute soak time for the CT18 to work.

Then back to MrSheen in between......followed by 12 monthly McGuires 3 step clean, polish, wax treatment.

(late edit to correct smelling pistake-- change 100 minutes to 10 minutes)

Can someone please enlighten me as to why not to use Mr Sheen on paint.

Harley Dealer told me to use it 5 years ago & been using it for 5 years on the Fatty, 8 years on the Ducati & after 12 years of using havn't noticed a single blemish on paint

Cheers

Mal

There's fuck all wrong with it mate, i've been using it for 13 yrs on my bike. Fact is, it will only cause some issue if you need to repaint your tins as the sillicone will affect the new paint.

Most quality paintshops will always strip the old paint anyway or at the very least if they are just applying a fresh clear coat will always clean the tins thoroughly with Prep-Sol etc, as most waxes etc need to be removed anyway.

I'm suprised no-one has mentioned using a ClayBar. Claybar removes all the polluntants off your paint work and leaves an extremely smooth surface for wax to be applied to.

It is all personal choice when it comes down to it.  For me i have chosen wax from natural sources over the silicone. Silicone is a chemical which is made in the lab, so to speak. Most people would not care as long as the bike looks good.  Main thing is we have freedom of choice.  The following article from somewhere on the net.
 

What about Silicones?

The use of silicones as used in certain types of liquid polishes are much more durable than wax polishes. Silicones were first introduced in a liquid polish for autos, aeroplanes and boats in the mid 1950's. They were easy to apply, had a greater depth of shine and endured many times longer than waxes. Silicones had a lot going for them but they had drawbacks that created nightmares for paint shops. Silicones "crosslink" and drift" onto the painted surfaces and penetrate into the pores of the paint. It is this penetration that has given paint shops so much trouble. Every time the surface is washed, it will drive the silicone deeper into the paint. It will continue to "drift" down into the prior coats and eventually into the body metal. As the silicones penetrate or drift further into the painted surfaces, they leave the surface exposed to the elements just as waxes do when they melt or are washed off with a detergent.

Once silicones have permeated the paint, the primer and the metal, a painter cannot get his paint to properly adhere. The silicones make the new paint "foam" which causes minute pockets of air in the newly applied paint. This is called "entrapment." As the paint is curing and the solvents are flashing off, the tiny pockets of air will slowly work their way to the surface and create what is called a "pin hole." Sometimes these entrapped air pockets cannot reach the surface before the surface has cured, and they become entrapped. Hence, three months later, the vehicle is left out in the sun and bingo! The air bubble expands from the heat; the paint softens, and out comes the entrapped air..creating more pinholes! Depending upon the quality of the formulation, silicones will hold their protection for approximately 6 to 12 months. Their demise eventually comes from their ability to drift. They will drift all the way to the base metal!