Camilo

For those of you who were thinking I was asking to find out what the pros use in order to emulate that - as I tried to explain a couple of times, I was just curious. I have no intention to use anything other than what I use now because I just don't think it's that important.

I appreciate the answers from those who actually know what is being used by those teams.

The rest of the discussion and arguments about technical aspects of chain lube are just yawn- inspriring and I have to admit I didn't read them. They were irrelevant to my question and discussed ad-nauseum in many previous threads already.

Al1943

I think these are excellent points. Most sand and silt are quartz, much harder than steel.
I live in an area that averages about 41 inches of rain per year. I use the typical home brew of 25% synthetic motor oil and 75% mineral spirits. In a dryer area I would use a dryer lube.

noglider 

I hope you got at least satisfying answer. I am loving the discussion that inspires your yawns, so I thank you.

LesterOfPuppets

You'll anger the lubrication gods with that kind of talk. I'd make an offering if I were you.

DannoXYZ 

Seems the fad of "super-oils" make their rounds on a regular basis. I've seen this happen numerous times in my 20-years of riding (10 of that actively racing and 10 working in a shop). As already mentioned the latest fashion in oil comes and goes. What I've found works best for me to get 5000+ miles out of a chain is oil that includes zinc dithiophosphates for lubrication and wear. Some of the oils already mentioned in this thread contains this stuff. And... it's also the stuff Honda recommends for their motorcycle chains.

Along with frequently flushing and lubing, but NOT cleaning; a "clean" chain is one without lubrication and will wear quickly (none of the "dry" lubricants can claim long chain-life, just "clean" worn-out chains). I'll typically service my chain every 200-300 miles.

noglider 

Danno, thank you for weighing in. I read everything you write carefully.

How do you service your chains? 200-300 miles is a short interval. Where is the Honda-recommended oil available, and what is it called? I figure we could learn from the motorcycle world, though I imagine their speeds are higher (obviously) and tensions are lower.

Asi

On motorcycle is another problem: spreading the oil all over the rims due to high speed. I have a Honda CBF600 and use Motorex 622Strong (for on-road) chain lube just because it's white, and my rims are white, and also it does a nice job and last's long.

I use it from time to time on bicycle also, but it collects a lot of dust, and it's very viscous and I don't think it really penetrates between roller and pin very well.

nahh

+1. chainsaw bar oil is really nice.

DannoXYZ 

I typically just flush out my chain with WD-40, wipe clean, repeat and then drown it in my favourite lube mixture. Ride around the block and wipe off the excess. Usually every 200-300 miles or each weekend, depending upon conditions. This was part of my regular Friday night routine before races, so the mileage will vary depending upon my training regimen that week.


But first, let's compare the tension a motorcycle places on its chain versus a human on a bicycle. Torque-output varies tremendously, so let's take the average of a Yamaha YZF-R1 @ 77.4 lb*ft and a Kawasaki ZX-14 with 113.5 lb*ft = 95.45 lb*ft average at the crank. Then you send it through the gear-box and 1st gear gives the highest-torque:

YZF-R1 = 1.512 primary-reduction * 2.533 1st-gear ratio * 2.765 2ndary-reduction = 10.59
XZ-14 = 1.541 primary-reduction * 2.625 1st-gear ratio *2.412 2ndary-reduction = 9.76
average = 10.17

torque @ output-shaft = 10.17 * 95.45 lb*ft = 971.1 lb*ft

Both bikes have 17t front-sprockets using 5/8" pitch chain. That's a radius of 1.691" or 1.691" / 12"/ft = 0.1409 ft

Find tension by dividing out the radius from torque: 971.1 lb*ft / 0.1409 ft = 6892 lbs of tension on motorcycle chain.

A 530 chain has 3/8" wide rollers between the plates, or about 10mm. You can compare that width versus a bike-chain to figure out the pressure and stress on the rollers. I suspect that the motorcycle chain experiences more force per unit-area of roller than a bicycle chain.

Chombi

Gasoline's just way too dangerous to be using for other than running engines in vehicles. Just way too volatile/explosive to be messing around with,........a real bad accident just waiting to happen. All it takes is a small spark or static electricity and a big fire is all over you.
I myself used to goof around with gasoline when I was a kid and I just kinda shake my head now thinking about how I could have really messed myself and other people and property around me with it.
I'm wondering if the less volatile Diesel or kerosene will be a much better/a bit safer alternative for brewing up lubes.

