Bikerumor Review – SpinPower Environmental Lubes, Cleaners and Bike Care

SpinPower bicycle lubes, cleaners and degreasers is a line environmentally responsible, biodegradable, non-toxic, super green bike care products.  On top of all that, they smell really, really nice and they have some great foaming cleaners that stick to the dirty parts and help really keep the cleaner where it needs to be rather than just dripping right off.

The products are manufactured by Prudent Enviro Products (PEP), which is local to us here in Greensboro, NC.  PEP has been private label manufacturing lubes, cleaners and other products for several mail order companies and brands for years and recently launched their own brand.  Besides the bike care goods, they also have an HR electrode gel and bottle/hydration pack sanitizer.

This review is Part 1 because we’ve only had a chance to test a few of the products, which is good for editorial purposes, because to try to review the full line would be a bit much.  To start, we’re reviewing the Foaming Degreaser Cleaner, Foaming Bike Cleaner, Bike Envy Silicone Polish and Natural Chain Lube, which is formulated with renewable vegetable oils.

Read “more” for pics and to see why this Foaming Degreaser is the best cleaner I’ve ever used…

I took advantage of the (slightly) warmer Florida weather visiting family over Thanksgiving to get outside and test these products.  First up is the Foaming Degreaser/Cleaner.  As illustrated above, the product comes out in a foamy consistency similar to foaming hand wash soaps.  This helps keep it in place and sets into the greasy parts without dripping right off.

This makes it especially helpful on the chain because you don’t get a lot of overspray going onto your wheel and tire…and it makes it easy to see that you have covered the whole chain.

It gets even better from there.    The lube is formulated with a “unique wetting action” that basically keeps the chain, cassette or whatever you’re cleaning wet for the duration of the cleaning.  As you scrub, the bubbles condense down to a liquid that catches the scrubbed grease and grime and drips it off the part.  This is a huge plus because with typical spray cleaners, you hose down the bike part, spray on the cleaner and then continually reapply the degreaser to keep it “wet” enough to scrub.  This stuff keeps the part wet on its own, so you end up using much, much less product.

When you’re done, just rinse the part of and it’s clean…no residue.

Before (above) and after (below) cleaning.  The old chain grease and gunk scrubbed away easily and rinsed off quickly.

As a bonus, the bottle comes shrink wrapped with their Cleaning Brush, which worked really well to get into the chain and cassette, and it did OK getting into the derailleur pulley wheels, but to be fair, they were pretty well caked with gunk.  All cleaning for this review was done without removing the wheel, chain or cassette from the bike.

I used it to clean the chainrings, too, to great effect.

Next up, the frame.  If I’ve learned one thing over the years, it’s to clean the drive train first because inevitably, the scrubbing bristles fling grease and grime everywhere (which is also why I don’t wear anything I care about while cleaning a bike…learned that the hard way, too).

The Foaming Bike Cleaner is more of a spray bottle than pump, like the chain cleaner.  So, it foams, but it’s a larger spray area and it doesn’t get the thick foam.  The pic above is taken about five seconds after I sprayed the bike and it’s already running a bit.  The solution is just to spray the upper part of the section you’re ready to clean, scrub it, then move on the to the next section.  It did tend to dry a little quickly in the direct sun, so section-by-section cleaning is sort of a must.

On my headtube, I have little clear patches where the cables touch the frame, and these buggers tend to ooze gummy residue around the edges, which inevitably gets dirty and gooey.  The Foaming Bike Cleaner did a pretty good job of getting most of it off, or at least loosening it enough to be wiped off with a paper towel.  The alternative to removing crud like that is Goo Gone, which I’m sure is much less friendly to a bike’s paint and moving parts.

Before you even think it, yes, I know my water bottle cages don’t match, and yes, I know I have a lot of headset spacers.  That’s how I roll.

The chainstay tends to get the brunt of the grime overspray both during the cleaning process and from chain slap during riding or resting the chain on it when you remove the rear wheel.  The color of my bike makes it a little hard to tell, but all the grime washed off with light scrubbing effort.  The only area that seemed to have a little difficulty getting the grease spray off was the rim surface, but a little more scrubbing effort got them clean.  My theory on this is that the rim surface has a lot of minute surface scratches from braking and there are a lot of little places for grime to stick.  Basically, they weren’t any harder or easier to clean with the SpinPower product, but the rest of the bike cleaned up very easily.

After cleaning and letting the chain air dry, I applied SpinPower’s Natural Lube.  It’s formulated with natural, renewable agricultural products and contains environmentally safe antioxidants (prevents rust) and wear reducing additives.  It’s a low viscosity lube, so it easily penetrates into chains and inner parts.  That also means it should be good for cold weather, which I tested on my first ride after application.

The bottle indicates it’s for road bikes and is good for wet weather use, and boy did I test that.  I dripped it along the chain while rotating the cranks, let it sit for a couple minutes, then wiped it off.  Surprisingly, it left the chain a little dark.  The next ride the bike took was on the bike rack for an 11-1/2 hour, post-Thanksgiving crawl from FL to NC…in the rain.

A few days later, I took the bike out for about a 70 minute hard ride in dry, sub-45º weather.  Actually, I had forgotten that I was using a new lube, but that’s a good thing…nothing seemed abnormal, noisy or slow, so it did the trick even after enduring a nasty day of sometimes highway speed rain.  Post ride, my chain looked decent (pic above, click to enlarge), but you can see the dirtying lube on the chainrings.  I should note that this is pretty normal for any lube. It’s still spinning quietly without any additional applications.

Given the “green” nature of the products and the effectiveness, I’d highly recommend giving them a try next time you need bike lubes or cleaners.  The products are currently available at Friendly Bike, and they’re in discussions with a few cycling distributors and working on their own online store for consumers outside the reach of IBD’s carrying their products.