Barbara,
It's not a waste of time, but it is a contentious issue to be sure. You'll get lots of opinions on the question. I'll add mine here.
For steel parts and those with good chrome, I use kerosene and a small , stiff, bristle brush. For alloy parts, especially those older ones that may be valuable, more care must be taken. For aluminum alloy parts that are anodized, I use warm soapy water and a brush. With liberal amounts of elbow grease of course.
Pretty simple. Just time consuming.
Scott Gabriel
Cape Cod
US
> From: Reperages Velo <reperagesvelo@yahoo.fr>
\r?\n> Subject: [CR] Secrets for cleaning dirty bike parts
\r?\n> To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
\r?\n> Date: Wednesday, January 12, 2011, 5:56 AM
\r?\n> Hi,
\r?\n>
\r?\n> It is probably a waste of time to ask this, because my
\r?\n> inability to clean parts
\r?\n> properly is probably genetic, however, I was noticing on
\r?\n> other people's listing
\r?\n> they had nice clean parts.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> I do have a distinct memory of regular comments on how
\r?\n> dirty my bike was when I
\r?\n> raced. Perhaps this is a trait of mine which I am not
\r?\n> able to get around.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> How do people get their parts so clean? Do they throw
\r?\n> them in solvent baths
\r?\n> like we used to before we understood the health risks (not
\r?\n> to mention damage to
\r?\n> any plastic parts). My dirty tooth brush sprayed with
\r?\n> wd40 and dirty cleaning
\r?\n> cloths don't seem to do the same. Is there a magic
\r?\n> cleaning fairy, or do people
\r?\n> spend hundreds of hours on this task?
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Please enlighten me, I am a little dim. I am the one who
\r?\n> didn't understand
\r?\n> until I was over 30 that the reason other women's make up
\r?\n> stayed on all day and
\r?\n> mine didn't is because they reapplied through out the
\r?\n> day, and I couldn't be
\r?\n> bothered.
\r?\n> Barbara Barrett
\r?\n> Reperages is a non-profit organization. 80 % of the 3,500
\r?\n> bicycles collected
\r?\n> each year are sent to Burkina Faso or Mali and provides 40
\r?\n> work places for
\r?\n> disabled people in Africa as well as much needed
\r?\n> transportation. Reperages also
\r?\n> provides 13 work positions for disabled and disadvantaged
\r?\n> people in France. Each
\r?\n> purchase you make supports a special project, and may be
\r?\n> tax deductable.