How to clean your wheels because you are too munted to do anything else

So this weekend I decided to do something different and go snowboarding. I'm not very good at snowboarding, having only gone two other times. I managed to do some pretty good runs, and one of the trails we were on was 2.5 miles down. I also managed to do some really epic stacks, the worst of which was a 45-foot fall down a really hard icy bit. I smacked my head and back on the ground a couple of times and gave myself whiplash and a concussion. Yay me. (Note, the concussion wasn't as bad as the derby one, but it was enough that I had a headache and felt like throwing up and couldn't recognise shapes and letters for a few minutes.) Yuck. But what that meant was that I couldn't skate. My back was messed up and I couldn't move my neck, so the idea of swivel head was just impossible. Bleh. But anyway, by now you might be wondering what the title of this entry is about. I give you the:

Sadface pity party slightly-OCD wheel cleaning festival of one

Yeah, seriously. Well, my wheels were pretty grody and the SCRD floor is really dusty. The BAD floor isn't as bad, but they have carpets down and those are dusty too. So either way, it is cleaning time. But I'll write this up as an instructional or something, so yeah.

So, since I can't move around a lot because my neck and back are messed up, I set up a bunch of little stations all around the floor for the different things that I had to clean. Here's like the equivalent of an ingredients list (i.e. the things you'll need to clean your wheels):

Yoga mat optional, but really helpful for sore butt.

• Skate tool/bearing press/T-tool thingy to get your bearings out of your wheels
• Bucket with warm (not hot) water
• (MILD!!) dish soap
• Some small container (old butter tub)
• Paper towels
• Something else to put under the bucket (I used a crap load of shopping bags from Trader Joe's)
• Old toothbrush and sponge
• Bearing Wash
• Wash Bottle
• Bearing lubricant
• Towels
• Plastic bag (like a ziploc bag)
• Safety pin or needle or push pin

And this is how you do it:

1. Disassemble your parts
The first thing you do is take your wheels off your skates. Duh. Otherwise you can't really clean them. Use your skate tool to take your wheels off, and store the nuts in a plastic bag so you don't lose them (alternatively, you can put them back onto your skate axles). Your wheels still have their bearings in them, and you can see how dirty they are by giving them a spin. If they make a "r-r-rrr-rrr" kind of noise, clean them.

Next, pop your bearings out of your wheels. I just use the little allen key thing on my T-tool to lever the back ones out, and then the end of the T bit to push out the other bearing. Then, you'll have a bunch of wheels, and a bunch of bearings. At this stage, dump the wheels (sans bearings) into the bucket of water with some dish soap. Also, fill the little tub with water and a tiny bit of dish soap as well while you're at it.

Now, the bearings. Use your pin/needle to prise off the rubber cover off the bearings, and drop the covers into the litle tub of water. Don't use solvents on the covers because the rubber has to pretty much seal your bearings in and solvents can wreck the rubber or make it disintergrate or something pretty nasty. Once you have all of those out, you should have sixteen bearings in a pile and sixteen of those little rubber covers. PROTIP: be careful taking the covers off the bearings. I flicked one out with a safety pin and then freaked out because I couldn't find it for like 20 minutes. Ze Boyfriend found it for me and it was on the other side of the room behind the playstation. :P

2. Clean your bearing covers
My bearing covers were so covered in dust that they made the soapy water in the tub a little bit grey. Ew. All I did at this stage was soak them in the soapy water for a bit, and then take them out and gently scrub them with a toothbrush to get the dirt off, and then dip them back in the soapy water again. I did that twice, and then patted them dry with a towel (be careful not to bend the metal bits on the back) and then laid them to dry on a paper towel. You don't have to do it THAT many times, but mine were particularly grody to start with. The toothbrush helped because there's little bits of dirt that get caught in the printing on the covers, and it gets them off without wrecking the rubbery bits.

3. Wash your bearings!
By now you should have 8 wheels in the bucket of water, 16 little bearing covers drying on a paper towel, and a pile of bearings. Dump out the litle tub of soapy water, and keep the tub.

I know there are various ways to wash your bearings, and depending on how you do it different things will apply. For example, you could put your bearings all in a dish and then move them around in the dish. Or you could get a wash bottle and use that. I use the Bones bearing cleaner bottle with spacers like this:

I think the key features of cleaning bearings are agitation and a good bearing wash. So long as the bearing wash goes through your bearings and actually removes the dirt and stuff, it doesn't really matter if you clean your bearings with a fancypants wash bottle or just shake them around in a dish. But make sure that you do agitate them a lot to get the dirt out, and check every now and then for how they sound when they spin. They shouldn't really be making much noise at all. When they are like that, I guess I'd consider them clean. When that happens, put the bearings on some paper towel to dry. (I put them with the open face side down, but I don't think it really matters.)