Chombi

Asi

It's not such a big deal with gasoline, it's a very flammable liquid, and that's about it, it burns, not explodes (it explodes in confined spaces with the right amount of oxygen), It's not very good if you inhale vapors, also you don't want to smoke around it.
But still it's not nitroglycerin, just a flammable fluid, like methanol/ethanol and other alcohols. For some aspects alcohols are more dangerous because they are burning with a very clean flame (that is very hard to see, blueish to transparent, on sunlight is almost impossible to spot). This is the reason that methanol drag cars after it was refueled, a good squirt of foam from an extinguisher is sprayed on the fuel tank, fuel tank cap, under the car, and anywhere methanol could reach to... standard procedure, preventive.

As for diesel and kerosene is very stable as a liquid, a jar full of diesel is not lighted by open flames (like a match, or a lighter, even if you insist.. probably with a welder torch may light it up and explode it). For a fact, I cleaned something in a tin can full of diesel and to speed the process I put it on a stove (gas burner), - that is because i knew it was safe to do so, just like twisting wires from the wall plug bare handed.. it's safe as long as you don't make ground with anything, and you don't touch the other wire

As a gas and thin film of liquid is similarly flammable. For a quick barbecue, I put some diesel onto the woods, then light it with some matches.

As a kid(more like teenager) I played with all sorts of contraptions made by me with calcium carbide mixed with water (it's a violent reaction that expands the gas very rapidly so in a closed space it will inflate until breaking in explosive manner, and that gas is acetylene that burns very well) - even those were fairly safe since i knew what i was doing, and I took care to hold a distance, not to put it in glass bottles (it would pulverize a spray of bullet-like shards of glass.. not safe), etc..

Most of what I said can be dangerous if not done by someone who knows what is he doing, but otherwise I'm still living, and had been working with CaC, Diesel, gasoline, kerosene, and other highly inflammable and explosive materials.

bjtesch

I've wondered oftentimes what would make a good oil for chains.

I have some chainsaw oil for my chainsaw, it looks like ordinary motor oil to me.

I know that motor oil has changed in recent years. One of the additives, a zinc compound, was used to control wear but it is also is a pollutant so it is not used as much now in ordinary motor oil, but is still used in some diesel oil. There are also oil additives that you can buy that contain it.

Automatic transmission fluid is a very good lubricant, and very sticky, but would be messy for bicycle chains.

There are lots of lubes available that contain teflon of some sort or another. I've wondered how well those work too.

I don't think it is possible to have a good lubricant that isn't messy. I don't worry so much about messy. Hose the chain down with something like WD40, wipe it off, and then put on lots of good sticky oil, then wipe that off. When it gets dirty, do it again.

DannoXYZ 

One misconception a lot of people make is that bike-lube can be made from oils used for automotive engines. The environments couldn't be more different. In an auto engine, you've got a pump that squirts the oil at high-pressure into the parts needing lubrication (main & rod bearings, camshafts, under the pistons, etc.). The wear-surfaces actually doesn't use the oil as an anti-friction component as much as a hydraulic cushion; the pressurized oil "floats" the parts away from each other. It's like the parts are on a hovercraft. Very rarely do the metal parts actually contact each other, and in cases like the cam-lobes, there are typically rollers at the contact surfaces. The only part on the auto engine that's similar to a bike-chain is the camshaft chain (if your car uses one) or the rollers in the cam followers; not parts with high amounts of wear.

There IS however, another part of the car that has similar metal-contact and scraping like a bushingless bike-chain and that's in the transmission. Hypoid gears in the differential can exert much more pressure, with wiping and sliding motions that scrape oil off the parts more than regular helical-cut gears and presents a much harsher environment than the engine. And there's no pump, so that oil has to be designed to provide lubrication and anti-wear properties with only a thin layer that's dripped onto the contact surface. As such, gear-oil contains many more extreme-pressure (EP) and anti-wear (AW) additives than engine-oil.

These additive packages can actually be up to 30% of a gear oil. The anti-wear additives such as zinc-dithiophosphate (ZDP), zinc-dialkyldithiophosphate (ZDDP), tricresylphosphate (TCP) actually chemically react from the heat of metal-to-metal contact and form a hard surface-film to prevent wear. Extreme-pressure additives can include chorinated paraffins, organophosphates, chlorendic-acid esters, molydenum disulfide and other polysulfides. If you look at the microscopic surface of smooth metals, they are anything but. They are actually more like mountain-ranges with peaks and valleys. Imagine two of these surfaces coming together (one inverted) and sliding past each other. The peaks would collide and you'd have intense pressures due to the limited contact area relative to the non-contact valley spots. These localized collisions generate extreme heat in the 300-1000C range. This heat initiates the chemical reactions with the EP additives that create extremely hard compounds that coat the peaks and fills in the valleys to spread out the load. It is actually these additive components that prevent wear on metal-contact sliding surfaces, rather than the hydrocarbon oil-film.

