This post may contain affiliate links, which help to keep Discerning Cyclist rolling. Learn more.
Depending on which side of the fence you sit, cleaning a bike can be a chore or an hour well spent.
I’m somewhere on the fence – don’t particularly hate it, don’t particularly enjoy it. But what can say for certain is that having the right tools for cleaning a bike does make a huge difference.
Rehook (a brand that shot to fame after appearing on the BBC hit show Dragon’s Den) has added a number of cleaning products to its range of maintenance items. They include the Revive Complete Bike Care Kit which we’re taking a look at here.
Did it make an hour’s bike cleaning an enjoyable process or one which we wouldn’t care to repeat? Read on and find out…
Rehook Revive Complete Bike Care Kit
-
Function
-
Value
-
Quality
Summary
A cleaning kit for bikes to help them look great and perform at their best. Includes almost everything you need to clean a bike from scratch. Let down by some strange inclusions and an odd omission.
Pros
- The 11-piece kit is a good starter pack for cyclists.
- Degreaser performs particularly well.
- Plant-based solutions.
- Bottles can be recycled.
Cons
- Brushes aren’t great.
- A chain cleaner would be helpful.
- Chain wax seems a funny choice to include.
Rehook Revive Complete Bike Care Kit Key Features
Sold in a handy bucket, the Revive Complete Bike Care Kit from Rehook contains all that most cyclists will ever need to clean a dirty, used bike. The kit includes cleaning solutions, finishing products, brushes, sponges and cloths.
The cleaning solutions are plant-based and the bottles included in the kit can be recycled.
Obviously, the bucket that the kit comes in makes a good receptacle for water and a place to store all the items once you’ve finished.
Let’s get into the weeds of this review by taking a look at each category of products included in the kit and how they perform.
Cleaner, Degreaser, Frame Wax, Bio Lube, Bio Chain Wax and Tyre Conditioner
All told, there are six bottles included in the care kit. The universal cleaner and the degreaser are the key liquids during the cleaning, with the frame wax and tyre conditioner delivering the flourishing touches. The chain lube and chain wax are the last two products.
Kicking things off with the degreaser. I found it did an excellent job of cleaning the key areas of the cassette, chain, derailleur and chainset. The nozzle on the bottle requires a twist to ‘SPRAY’ before you can get going and once you pump the trigger a pleasing foam develops.
Agitated with a brush, sponge and water the degreaser made light work of returning a blackened cassette to shiny silver once more. Clearly cleaning your bike isn’t just simply to make it look good, it’s to help it perform too and in the case of Rehook’s degreaser you can certainly feel confident that it’s going to help the mechanics of your bike.
My major issue with this kit is the lack of a chain cleaning tool. OK, you can degrease the chain to kingdom come, but the brushes, sponges and cloths aren’t going to return each link to factory condition.
Whilst I appreciate a specific chain cleaning tool would add plenty to the total price of the kit, I feel it would improve the overall usability of the kit.
Moving onto the universal bike cleaner. Whilst it doesn’t foam as much as some other products that I’ve used in the past, it does well in cleaning key areas like the brake callipers and around the bottom bracket – sections of a bike that are some of the worst offenders of attracting dirt. That said I felt it performed best when I was liberal with the trigger. After cleaning just one bike I’d burned through 1/3 of the bottle already.
The frame wax is a more liquid substance than examples from other brands but it certainly did the trick when it came to buffing the standout bits of my frame. I managed to achieve a pleasing shine in key areas.
Similarly, the tyre conditioner helped revive my ageing Panaracer Pasela’s – although I think restoring the brightness of the tanwalls is a fading dream!
As a final application before returning the bike to the shed, I used some of the Bio Chain Lube. It’s an all-weather formula and the yellow colour helps you to identify how much you are applying. I can’t attest to the chain’s performance and longevity but I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough – for the everyday rider I’m sure it will be more than fine.
I find the inclusion of chain wax a strange option, but clearly, Rehook believes that some cyclists will use it. Perhaps removing it could make space for that chain-cleaning tool I mentioned.
Brushes
There are three brushes in the bike care kit. I have no complaints about the all-purpose brush and the two-pronged brush – both of which helped access hard-to-reach areas like the wheel hubs or the jockey wheels.
I can’t say the claw brush was the most usable, especially when cleaning my bike’s cassette. The short, stubby bristles were perhaps the only useful part of this brush. It would have been nice to use the hard plastic nose of this brush to clean the black goop that sticks to my bike’s jockey wheels but it was too flexible for that. Back to my trusty flathead screwdriver for this one!
A very minor gripe, but it might be nice if the brush handles could be a different colour. I found it was easy to put one down and lose it – although that could be due to my current state of mind more than anything else!
Sponges & Microfibre Cloths
Included in the kit are two expandable sponges and four microfibre cloths – both of which I enjoyed using. The sponge is extremely satisfying to dunk into the water and it made light work of really dirty areas, like the underside of my mudguards.
The microfibre cloths were versatile enough to cope with general cleaning, cassette buffing and frame waxing. In my experience, the cloths didn’t fray or rip.
Is the Rehook Revive Complete Bike Care Kit worth it?
Having used all the products included in the kit, barring the Chain Wax, I was pretty pleased with how well it brought up my tired old road bike.
The degreaser did the job of removing the worst grime, the frame wax brought back the shine and the tyre conditioner revived some old rubber, ready for my next ride.
At £68, the kit is noticeably cheaper than similar products from the likes of Muc-Off. That being said, I felt the universal bike cleaner wasn’t that economical and I really missed a specific chain cleaning tool.
Overall, if you have no bike cleaning products in your shed and you are in the market for a complete kit to get you started, then the Rehook bundle could be worth the investment.
Where to Buy the Rehook Revive Complete Bike Care Kit
Rehook’s bike care kit is available to buy directly from their website and Amazon. Buying from Rehook’s website, the shipping varies from country to country, but for UK customers, expect to pay another £2.99 for delivery on top of the overall £68 price.