Crankalicious Pineapple Express spray wash

Crankalicious Pineapple Express Rapid Acting Spray Wash works to the same basic principle as everyone else's grime-gobbling potions. In truth, it's not the fastest acting formula but seems kind to all surfaces and, like several others I've tested recently, the end results are well worth the extra minute's marinating time.

Ours was the ready-made 1 litre version, but there's also a portable pump spray, for tour-friendly washing, or a workshop-ready 1 litre concentrate. The latter sounds perfect for making industrial quantities, or brewing more intense 'custom' derivatives.

The pineapple scent suggested a citrus base but I'm assured it's made from a 'proprietary blend of non-ionic surfactants'. Crankalicious politely declined to divulge more. For those of us who were gazing out of the window during chemistry lessons, surfactants are the active, muck-shifting ingredients.

Let us spray…

Directions say spray all over a dirty, grimy bike and allow 2-3 minutes' standing time. Then, agitate with the appropriate sponges/brushes before rinsing off with a low pressure garden hose. I give bikes a quick cold water rinse first. This helps things along a bit and, during winter, dismisses anything salty or caustic; warm water only gives the salt monster a boost.

My fixed gear winter/training bike was an obvious guinea pig since I've suddenly developed a taste for gravel type adventures. Three hundred back-road miles had left a curious mix of grime clinging to the down tube, rear triangle and fork legs. Warmer weather had also awoken my home brewed waxy frame preserve, causing it to leach out from the breathe holes.

Bike hoisted up in my workstand, starting at the bar I blasted liberally from a distance of 30cm. The stock trigger has decent pressure, although in keeping with M16 and several competitors, the mixture isn't visually that lively.

Having harvested brushes, polishes, sponge and garden hose, three minutes was up. Lashings of caked-on, gritty mud clinging to the rear guard literally fragmented, cartoon fashion. First glancing shot of my garden hose, this slithered away into the gently foaming puddle below.

> The lazy guide to bike cleaning + video

I wax all my bikes religiously, which provides a long-lasting slippery surface and makes cleaning up quicker and easier. However, results were consistently good on less fastidious friends' bikes too.

Oily petrochemical spatter needs more persuasion. This is when a bucket of warm water comes into its own. However, again in common with the M16, less sophisticated, congealed lubes shifted with only modest persuasion.

It's worth remembering these stock formulas are designed as generic cleaners, not full blown degreasers. Welcome lubricant doesn't get washed away from chains, cassettes and so on.

Start to finish, my machine was gleaming in 20 minutes flat and that included drying/polishing time. Winter's grime may prove a bit more taxing, though, and I'd like to try the concentrate, to see how it compares with Fenwick's FS1 concentrate.

Extending waiting times by a few minutes hasn't resulted in any dulling or streaking. This remained consistent across my fleet and on polished, plated, anodised or painted surfaces.

As an experiment, I swapped the OEM trigger for one with a more potent agitator to see if this had any effect. Doing so produced a thicker foaming lather, which cut through heavily impacted grime faster, reducing standing times to two rather than three minutes – welcome when working on several mucky mountain or cyclo-cross bikes.

Most formulas leave braking surfaces squeaky clean, so I wasn't surprised by some minor squeal the first few times I engaged the brakes, particularly on a disc setup.

Summary

There are cheaper products around, but a tenner seems the going rate for bike-specific washes these days. It's certainly on par with M16, though it wasn't obviously superior, and allowing for some experimentation on my part, contents are consumed at a comparable rate. Prolonged, continued exposure hasn't done anything nasty to my hands, or other areas of exposed skin either, which isn't always the case.

Verdict

Decent bike cleaner that achieves consistently good results on all surfaces