The majority of people who own a bike understand the importance of proper chain maintenance and that a clean, well lubricated chain makes your bike happy and thus providing a better riding experience. However, there are those of us who are reluctant to spend an eternity cleaning our change with an assortment of brushes and ending up with the chain that is still gummy, I’m, exaggerating of course, but manufacturers are the need for a product that can swiftly clean your chain.

Introducing the Park Tool cyclone I got this product off Chain Reaction Cycles for about $25 Canadian I had always wanted one, so I decided to take the plunge. Hon not intended. The tool was a lot more compact than what I imagined and seems to be made of very solid material. Perfect for those who like to drop expensive items inside the cyclone, are a variety of scrubbing brushes for getting in every nook and cranny of your chain in a small magnet each for gathering up metal shavings, the product is fairly lightweight for all you lately needs and, as I mentioned is quite small.

The instructions are lacking, but hey I’ll figure it out. If not Google the that’s onto your chain, and you can begin using the tool, I was using a citrus degree to that been diluted with bottled water, no reason for the bottled water. It’s just what I had on hand I find it rather enjoyable using the cycle I’m a bit of a frequent that come to the Colinas and function of my chain and the tool feels like it’s doing a great job. The action is very stout and feels satisfying in your hands.

Moving on I spend about a minute with the cyclone and left it to sit for a few before devs on my bike with a car, because now there is not a promised maximum amount of time. You’re supposed to spend using the cyclone to achieve mad fun. Leanness geez, I can’t believe I got that one one take I chose a minute which would be an absurdly short amount of time if I had been using just brushes. I can honestly say that I was impressed with the cyclone, even though my chain was not perfect.

It shaved me a good chunk of time that it can be used for riding I’m, making more content for you guys. There were a few spots that had grease left over but, like I, said, I only spent a whole 60 seconds cleaning the chain, so I didn’t use a cyclone once and then solidify my opinion. Over the course of a month, I used a tool and I can say that I was extremely happy with my purchase. Shifting improved and my bike was a lot quieter. I was able to get my chain perfect after using the cyclone for about three minutes.

This is well worth the money and I would highly recommend you get one for your toolbox. The park tool cyclone chain cleaner, is one of the most user-friendly convenient tools. I have ever use and spare parts are available. If you love using it as much as I get it guys.

Chain, cleaner, it’s being filled up with cleaner or we can do it fill it up. You know just click it on then start back I. Do this process repeat this process about three to four times by that time the chain is pretty clean, I run a couple of flushes of water three and then pretty much dry, the chain off, and it’s pretty straight forward. Job exhibit. When you do what I did then and the young you can see from here, just the state of the water and it’s it’s clearly removing all the grease and also and the oil and depth from the channel.

These are the park tool bike chain model, but it broke. I thought this is a replacement, but I, don’t think that’s gonna work either. So let me take you through why this one broke and the things that I think will keep this from being a good replacement. This is the Park Tool cm five-point cheer. You can see it just there. It’s the consumer model. I use this once a week, sometimes more, but at least once a week and here’s how it works. It’s got a top that comes off like this there’s a brush up there that spins freely.

This is the same brush right here, and this is a slightly different brush. You bring a chain through here and then you put the top one like this and the bottom secures to the top. With this latch. You flip it around like that and that’s where the first problem comes in. You can see there are a network of spider cracks if we get the glare off there, bunch of spider cracks down here and that’s because this process puts a lot of stress right there. This is not the original screw. There was a pin in there that was like riveted in some way that fell out a long time ago, and you can see that the other the other latch is here, because that one has also just broken, and this one actually I think has yeah.

It has worse spider cracks, so you can see the problem there, and this is just due to choosing a plastic. That’s not strong enough for the dimensions of these features. There’s a lot of force going in there and not enough plastic, and so it cracks and it’s a it’s a brittle plastic. So that’s a problem. The brittleness of the plastic also leads to a second problem which is I dropped us the other day and it cracked everywhere. There’s a big crack here. There’s a big crack here. It goes all the way down.

There’s a magnet, that’s supposed to go there, but that part broke also I, don’t know it just seems like this plastic is too brittle for this application, but as you’ll see when we compare it to this other one, it does have some strong points. So, let’s come back to that. This is the professional model. This one is the CM 25 professional chain cleaner. It has a housing made from aluminum, it’s a cast, aluminum looks like a die cast and maybe powder coated blue. Let me show you a couple things you can’t see on the website.

