We all hate washing down our bikes after a ride and often it just doesn’t get done. IGL Coatings is a Malaysian company with a lot of experience in automotive protective coatings. It’s transferred this to the new Ecocoat Bike package, giving you everything to add a hard, durable silica surface coating to your pride and joy.
As well as stopping muck, oil and dust from sticking to your bike, Ecocoat Bike also protects against UV and repels water, which will bead off your frame. On the hardness scale used for pencil leads, the coating comes out at 8H.
According to Martin Eames, Director of IGL Coatings: “We want to take our class-leading expertise in the automotive industry and shake up the cycling cleaning industry. Instead of spending large amounts of money on numerous cleaning products, the Ecocoat Bike coatings ensure a gloss that repels dirt and grim for up to 24 months.”
Ecocoat Bike can be applied to components and wheels too
Preparation is everything and the first step is to thoroughly clean the bike with the Ecoclean Precoat product, using a microfibre cloth to wipe it down. There are a couple of small applicators included too, to help you get to the bike’s fiddly corners.
Once you’ve thoroughly cleaned the bike, it’s time to apply the coating. This comes in a 10ml bottle that’s enough to treat two bikes or double coat one. There are microfibre cloths in the kit, which can be stretched over the foam applicator block, which has handy grooves in its sides to keep the cloth in place.
Then it’s just a case of applying a small amount of the coating to the cloth and smoothing it evenly over the frame. Providing the temperature is over 5C, the coating cures in 2-4 hours, with the curing process continuing for another 3 to 5 days.
The cured coating can be cleaned with products with a pH between 3 and 9, without affecting its performance. Beware of some Muc-Off products though, which can be caustic.
One 10ml bottle is enough to coat two bikes. The gloves are to stop you getting fingerprints on your coating
The kit includes rubber gloves, not because the products are harmful, but to stop you getting fingerprints on your shiny coating before it’s dried.
IGL Coatings says that Ecocoat Bike is safe on carbon, alloy, steel and titanium frames. You can also apply it to wheels, stems, bars and other bike kit like helmets.
IGL Coatings clearly understands the cycling market; the Ecocoat Bike kit also contains a 60ml spray bottle of its Ecoclean Air product, designed to remove odours from helmets, shoes and other whiffy kit.
At £79.99, the Ecocoat Bike kit isn’t cheap. But it could be a worthwhile investment, so that when you arrive knackered after a hard ride, that post-ride clean up is less of a chore.
IGL Coatings is aiming its kit at riders who want to keep their bike in tip-top condition, with home mechanics able to treat their own frames. There’s more details and a video on IGL Coatings’s site showing you how to use the kit.
And IGL Coatings’s range includes other products potentially useful to the bike rider, including washing products, other coating products and a tar remover.
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Paul started writing for Cycling Weekly in 2015, covering cycling tech, new bikes and product testing. Since then, he’s reviewed hundreds of bikes and thousands of other pieces of cycling equipment for the magazine and the Cycling Weekly website.
He’s been cycling for a lot longer than that though and his travels by bike have taken him all around Europe and to California. He’s been riding gravel since before gravel bikes existed too, riding a cyclocross bike through the Chilterns and along the South Downs.
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