Will Wheeler

If you want a properly cleaned chain with all the grit (the stuff that really hurts) in between rollers and bushings, removed, you have to get rid of all the lube too. There's just no other way!!
Just wiping off the chain on the outside with a rag, is like "polishing a turd".

djb

I know , this is like bringing up politics or religion....I guess I should just say that if your technique works well for you, then it isn't for me to say otherwise.
Happy riding.

pdlamb

I respectfully disagree. What you say is true for the grit that's inside a chain already, however, regularly wiping the chain off gives you a chance to remove grit that's in the grease but hasn't made its way into the chain innards yet. A regular wiping habit seems to extend the life of my chains somewhat, at least!

gauvins

From what I understand, the type of cleaning depends on the type of lubricant.

If the lubricant has a brief expected life (most "dry", many "wet") a degrease-and-lube strategy would be appropriate. (T9, finish line 1-step, for example)

If the lubricant is expected to last for several days/weeks/more, such as Chain-l, dry wipe would be preferable.

I plan to switch to Chain-l, which is said to last up to 1000km+ on one application, with a 4oz bottle good for up to 10 applications. If I am not mistaken, the developer of this lube is a regular contributor in this community. He claims that occasional wipes with a paper towel are enough.

A deep clean/light lube system (ex. WD40) might get you a shinier drivetrain, but is not really convenient on longer tours, where resupplying may become an issue.

It is also interesting to read about wax-based hybrid systems (T9 cleans and lubes, has great reviews) and contrast it with the popular WD40-bike line of dry and wet lubricants that expressly state that there is no wax, and therefore no hard-to-clean residue.

Interesting topic. Will eventually report on my experience.

djb

this is my experience over the years. Plus its fast to do, hence I do it often (rag wiping). Hence I dont have to fight with accumulated gunk.

Triflow that I use is in my opinion, an "inbetween thick and super thin" lube, easy to wipe off, yet more lasting than the super super thin ones that are super clean.

gorshkov

If you do use a water sprayer to clean your chain (I do this after riding my MTB in the mud), spray from above or behind the bike so you're never directing the spray directly into the hub or bottom bracket.

hfbill

So for a deep cleaning, I take my rear wheel off, take the tire off and inspect the tire & tube and set them aside so I don't get solvent or lube on them. I have a kitchen drawer tray that's about 2"x10" which I fill with Mineral Spirits. I then run the chain through it, 10 inches at a time, submerging the chain in the mineral spirits and brushing it off as I go with a cheap disposable paint brush. I go through the whole chain, then the derailleurs, cassette etc, avoiding the plastic and rubber bits. I wipe off the excess & then air wash everything with compressed air & re -ube with a micro fiber rag. I do this once every couple of weeks or so. In between, or on the road, I wipe down with "Pro Towels" (citra-solve impregnated handi-wipes) and re-lube with a rag.

cyccommute 

Regular wiping of the chain forces as much grit into the chain as it removes from the outside. Worse still is that it forces the smaller particles of grit that can get down into the chain where it can do damage. People tend to only think about the things they can easily see and forget about the size ranges that aren't visible but do the bulk of the damage.

People also forget...or want to ignore...the whole point of an oil based lubricant is to have the oil flow. If it flows, it will pick up grit small enough to get through the gaps in the chain where it grinds away at the metal.

saddlesores

chains are consumables. consume them.

but you indeed do want to clean the outside
of the chain.......to keep the grit and other
ickiness from grinding down the chainrings
and cogs faster than necessary.

Will Wheeler

I can't see why a clean outside is that important. It's the dirt that is, or isn't, between the pins and rollers that matters. A good test to see how dirty your chain really is, is to wiggle it sideways. If you hear crunchy sounds you have grit in places where it shouldn't be.

Will Wheeler

I totally agree!
One simply can not get a clean chain by wiping the outside surface and expect the rest of it to clean itself. It's just impossible!

cyccommute 

I certainly agree. People spend waaaaaaaaaaay too much time obsessing about chains

Or use something that doesn't hold onto grit and other "ickiness". I find it constantly amusing that most people sing the praises of the factory lubricant and then replace it with something that isn't even remotely like it while at the same time railing against a lubricant that is much closer to the original. And then spend all of their time cleaning up the goop that they slather on.

robow

When it comes to thoroughly cleaning one's chain, do you remember as a kid, we would take our chain apart, string it into a pop bottle (made of glass back then), fill it with kerosene, shake it around, let it sit, dump and refill. Afterwards we would take the chain out and wipe it down, and it would just sparkle, then we little problem solvers would replace the chain on the bike and it made so much noise that you couldn't hear your baseball cards clacking on the spokes because you had just removed all the lube including that which was within the rollers. Not always being the sharpest crayons in the box, it took us awhile to figure out that we really really had to lube that chain thoroughly before riding again.

