Automotive Brake Parts Cleaner for Bikes

My new favourite bike cleaning tip: Automotive Brake Parts Cleaner.
Available from autozone or anywhere else. I had some laying around so I tried it out on my Shimano Ultegra shifters (because you can't / I don't want to - take them apart) and have since adopted it for lots of other uses. It blasts away all the crud, dries quickly on its own, and doesn't leave residue so you can follow it with oil/grease as appropriate. Today I cleaned the chain on my fixie with the stuff. Amazing. Like new.
One word of caution, it ate the spraypaint on my front fork (Used it to clean my front brake caliper) so if you're worried about the finish you need to be really careful. I'm not sure whether it has any other negative consequences like eating the lining on brake cables or breaking down plastic parts, but I haven't seen any problems with it.

A tip I have mixed feelings about, though, is a "dry" lubricant. I used some liquid plumber dry lubricant on my road bike last week and within 2-3 rides it was making a lot of noise. I put good old trusty Phil Wood Tenacious oil on the chain and dérailleurs and everything seems back in order. I gave the stuff a second chance and used it on my fixie's chain today, though, so we'll see how that works out.

Tomorrow I'm going to finish taking photos for my aero bar modifications post, I promise.

Also, today I ordered the first plate for my letterpress experiment. The press is mostly built, but I'm going to wait on the plate before finalizing it and publishing my report on the whole process.