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In my personal experience, simple dish soap is perfectly sufficient to completely clean a motorcycle.
Steam cleaners cause enormous damage, keep away from them...
Remember how you all cleaned your beloved bicycle by hand, certainly not with a steam cleaner, no, by hand, with a rag, and some oil...
Machines get dirty, some people call it "patina", others call it "life".
Yeah, Simple Green is not recommended for aluminum. At the very least it will discolor it. (Same thing with Formula 409).
They have another product called Simple Green Extreme Aircraft Cleaner that is aluminum safe.
If it's just road dirt, not tar or grease, car wash soap is probably all you need. Get some bottle brushes for those tight places, and a 5 gallon bucket of this:
Rule #1: Always start with the most gentle cleaner. Only move up to something more aggressive if that doesn't work.
Any quality car wash or bike wash soap is great.
I've used Gunk for years. Always worked wonders. I had a dealership sevice guy tell someone: "I feel like I have to put on cotton gloves before I touch his bike!"
Thanks for all the tips, good info there. The issue with the engine right now is last spring when I took the bike to FuelMoto for the tune/break-in I made the mistake of renting an open trailer and it rained all the way/6 hours. Your guys are saying, rain no big deal, right? Well, this is Minnesota and Wisconsin rain, and the temp was just above freezing the whole 6 hours which means the roads were drenched in chemicals and now so are those cases. It's been washed since that day of course, but that trip really made the engine look like ****. I want to get it cleaned while it's on the lift because I'm too fvcking broken to be squatting in the driveway in the spring. I think I could get away with carwash in a bucket and a couple of stiff brushes, then using a spray bottle of water to rinse. That should keep the water at least controllable. Like @IdahoHacker suggested, I'm going to start out with carwash then move up if needed. I mean, I have until April/May before it's warm enough to ride so I have time and need the project.
Old and very old motorcycles were never washed, they were "cleaned," and kept "maintained" as best as possible, so that they could be started again one day...
Sorry, this was not another old "Indian", it was a "Mabeco", the only Indian ever produced in Berlin/Germany. Mabeco: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabeco
I would be damned if I used a steam cleaner on an antique motorcycle like this.
No one would attempt to clean an unknown painting by van Gogh with a simple broom and shovel...
Last edited by Mike1956G; Jan 10, 2026 at 10:55 AM.
These are the two I've been using. I definitely cut the S100 50-50 with water before spraying on. Otherwise it really takes some spraying to get it completely rinsed off. With any cleaner, rinsing is really important, otherwise it may leave a white residue when it dries.
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