Cleaning CamelBak Podium Bottle Caps

 I pulled a bottle out of storage and found the cap had a lot of black mold growing in the valve/mouthpiece. Even the shortest Google Safari will reveal that this is a very, very common problem with tons of complaints with the old bottle cap valves. The latest caps, which are made to come apart (and do) easily so they can be cleaned solves this problem, but creates another -  the new caps protrude deeply into the bottle itself, reducing volume, especially if you're trying to put as much ice in the bottle as possible. 

As a result, many people, myself included, still use the old caps whenever possible, and personally, I think either CamelBak needs to make a new, non-intrusive cap, or be sued for mislabeling their bottles. This says nothing about the new concave shape of the caps being an aerodynamic disaster. 

Anyway, enough griping, I'm here to tell you how you can clean the old-style bottle cap valves - with a Water-Pic, maybe, OR, an electric toothbrush, Optic White toothpaste, and a lot of rubbing. I also want to reassure anyone who is anxious about taking the valve apart that you can safely disassemble EVERYTHING in the old style valves, just be careful to warm up the silicone mouthpiece with hot water before trying to pull it off. Take pics as you disassemble if you like so you know how to put it back together.

WARNING: Be sure to work over a sink with a tight filter of some sort installed in the drain. These are small parts! 

Assuming there isn't any mold inside the valve body itself, you can clean between the large silicone mouthpiece and inner valve body with a Water-Pic. It's going to spray water all over the place, but it has enough pressure to get between the mouthpiece and the inner valve body, so it will work. You can use plain water, or mix up a 3-4X isotonic saline solution to use in the machine. 

 If you use a salt mixture, you MUST rinse the entire machine out thoroughly because if the salt crystallizes inside the pump, it's ruined. Just put hot tap water in the reservoir, start the Water-Pic, and let it run for 10 seconds. Then put the pic end in the sink and let the rest of the fresh water drain through the machine. Problem solved!

Main slide valve 2 above is Open, above is Closed.

If your inner valve is moldy, like mine was, more invasive cleaning is required. You need to remove the  valve from the cap, disassemble and clean the inner valve body.

I use either the glass part of a basting ball, corkscrew cover, or end of a plastic stirring spoon to pop the valve off the top of the On/Off twisting valve body, which you can do before or after pulling the silicone cover off. The valve body itself has 4 parts...

1. The translucent body
2. The blue squirt valve body (this is what started the revolution in bottle tech)
   
3. The translucent valve body retainer that snaps over one end of the body
4. An O-Ring the body rides against the On/Off cap slide valve
   

(More pics to come, promise, but my toothbrush battery is dead, and I have another bottle I will photograph when cleaning)

Optic White toothpaste has 3 very helpful ingredients - hydrogen peroxide, glycerine and a very fine grit.  Peroxide is a bleach, which kills mold, mildew, bacteria, and probably COVID-19. The stuff you buy in brown bottles is a 3% solution in pure water. A friend reports it was used at 80%+ concentrations to leach uranium out of ore. We're not going THERE, but soaking these parts overnight in 3% peroxide in the bottle had no effect AFAICT, so Optic White is probably a 6-10% solution. Whatever, it works.

Glycerine is a clear, oily substance that helps your fingers move deftly over these translucent, silicone parts while rubbing with the fine grit to remove stubborn black mold and the stains it creates while lubing and protecting the part.

The grit makes Optic White work like SoftScrub, but does so while protecting the silicone in a way Bleach (sodium hypochlorite) doesn't. Working with the part on a hard surface is helpful in keeping the toothpaste against the part you're cleaning, while pressing down with the toothbrush. I used a new soft-bristle Braun brush, but use whatever you like. Less pressure is usually more effective as it keeps the ends of the brush engaged, not the edges. 

All of this is done with food-safe ingredients, which should be obvious because you can put all this stuff in  your mouth and probably do all the time. The result? Bottles that are not only clean, but minty fresh! ;)

The 4 parts of the Inner-Valve assembly laid out in order

Assos Soap: Clean & Sanitized Gear

 I've been bugging my wife to find me some Lysol Laundry Sanitizer to get the stench out of my jersey's armpits, but in its stead I found some Assos Detergent I like even better, and it has, AFAICT from the Safety Data Sheet, the same anti-microbial agent. We found some Lysol, finally, but the price of that and Woolite aren't much cheaper than this.

In addition, the detergent is formulated to be kind to high-tech fabrics, and as expensive as riding gear is getting, that's become much more important. I also like that it has a very light scent, as my wife is very sensitive to perfumes used in laundry products.

I am happy to report that my clothes now come out of the washer smelling great, as my clothes are both clean AND sanitized, so no stinky armpits, nor bacteria in the chamois to start saddle sores. At $33 per liter, it's expensive, BUT, you only use 1 cap full in an HE load, so I've settled on that for each and every load. Throw the cap in with the load, or it gets to be a mess. 

