Guy Martin joined the bike cleaner business with his ‘Proper Cleaner’ at the end of last year and Pete has been seeing how it deals with the Scottish filth.
The bike cleaning game is a super competitive one, with folks like Muc-Off having the monopoly for many a year. It’s not quite so easy with plenty of others like WD40, Hope, Juice Lubes, Steve Peat and Flaer amongst others joining the game.
General all-round legend Guy Martin launched his ‘Proper Cleaner’ last December, a biodegradable, alkaline based bike cleaner that is shipped without water. When you buy it, you get a concentrated tablet and a bottle. You add water and, hey presto, cleaner appears.
Key Features:
- Safe to use on all parts and surfaces.
- Disc rotor and pad friendly.
- Alkaline based and contains no solvents, acids or CFCs.
- Liquid is 100% biodegradable.
- Capsules last up to 3 years.
- Not tested on Nigel the Dog or his mates.
- Designed, tested and manufactured in the UK.
- £6.50 RRP with a bottle, £5 without
- GuyMartinProper.com
Cleaners may not be the most attractive of products, but they perform a very real and important job for anyone in the muddy UK. Guy Martin’s Proper Cleaner is the latest in a growing market for such products.
There’s quite a bit different about the Proper Cleaner compared to the competition, and the most obvious one is the lack of pre-mix. The cleaner is sold as a dry tablet and you add the water yourself to make 1.5L of bike wash.
This is hailed as having a smaller carbon footprint than other cleaners on the market owing to the fact that you can simply buy replacement tablets rather than a whole new plastic bottle each time.
You can buy the tablets on their own for a £5’er or with a Guy Martin branded bottle for £6.50.
Whilst the lack of water is the most obvious feature, it’s also a nice touch to see the entirety of the product being made in the UK, further reducing the carbon footprint.
At only one hundred and fifty pence more than Hope and Muc-Off, your choice is really going to be down to personal preference. Flaer’s Revive is a personal favourite and has produced the best cleaning results, but at a tenner for the same amount of cleaner, it’s twice that of the competition. On the face of it, you’re paying slightly more money for your Proper Cleaner, but each capsule will fill two 750ml bottles, making it cheaper per litre.
Simply drop one of the capsules into the supplied 750ml spray bottle before or after adding water, mix and leave for 30 seconds and you’re ready to rock. Spray liberally about the frame and leave to soak into the muck. Agitate the dirt with a brush and you should be left with a shiny bicycle.
When testing Guy Martin’s Proper Cleaner on some horribly muddy bikes we found that it gets the job done but does lack the bite of some other cleaners. You’ll get your bike clean but you’ll need a bit of pressure in your hose and a good brush. Greasy bits like chains and cassettes will need a bit of extra scrubbing.
It’s also worth saying that other brands like Juice Lubes, Muc Off or Fenwicks sell ‘concentrated’ bike cleaner that works undiluted as a drive-train cleaner and waters down to create a bike wash. Guy’s product obviously doesn’t do that and you’ll need to buy a separate drive train cleaner alongside. Not a big issue but you loose the ‘two for one’ bonus you see elsewhere.
What do we think?
Proper Cleaner occupies a middle ground between the ‘classic’ cleaners that Hope and Muc-Off produce for less cash, and the high performance cleaners like Flaer. If you like the idea of reusable packaging and men with gert chops that fix lorries and have 1700hp engines in their kitchen for fun, then the Proper Cleaner is the one for you.
We love:
- An innovative approach to reducing plastic and packaging
- Gets the bike sparkling if you’re willing to put a bit of scrubbing in.
- Guy Martin and Rolls-Royce Merlins.
Could do better:
- Wider spray nozzle for a bigger spread.
- Not as effective on greasy drive trains as the competition.
- Lacks the 2-for-1 chain/bike cleaner combo of other cleaners.
Proper Cleaner is available direct from the man himself over on GuyMartinProper.com.
