Diomyx is feeding my clean motorcycle habit. They kindly sent a sample pack of their products and suggested I might like to clean my motorcycle.
My problem is that my motorcycle gets over-cleaned. As strange as it may be, I find cleaning a motorcycle – well, my motorcycle – therapeutic.
Testing Diomyx products on a clean motorcycle wasn’t going to get us anywhere, so we sent Carle to Wales for four days and asked him to get his KTM 1290 dirty.
Surprisingly, Carle didn’t see this as a problem. Four days later, with a KTM covered in insects and Welsh road grime, we gathered to test the wide selection of Diomyx products.
Snow in July
In a further strange turn of events, we decided to read the instructions. Diomyx Heavy Duty Snow Foam is a concentrate that you dilute four-to-one with water and then add to your snow foam attachment on the pressure washer.
Having covered the bike in snow foam, we did the usual wait for a minute or two to let the snow foam do its thing and then washed it off with clean water.
We didn’t cheat and start rubbing. Spray, wait, and rinse was all we did.
Result: A lot fewer flies, especially on the KTM’s screen and visibly, a layer of grime had gone from the bike.
Looking through Diomyx’s website, you also have options for a Diogold pH-neutral supreme foam wash and a Bike specific foam wash. I’m not sure I understand the difference between them all, but we were happy with our results.
Lega on the Wheels
Cleaning wheels is a pain. Lega, according to Diomyx, is a non-acid alloy wheel cleaner. This is for use on coated alloy wheels only. Although Lega isn’t an acid-based cleaner, it is a powerful alkaline, which a chemist friend tells me can be brutal if misused. A pH-neutral wheel cleaner would be more desirable but would most likely also be ineffective.
Heed the warning on the label about using Lega only on coated alloy wheels.
Sadly, the instructions also suggest some light manual labour by brushing on, agitating and then rinsing, which means I’m still searching for that unicorn of a wheel cleaning product that would save my knuckles.
Lega removed all the brake dust and road crap from the wheels but did miss a few bits of chain lube.
Result: Clean wheels with the minimum of manual labour.
Halo – For the sticky bits
Halo is a deep clean, degreasing formula, and it is very effective, especially when you put a little on a rag and use it to remove the chain lube and tar spots from your wheels.
As we had some Halo left in the dish we were using, Carle – using a painter’s nook brush – decided to see what Halo was like as a chain cleaner. This may not have been what Diomyx had in mind when developing Halo, but as chains are covered in old sticky stuff, we thought it made a solid test.
We used it neat, and as the recommended dilution is ten-to-one, perhaps it isn’t surprising that Halo proved itself as a powerful degreaser.
Result: The KTM now has a very clean chain.
Lavare
Of all the Diomyx products we tested, Lavare is perhaps the most boring. Put a little (50ml) into a bucket of warm water and wash your motorcycle.
More than just “soap”, Lavare contains a wax held in suspension with the soap thanks to those beautiful things called Surfactants, which are clever molecules that spontaneously bond with each other to help the elements in Lavare combine into a stable solution. What is there not to love about science?
Just remember to rinse the soap suds off before the sun dries them onto your paintwork.
Considering we had already used the Diomyx snow foam and Lega to clean the wheels, there wasn’t much dirt left to shift.
Result: The water was dirtier at the end than it was at the start, so we shifted something.
Ritorno
This was the one Diomyx product we tested that had us puzzled. There were parts of the KTM where Ritorno brought the black plastic back to life. Showroom shine shizzle. A deep glossy finish to what would otherwise be dull KTM black plastic.
In other areas, nothing seemed to happen on what looked like the same type of black plastic. Weird.
Result: If the plastic parts on your motorcycle are made from the “right” type of plastic, Ritorno is wonderful.
KTM 1290 Finish
The KTM 1290 we run is not ageing well, which is made worse by the KTM having a matt finish, to begin with.
A year ago, we went to ProBolt and swapped numerous bolts and fasteners for their ProBolt quality replacements.
After another winter – the ProBolt fasteners remain bright and shiny, whereas the original KTM fasteners look worse than ever. Why is this important when talking about Diomyx?
Diomyx manufactures a range of excellent cleaners. They will clean away anything on the bike’s surface, which is precisely what we want most of the time.
Using Diomyx through winter will do a great job of removing the salt and general road grime from your motorcycle. However, remember to renew your XCP, ACF50 or FS365 winter treatments afterwards.
Bottom Line
Numerous products claim to be the best for cleaning your bike. I first became interested in Diomyx following reviews from people with no reason to say anything about the product, but they went to the trouble to say how good they had found it.
Most of us have our favourite cleaning substances, and what matters is what I do when I run out of Diomyx. To get to that point, I’d better ride my bike and get it dirty again.
