My weekday training is indoors year round. Just seems to be my only option with my work schedule and living in an area where cycling is difficult even at a recreational level, much less training. I suspect all that frequent this thread for training have experienced the amount of sweat generated training at level even with cooling fans. Even during the winter when the room is cold and fans are running I leave a puddle at the base of the trainer or rollers.
The struggle has been the amount of serious damage to my bikes. I recently sold my first road bike a 2004 Felt F4 and before selling the bike as consignment at a local shop I did some cleaning. Surficially the bike look rather clean, but all sorts of damage was done to components. Bolts on the stem were almost completely siezed, cables and housing had to be replaced, the stem had to be replaced as it was badly corroded internally, as well as, other bolts and connections were siezed. Got the bike cleaned up and it sold for a good price.
Current day, my six13 has become my backup rain/indoor trainer bike and just in a couple of weeks the clear coat has started to blister up in several spots on the aluminum portion of the tubing and the appearance of etching in the aluminum shifters as well as some other damage. Just in a couple of sessions when I removed the front wheel skewer to let it dry out salt (white powder) was caked inside. Last night I loosened bolts on the stem and headset to clean and add grease to reduce sweat from penetrating and those were almost seized already. Just after a couple of weeks.
My current practice of trying to keep these bikes from getting damaged is to wipe down after each session, but that only helps the surficial components and frame. It does not really help where sweat penetrates into components and seeks a path under the clear coat. The other measures are using a "bike thong" covering the top tube while training, but that really does little to help and I spray down the bike with a silicone based protectant like Pedro's Bike Lust and let that penetrate into components and dry on the frame. I think my next step is trying a dehumidifier to help because even the frame on my wife's treadmill sitting next to the rollers is rusting and only on the side where I am training. We live in the southeast so humidity stays high anyway so maybe it will help in drying out the room faster, but I know it is not the total solution for the bike.
I am just amazed at how fast salty sweat can damage a bike. Really fast in my experience. I found one of my brake cables kind of sticking. It was sticking at the rear so it appears that sweat was running down the exposed cable into the rear housing. When I pulled the cable out a lot of white powder (salt residue I assume) came out of the housing and that was just after a few sessions on this bike.
I am doing what I can short of completely taking the bike apart to clean and let it dry out before the next session. Training still means more to me than the equipment so I will keep going forward. If you have any other thoughts or ideas please share and if you are training indoors and not periodically loosening some of the bolts and cleaning you might want to check them just to make sure. On the Felt that I sold I was using an old cheap Velomax wheel for training (thank goodness). I didn't think to periodicaly remove the skewer from time to time and it seized inside the hub and could not be removed. I to throw that wheel in the trash. Argh!
The struggle has been the amount of serious damage to my bikes. I recently sold my first road bike a 2004 Felt F4 and before selling the bike as consignment at a local shop I did some cleaning. Surficially the bike look rather clean, but all sorts of damage was done to components. Bolts on the stem were almost completely siezed, cables and housing had to be replaced, the stem had to be replaced as it was badly corroded internally, as well as, other bolts and connections were siezed. Got the bike cleaned up and it sold for a good price.
Current day, my six13 has become my backup rain/indoor trainer bike and just in a couple of weeks the clear coat has started to blister up in several spots on the aluminum portion of the tubing and the appearance of etching in the aluminum shifters as well as some other damage. Just in a couple of sessions when I removed the front wheel skewer to let it dry out salt (white powder) was caked inside. Last night I loosened bolts on the stem and headset to clean and add grease to reduce sweat from penetrating and those were almost seized already. Just after a couple of weeks.
My current practice of trying to keep these bikes from getting damaged is to wipe down after each session, but that only helps the surficial components and frame. It does not really help where sweat penetrates into components and seeks a path under the clear coat. The other measures are using a "bike thong" covering the top tube while training, but that really does little to help and I spray down the bike with a silicone based protectant like Pedro's Bike Lust and let that penetrate into components and dry on the frame. I think my next step is trying a dehumidifier to help because even the frame on my wife's treadmill sitting next to the rollers is rusting and only on the side where I am training. We live in the southeast so humidity stays high anyway so maybe it will help in drying out the room faster, but I know it is not the total solution for the bike.
I am just amazed at how fast salty sweat can damage a bike. Really fast in my experience. I found one of my brake cables kind of sticking. It was sticking at the rear so it appears that sweat was running down the exposed cable into the rear housing. When I pulled the cable out a lot of white powder (salt residue I assume) came out of the housing and that was just after a few sessions on this bike.
I am doing what I can short of completely taking the bike apart to clean and let it dry out before the next session. Training still means more to me than the equipment so I will keep going forward. If you have any other thoughts or ideas please share and if you are training indoors and not periodically loosening some of the bolts and cleaning you might want to check them just to make sure. On the Felt that I sold I was using an old cheap Velomax wheel for training (thank goodness). I didn't think to periodicaly remove the skewer from time to time and it seized inside the hub and could not be removed. I to throw that wheel in the trash. Argh!
  With these pop up daily thunder storms in Atlanta, my grass needs to be mowed at least once a week and I really don't care to win, "best yard in the neighborhood" award as my neighbors can testify. 