Again, that's due to the different nature of engine versus gear oil and how they work. Gear oils face a much harsher environment and they undergo much more difficult testing. One such test is the 4-ball-weld test where three balls are held in a cradle and a 4th ball is laid on top and pressure is applied by spinning the top ball:



Due to the extreme pressure of the tiny contact-area of two spheres, there's no oil that can provide a film to reduce friction. Different oils actually perform significantly better than others before the balls weld to each other:



Another test is the pin & V-block test:



This is even worse than the 4-ball test because the wiping action scrapes off most of the oil that can can still adhere to the surfaces of the balls not in contact. In this test, it's all in the additives as very little oil remains between the contact surfaces. Again, some oils do better than others with an advantage going to those with higher amount of EP and AW additiives.

In fact, it is 75w-90 gear-oil that Honda recommends as lubrication for their motorcycle chain. In this type of oil, I've found that Amsoil Severe-Gear (SVG or SVO), Mobil-1 Synthetic and Valvoline SynPower 75w-90 gear-oils to perform extremely well. I always have some around for my car and motorcycles, so it's a simple matter to slap some on the bike-chain as well. Heck, as a test, I took one chain to 10k-miles and it was barely over 1/16" stretch.

tatfiend 

Danno;

Very interesting. Do you know of any lighter lubricants with these anti wear additives. It looks like they might be ideal for use for internal geared hub lubrication applications such as my NOS Sturmey Archer S5-2 which is old enough so it has an oiling port.

Does synthetic ATF have a similar additive package? I believe the gears section of automatic transmissions are primarily splash lubricated.

tatfiend 

Returning to the OPs original question.

Per FranK Berto in the 80s professional bike tour mechanics did not clean or lube chains. He claimed this information was from a professional team mechanic. They typically just threw on a new Sedissport chain, the cheapest narrow derailleur one that Sedis made. Teams bought them by the gross.

With most pro teams now having Shimano, SRAM or Campy as a sponsor I suspect that at the professional team level things may very well not have changed but now they use the provided sponsors chains.

verktyg 

Back in the early 90s, the owner of the LBS that I dealt with had previously been a team mechanic in the US and Europe for several different pro teams.

At that time Sachs offered a dry wax style chain lube and another more oily one for wet weather use. I don't know if that's what he used as a pro mechanic but that's what he recommended.

Since I don't like getting wet (and try to avoid riding in the rain), I used the dry wax lube. For my use it was the best I'd ever found, too bad they stopped making it. I was doing a lot of off road riding then in dusty conditions and it resisted picking up grit. As a plus, it didn't rub off on my leg!

I cleaned my chains regularly. It didn't take much of the Sachs dry lube, a small bottle lasted for quite a while.

Chas. verktyg

noglider 

Wow, I'm learning a lot! Thank you, DannoXYZ!

DannoXYZ, what's your background? Not many people like you work in the bike industry.

krazygl00

Danno, you can save money on WD-40 (I find that a can is up to like $8 these days...WTF??). WD-40 is mostly Stoddard Solvent (Mineral Spirits) and since you're using the solvent aspect of it, just get a can of mineral spirits and put it in a spray bottle. Hell I even found a WD-40 brand spray bottle that is less resistant to deterioration from solvents. Mineral spirits is also pretty much as good a cleaner and dessicant as WD-40 so you can use it for things like spraying down the seat-tube to keep the BB dried out.

krazygl00

So, half-joking, half-serious question here. The only thing missing from this equation for a bicycle would be the intense pressure and heat needed to create the hard coating compounds on the surfaces. So...slather your bike chain in gear-oil with the EP additives, and put it in a 500 degree oven for an hour? Almost like you'd "season" a cast-iron pan?

furballi

My cheap brew consists of 2/3 gasoline and 1/3 gear oil. It's dirt cheap.

noglider 

Please read the previous warnings about gasoline. The savings are not worth the risk. Buy something that's a tiny bit more expensive and not as dangerous. And please spread the word. People die and property is destroyed.

Homebrew01

Very interesting .... Do you mix the oil with mineral spirits, deisel or something to thin it out before putting on your chain ?

Camilo

That was interesting (I read it!), seriously. But also seriously, does this knowledge - or putting it into practice - actually make a meaningful difference in the functioning, efficiency or longevity of a bicycle chain compared to just oiling it regularly with whatever oil a person happens to have on hand?

DannoXYZ 

https://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/mba0818l.jpg

mike_s

Are you an amsoil distributor? They just LOVE the 4 ball WEAR test. Interestingly, no correlation has ever been shown between the results of that test and real world engine wear (let alone bicycle chain wear!).