I think @mcneese.chad was getting at this in his original reply, but if you’re having corrosion issues on your bike you probably need to upgrade your fan situation
All this talk of lubricants and towels and sweat catchers is treating the symptom not the cause
If your sweat is dripping off of you such that you have puddles of it on the ground after a workout you are best served by improving your cooling situation. Investing in some high end fans will cost about the same as a new front mech and be a permanent solution
That is exactly what I was thinking. Big drops or pools of sweat are a sign of insufficient cooling. He mentioned he thinks his setup is ok, but I wonder if it could be better?
That’s not the case for me, and it’s no accident. I have 3 fans and pull air from a window to cool. I rarely, if ever, have more than 5 drops of sweat on the floor.
Funny I had this happen on me years ago with a Roubaix I rode. The brifter went three times on account of the shift force rise. Eventually I traded it in at the LBS. Then noticed similar things on the newer bike. The culprit for me was the cable guide on the bottom of the BB housing. The splash from my bottles would run down there and the gunk would accumulate under the cable. I wonder if you are experiencing the same thing. I solved it by putting a big blob of silicone grease there. Keeps all the moisture away from that area.
Never mind just caught up on the thread. It is the shifter itself. Old school solution soak it in a mug of diesel. Then regrease the springs and pivots. I use a big old syringe as a grease gun. That might bring it back to life but it doesn’t help your root cause. If I thought it was sweat splash I would just tie a rag around the top of the shifter for the indoor duration. IT would serve two functions. protect the shifter and verify the root cause. If it isn’t wet at the end of a session then the cause is elsewhere.
Also concur on the WD40 remarks here. It is an excellent degreaser as well as a water displacer but a very poor lubricant: it is designed to be volatile and to adzeotropically remove the moisture. So it won’t hang around for long. If you are going to use it on the derailleur I would use the Silicone version. At least that will leave some useful residuals.
OMG…that sounds awful to me. I really dislike having a lot of air blowing on me. I only use a standing fan on low and it is positioned about 3-4 feet in front of me.
But I full recognize that I am the outlier on this issue…
This makes me think I might be higher on the sweat scale than I previously thought, or perhaps you’re very low. I did Brasstown yesterday (90 minutes endurance) and I had 2 fans on me the whole time. The fans were just on medium because it was around 70 degrees F in the garage. I felt relatively comfortable the whole time (and even a little chilly near the end when my wife opened the garage and the temp dropped to around 68F) so I never turned the fans past medium. When I finished I wouldn’t call the sweat on the floor a pool, per se. It was more like a layer of sweat. It was certainly more than 5 drops.
Like most garages mine is not climate controlled, but it is insulated. I live in the south so in the summer it’s common for it to be between 80-85 degrees F. After sweet-spot workouts in particular there is commonly a large pool of sweat on the floor despite the fans running full blast.
I use an XPOWER “air mover” style fan (which is very similar to the Lasko fan that’s often recommended on the podcast) and also a 24" Patton axial fan. Both are up off the floor sitting about level with my top tube and both are pointed directly at me. At full blast they move a lot of air. They blow so much sweat off me that the front door of our garage fridge which sits about 30 inches a bit behind and off to the right of my rollers has lots of small rust spots where sweat has landed.
As noted often on the podcast, insufficient cooling reduces performance. However, I’ve seen steady (albeit slow) gains during the entire time I’ve used TrainerRoad. I’m currently around 130 lbs. with an FTP of 254 (around 4.3 watts/kg). Even in the winter when the garage is much cooler I still sweat enough to “layer” the floor.
That sounds like something that would appear on the “Hack or Bodge?” segment of the GCN Show, but the idea has merit nevertheless. Maybe I could come up with a kind of carbon fiber “sweat fender.”
I didn’t start using the WD-40 until the derailleur had already stopped working. Liberal application of the WD-40 plus lube has gotten it back into working order.
I am actually at least a mid level sweater. I can leave large pools with poor cooling and plenty of sweat in clothing and dripping off my head when outside.
I am in a basement with heat and air con, and window access. I can keep the room 60-70 deg F most of the year. So my top end is lower than your max for sure, which I know would feel worse and push my cooling to the limit.