If you use a wash bottle, you can only wash eight bearings (enough for one skate) at a time, so you'll need to redo this process with more bearing wash. Dump out your old and dirty bearing wash into the tub. Mine was all grody with tiny flecks of crap in it. I don't know how much crap bearing wash can take, but I usually wash each new batch of bearings in the bottle with new wash. I guess otherwise it's kind of unfair that some bearings get clean wash, and some get secondhand wash? I don't know. But yeah, repeat the process with the other eight bearings. DO NOT RINSE THEM WITH WATER. They'll rust, and you'll just have wasted a wash and wrecked your bearings. Boo.

When you're done, you'll have a bunch of bearings drying on paper towel and a bunch of weird chemicals in a tub. Now, I was talking to Steffin about this the other day, and neither of us feel right about dumping old bearing wash down the drain. After all, it does come with all these weird warnings about not to touch it too much or drink it or get it in your eyes or whatever, so it can't be good for sticking in the ocean. But what to do? Well, if you're using a small, disposable container, you can just put the lid on it and seal it, and then throw it in the bin. If your container doesn't have a lid, maybe seal it (cling wrap or duct tape or whatever) will work anyway and then you can safely pitch it. Remember to wash your hands when you're done fiddling with these chemicals.

Leave everything to dry on a paper towel. I did mine overnight, because you want to make sure everything is 100% dry before you reassemble them. Don't be tempted to use a hair dryer or something on the bearings and the seals; the super hot air can sometimes warp the plastic/rubber. But yeah, maybe leaving them in a warm room is okay.

4. Wash your wheels
This bit is just manual labour. I think I T-stopped at some point through some dirt or something, because my wheels were like this and all flecked with crud:

Soaking your wheels will sometimes get some of the crud off. If it's just like dirt/mud flecks, they'll come off on their own. Mine were weird caked on flecks that were stuck in the grooves in my wheels, so I had to scrub them with the scrubby bit on a sponge (but not too hard). If you do this, scrub in the direction that the grooves are in, or else you might wreck the grooves. This probably took the longest time because every single wheel I had looked like this. Also, I had little tiny pebbles embedded in some bits of my wheels (they're really squishy, so yeah) and I had to pick those out with a pin. I did each of them and let them drip dry a bit in that top bit in the bucket where you wring the water out of your mop.

After that, drain the soapy water and rinse your wheels with clean water. I didn't know how polyurethane reacted to soapy water on a long term basis, and it just seemed a good idea to rinse the in water. Then, it was onto another paper towel and then left to dry overnight.

5. Reassemble your wheels
Reassembly is pretty straightforward. Make sure everything is dry. Seriously. 

If they are, then do the whole process backwards. But before you start, put some bearing lubricant into your bearings. I like Bones Speed Cream, but you can use sewing machine oil as well, or whatever. Just don't use WD-40 for the love of derby jesus.

I think 1-2 drops suffices for each bearing. Given them a spin after you lubricate them just to get the oil distributed around your bearing evenly. If they're all lubricated, then press the bearing covers back onto the bearings (make sure the rubbery side is on the outside).

Then, press your bearings back into your wheels, and then put your wheels back onto your skates. This is why it's important to keep the nuts safe this whole time for your axles--it would really suck balls if you got to this point and then realised that you've lost an axle nut. Boo. But otherwise, I think that's pretty much it.

For quicker maintenance, occasionally wiping down your wheels and bearing covers with baby wipes is effective.

Also, iced tea looks like dirty bearing wash:

EDIT: FOR THE LOVE OF DERBY JESUS CHECK YOUR BEARINGS AND AXLE NUTS BEFORE YOU SKATE!!  I didn't, and because I'd put bearing lube in and my nuts weren't tightened enough, I was skating along at training and MY FRIGGING WHEEL FELL OFF. Yes. It rolled away and I was on 7 wheels. The bearing also popped out but I put it back in, and then everyone had to spend like 10 minutes looking for the stray nut. Awkward. Also, Pain laughed at me because I freaked out and yelled out "I LOST MY NUT!!" I didn't stack, but you can see how this could be kind of dangerous. :P