A nice bonus feature is if you forget your clothes in the washer overnight they don't start to mildew. Don't mix cotton clothing with your "plastic" high-tech stuff as it soaks up a ton of water so you get a lot of residue in all the water left in the cotton. Wool socks seem to be OK, as they don't hold much water, especially if your machine has a good spin cycle. 

You'll have to decide if $33 every cycling season is a reasonable price to have perfectly laundered riding gear, but for me, it's been wonderful, so I'm giving Assos an A+ on this one. It's also sold in 300ml bottles if you want to dip a toe before plunging in. BikeTiresDirect had the best price I could find.

Cheers!

PS: Just a short update, I've struggled for years with pimples under my bib shorts, especially where riding in the drops or aerobars folds them into my skin near my waist. Happy to report they are all but gone after just a month. Some of these were so persistent, the folds always occurring in the same place, they produced small scars. Those pimples are GONE!

TMI, I know, but if you've tried every imaginable thing, and obsessively cleaned your skin, this is a BIG deal. Njoy!

PPS: I find I have to use 2 caps full now, as whatever is turning my armpits into Super-Fund sites has apparently mutated into something more resistant. I find this somewhat alarming, but for now, will keep using the product. I promise to report growing a 3rd Eye or something nasty if it happens, but for now, this soap is still the best thing going.

Shimano Ultegra R8000 L-Shifter "Fail"

 I've run into a problem with my L-Shifter, the one that shifts between the big-ring and small ring on a 2x11 gearing. Given how hard it is to buy these, vs the right shifter, I think this is a common problem. 

It's very hard to examine the internal workings of the ratchet mechanism, but it behaves as though the "H" ratchet tooth's back-side is shaped differently somehow, so that when you shift past it and then relieve when letting the shift paddle fall back, SOMETHING inside the shifter malfunctions, or at least, acts in an aberrant manner. My guess would be the half-round bit that straddles the ratchet and implements the 1/2 step relief back to H- gets stuck or hung-up because the shifter then refuses to shift from H- back to H.

The problem is hard to define, but easy to fix once you are aware of it. Here is the explanation I sent to my "Gear Head" at Competitive Cyclist where I bought my Pinarello. They sent me a new set of shifters 2nd Day Air at their own expense because Shimano is so backed up it would have taken 2 months. For some reason, they sent me a Di2 shifter set, which is hard to reconcile with the explanation below, but I give them an A for effort, and the Gear Head thing really is nice in situations like this, as I already have a return label to send the Di2 back.

The Shimano Ultegra R8000 L-hand shifter has developed an odd shifting problem.

As you probably know, there are 4 shifting positions for this shifter, let's call them

H
H-
L
L-

I should be able to shift from any of those into any of those, and could until a few weeks ago. Now, however, I can shift from L to H, and relieve back to H- alright, but once I am on H- I  cannot shift back into H. I have to drop down to L, and often L- to shift into H. More and more now I cannot even shift from L to H. I have to shift all the say down to L- in order to shift into H. Otherwise the shift lever simply refuses to budge, making this a Go/No-Go failure.

I removed the cover from the shifting mechanism on the shifter (oddly, the retaining screw was ~ half unscrewed, so maybe the assemblers had encountered some problems with this too) and inspected it. I can't see any debris, broken wire strands, grit or dirt in the mechanism. In fact, it looks very clean. I also inspected the front derailleur, and it too looks like it's in perfect shape.

There is no reason I know of why this mechanism should be failing, and I don't think there are any "user serviceable parts" on the shifter, aside from cable replacement, so I have to think something inside the shifter was defective upon mfg and the shifter needs to be replaced.

After I sent this, I did another Google Safari, and after about an hour came up with just one poorly described definition of the problem and solution, so I think this needs a little better airing.

It appears that Shimano designed the shifter so the H-Stop set-screw needs to stop the travel of the cage, NOT the shifter's cable travel. To me this is an appalling design flaw as even normal cable stretch - which is what happened in my case - will eventually overcome the barrel adjuster's ability take up enough slack/tension (it really IS tension, not travel in this case, as the cable must NEVER be even a tiny bit slack when over the big ring)

My RX is to back the cable tension adjustment screw on the derailleur AND the barrel adjuster off as far as you can to give you as much slack as possible to get as much cable slack as necessary, and then unscrew the cable clamp screw and pull up all the slack you can before tightening it back down. The little plastic thingy is a bit of a PITA but does make a nice aero-clean bit when all assembled properly again.

Adjust the H & L stops to arrest travel, and use the cable tension screw (put some LockTite on it too, another appalling oversight on Shimano's part) to tweak the derailleur position.