Here's some recent snaps of my beautifully prepped 990 after a month of hard commuting through a British February. Looked like this many times before so I know it will all clean up with a bit of time and effort. But really, I'd rather it looked like this and have had the last thousand miles of fun and games than it was mint and shiny under a blanket in the garage and not been used.

Similar state - off to these guys this week http://allyearbiker.co.uk

Looks like you need start bulk buying muc-off and gt85

Its gotta be hard work keeping a bike clean with all that salt shit they put on the roads over there. About the worst thing in Oz is getting the flecks of melted tar and small stones off the bike. A real bastard to get out of the radiator fins if you ride through a newly sprayed area of bitumen.

I dose the whole bike every ride out with AFC50 just to keep the crap at bay. Don't have time at the moment to clean it properly all the time so it just gets a bit mucky over the weeks. All this cleans up really well when you do the proper job. But that, in my opinion takes at least a few hours minimum and I just don't have that free now.

In my experience a bike that is run regularly, even through the shit weather, is still a better fettled bike in the long run than a bike that is cosseted and not run. Those are the bikes that develop bigger problems because they are sat dormant and are a big pain when they are resurrected in the Spring.

Ride all year is what I say!

Bic, almost completely off topic here, but that is the weirdest looking tyre surface (3rd pic) I've ever seen.
Looks like it got really hot and then the soft rubber was pushed all over the place, but not from riding. How'd you do that?

holy fook that's filthy!

so you reckon you can clean all that? man, hats off to you. looks like a huge amount of work

I use my bike all through winter and it looked pretty much the same as yours. I decided to wash and polish it last weekend and it was looking great. Then on Wednesday and Thursday we had a couple of monsoon - like downpours and it now looks worse than it did before I washed it! Bloody "Great" British weather!!

Well I don't ride it through the winter, just the dry days between the rainy days and still get's almost that dirty

But then I send her to the shop and it come's like this...



Makes me smile in spite of the bill

That's the price quoted on the website - it's a franchise operation based near me in Kent - happy to contact them on your behalf if it helps.

Wow, that is cheap! I'd pay £65 for my bike to be turned from winter hack back into a summer tool.

But I also really like the Karma of cleaning bikes myself. It's the chance to really see if there are problems developing before they turn to breakdowns and makes you more intimate with your bike. Call me an old hippie but I believe in a relationship/bond with a vehicle that you are riding and that is part tool and part friend. I've never felt happy riding a hire or loan bike in anger.

But I just don't have time nowadays to spend hours in the garage with an oil rag. Some times I do but this year is not one of those periods. I just have time to pile up the miles in the rain and salt and I'd pay that every two weeks to be honest!