Cleaning your bike: How to clean the cassette

To keep your bike fully functional, you should clean the cassette regularly. You only need a few tools and a little patience to make your bike fit for spring. In this article, we explain how to clean the cassette properly.

Instructions: Cleaning the bike cassette

To ensure that the components of your bicycle last a long time and function fully, it pays to clean them regularly. Here’s how to clean the cassette from your bike properly:

• Disassemble the rear wheel by shifting to the smallest sprocket, releasing the brake and quick release and pulling the wheel out downwards.

• Take a chain cleaner and apply it to the sprocket and the gaps.

• Let the cleaner work for a while to loosen the coarse dirt on the cassette.

• Now wipe the sprockets with a cloth to remove any dirt.

• Use an old toothbrush to clean the spaces between the sprockets again.

Tip: Remove and clean cassette on bike

If you want to clean the bicycle cassette even more thoroughly, you can remove it first to get to the components better.

• Use a sprocket puller to open the end ring of the sprocket set and thus remove the cassette from the bicycle.

• Use a coarse brush and some citrus cleaner to clean the cassette.

• Lay the sprockets down in the correct order when cleaning so that you have an easier time installing them.

• After cleaning all the sprockets, put them back on the freewheel and tighten the end ring to about 40 Nm.