The first one is the way the handle attaches. The handle attaches right here with a little set screw. One one set screw, let’s point with something a little smaller there’s this set screw right there and the problem with that set it down. So you can see is that the handle Wiggles it pivots about that set screw. The set screw does a great job of holding on to the the main case, but there’s a bunch of slack bunch of slop at the edges here, and it allows this to rotate, and this is I just just got this and unpack this, and that is not gonna get any better with time.

Let me take this off and I’ll show you why that is so. I’ve loosened up the set screw, so the handle can can move now, and you can see the problem and the amount of lateral slop that it’s got if this were tight and the set screw was just holding it in then that would be just a fine design, but it’s not the set screw has to hold it in, but also try to restrain this this other slop and because there’s only one, it’s not able to do it. If there were two it would you okay, but there’s only one. One way to tackle this kind of design problem is to use instead of a square.

If we look at this piece of the handle here, you can see that it’s square. This is at a 90 degree angle with that, and there are some small champers here, but the the inside surface of this of the case I’ll show you what I mean right right in here. That does not have a corresponding chamfer, and so that means that this, when you put this in here, it doesn’t wedge itself in there, it just rattles around and that’s actually where this one works pretty well. This handle is it’s not a square? It’s a it’s a triangle.

The top is slightly narrower than the bottom, so that when you slide it in here that wedges itself in place and holds it firmly, despite a lack of any fasteners at all that that has worked great, and so if this one were improved with some kind of taper. That would that would handle this problem and allow one set screw to hold it in place. Once we open it up once we open it up, the the consumer model uses individual brushes, but this one doesn’t tip over, but this one the brushes come out as a cartridge, and so there’s the second problem.

This sponge falls right out and this cloth the chain the chain moves through this way, and so it gets scrubbed and then presumably, this sponge and cloth dry. It dry it out before it goes outside, but the sponge doesn’t stay in there. So it’s gonna, you know, fall out and be lost immediately and the reason it doesn’t stay in there is that it’s it’s too short. If it were, if it were a little bit longer, then it would stay in there. The sponge is held between this cross bar and that cross bar, and you can see daylight on both sides, so it just rattles around in there and there’s nothing to hold it.

Sometimes you get lucky in it and it stays in for a minute. It’ll just fall right out. The same is true on the bottom, but you’ve got gravity helping you out. In that case, this this cloth is really a pain that comes that comes out quickly too. This design is a little weird, it doesn’t look like I, don’t know the top and the bottom cloth retaining features are designed separately like they’re, not the same, and that’s a little weird, because the bottom cloth pertaining features actually work pretty good, because you can see the cloth pokes through goodway’s, and so it’s got good.

It’s got a good hold on there and the reason it can do that is that the cloth features on the bottom are closer together. They are on the top, let’s zoom in so you can see what we’re talking about. So we put these side by side. You can see that so this one is the bottom. It’s got the big brush. You can see that they’re closer together. If we line up the left-hand cloth slot, then you can see the right hand slots don’t line up and I’m surprised by that it would have expected them to use the same.

You know the same features on top and bottom yeah. Part of the reason why they didn’t is that this one’s getting pretty close to the end, so you have to kind of incorporate it into this. This end feature: ok, fair enough, but they you know the the top handles that problem differently and seems like the bottom could have as well. It would be more effective to do that, and the second kind of weird thing is that the width of the slots are different, so notice that the left hand cloth slots. The top slot is wider than the bottom slot.

The bottom the bottom slots match each other and the bottom slots match the top right slot. The top left slot doesn’t match, so the cloth just falls right out. That’s that’s pretty weird um yeah, so I don’t know in. In my view, that means that those those drying features aren’t aren’t very useful. Maybe maybe this sponge will stay in, but there’s there’s all this other stuff, that’s gonna. Either these will get worn out right away or more likely, they’ll fall out and this one will fall out and get lost too.

So that means that about I don’t know half the width is is not very useful and the handle Wiggles so I I’m not sold on this um on this pro version, I think that the case will hold up just fine, but I think the guts are not are not very useful and this consumer version is made out of a plastic. That’s that’s too. Brittle they’ve changed the design recently. This is the 5 2 and they have now the 5 3 available. But the plastic is the same. It’s gonna have the same cracking issues, at least at least from dropping, if not from the end latches, which, which they’ve also changed so I’m I’m feeling like Park, doesn’t make a tool, that’s built for me, a guy that you know I’m just a regular guy, but I use it pretty frequently once a week, sometimes more and I’d love to buy something from them.

But I don’t think either of these is the right tool.