Tested: Dirtwork Bike Spray sample

Dirt Work UK are on a quest to produce the perfect bike cleaner, forget that weak watery rubbish most current bike cleaners are. These guys are developing a premium product that actually does the job properly At the moment they're doing a lot of testing, and my Kona Jake the Snake was lucky enough to get to try it out.

The sample arrived yesterday and my cross bike had a nice crusty layer of mud welded to it from Sundays race in Amlwch so was in desperate need of a bath. As it happened the sun decided to show its face today so I decided to give the stuff a go. I got a nice sized bottle of the green spray so applied liberally across all of the bike. The first thing that hit me was the smell... quite pungent and chemically, proving that it's pretty concentrated stuff as I don't think it's a parfum smell. Perhaps something to mask it a tad might be nice... apple and cinnamon for the Christmas season? Anyway here are a few pics of what my bike looked like before, nice and dry, welded on mud:

Before: Pretty grubby, and very crusty (click for larger image)

So after giving it a good spray I left it for a couple of minutes to do it's thing. Nothing particularly interesting happened within these two minutes, no frothing, no noise, no melting etc etc. Once that was over I gave it a rinse with my hose, which I have to add is pretty feeble when it come to power. The mud seemed to come off real easy so the spray had definitely done it's job, if I'd sprayed it without adding any chemicals not much would have happened for sure. I then took a few more pictures from phase 2 of the process:

Not much mud left at all, just slightly brown marks where it had been (click for larger image)

Phase 3 involved giving the bike a wipe with a damp cloth to get rid of the brown marks that the hose hadn't quite washed off. This is where my bike started looking super orange. All the brown marks wiped off with ease and even black scuffs that I hadn't been able to get off before had faded. Nice! So once again I took a few MORE photos of what my bike looked like to finish...

Almost like new, just some mud on my tyres and a greasy chain to work on (click for larger image)

All in all this stuff has done the job big time. The bike looks super shiny and super orange. Comparing it to other sprays like it that I've used this stuff is significantly better, you can tell it's a lot better quality chemical wise and I can see it doing well in the MTB and Cyclocross worlds, or any other sport involving mud and machinery. I would have liked to give it a go on my carbon fibre road bike, but apparently they don't know if it's safe to use on carbon yet... and I don't want to be the one to find out! So I'll just have to stick with one bike looking funky fresh for the moment. Best of luck to Dirt Work with the rest of testing, I hope it all goes well and thanks for letting me try it out.