Edit: if little Bobby K. is out there reading this, I told you not to use gasoline !

Doug64

If you use a removable link, like Sram's Powerlink, it is easy to see the effectiveness of your chain lube and lubing method. Just carefully remove the link, and examine the pins and roller openings.

Joe Minton

Doug64:

That is what I do. I use KMC links. When I was refining my chain lube mixture, I used the same technique to evaluate how thick it had to be to exclude dirt while remaining thin enough to re-flow. As the Brits might say, it worked a treat!

Joe

pdlamb

This is a remarkable assertion, but it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.


Sure, some grit remains. But exactly how and where is the grit forced into the chain? Is it around the rollers, which is probably the loosest joint in the chain? Not the way I do it; some oil may be pushed toward the roller-inner plate joint, but most of that flows back onto the roller surface after the roller goes past the wiping cloth.


Could it be forced into the joint between the inner and outer plate? Maybe a little bit along the top of the joint, but that joint is so small in comparison to the width of either plate it's ludicrous to say as much will be forced into that joint as will be wiped off. What about the sides? Again, a normal wiping will get some oil/gunk off the inner plate, but I'm not sufficiently anal as to try to wipe around each edge to get all the stuff off.


Pin to outer plate joint? Just try to force something into that friction fit! I suppose if you made a special fixture just larger than the pin diameter you might force a bit into the annular gap around the pin, but if you're using a rag or paper towel, you'll chase far more oil around the circumference of the pin that you'll push into it.


No, unless "just as much" is a new colloquialism for "some" this assertion fails.


Is it better to wipe off excess oil and dirt periodically? Logically, the longer dust in oil is left on the chain, the more time it has to work its way inside the chain. Experimentally, I get 10-20% more life out of a chain that's been wiped off periodically than one that either hasn't or that was dunked and "cleaned" in mineral spirits before re-lubrication.

onbike 1939

If you want to get rid of the crud that builds up on the cassette then ditch all oil-based lubes and go for this one which is not oil-based and keeps everything clean. It attracts no grit at all and after using it for seven months I remain impressed.
No connection with the company blah...blah...

https://www.scottoiler.com/us/product...esolution.html

gauvins

Might be. I might have indicated that I've seriously considered a clean-first/lube-second approach (ex: T9, First line 1-step). I've finally opted for CHAIN-L, a thick oil. I was sold by the fact that a 4oz bottle is reportedly enough for several thousands of KMs, and dry wipes are supposedly enough to keep the chain reasonably clean.

Will eventually report.

veganbikes

Just bring a SRAM bulk box of chains with you and ditch the old chains that way you never have to worry about grit ; )

cyccommute 

There is no barrier to the grit on any part of the chain. Any wiping action is going to remove some dirt and grit but it is also going to force that grit into the spaces of the chain. Not the large pieces you can see but the small ones that fit down into those spaces which just happen to be the ones that cause the damage.

What you are missing it the distribution of particle sizes. The large particles that you can see won't get pushed down into the chain and are what are picked up by the wipe. The small damaging particles that you can't see will flow down into those gaps along with the oil. Of course some of the small particles will come off with the wipe but an equal amount will be forced into the chain.

That's why people tell you not to oil a dirty chain. The microscopic grit gets carried into the chain.

If you can get oil or any lubricant into that gap, you can get grit into that gap. Again, it will be microscopic but just because it is small doesn't mean that it isn't grit. The "grit" that is most damaging is silicon dioxide which is also known as quartz and is the major component of sand. If grit is present, it will be present in every possible size from nanometer diameter (or even smaller) to visible grains. I would say that 25 µm (about 1/2 the width of a human hair) and smaller could easily fit in most any of the gaps of a chain.


Just as much of the damaging size range. If you can see it, it's not a problem and I would agree that size range won't work into the chain. But you can't see the sizes that fit in the gaps. You can often feel the grit in the chain but you won't see it.

Think of it this way, 40 mesh is about the size range of flour. You can see a pile of flour but can you see the individual grains? 40 mesh is 420µm or 0.42mm or 0.0165". That particle size can easily fit into any of the gaps of a chain. 40 mesh isn't even that small of a particle size for dirt. You could easily find a significant volume of 200 mesh (74µm, 0.0029") or smaller particle in any sample of dirt. Even 40 mesh particles aren't going to significantly change the flow properties of oil and when you put pressure on the chain with the rag some of the dirt will come off on the rag but some of it will just get pushed into the voids in the chain.

I argue that it is better not to collect the dirt in the first place. I don't wipe off my chains at all because they don't need it. My chains last as long as others claim their do with wiping or weekly cleaning or shaking chicken bones over them. I just don't spend as much time obsessing over how to clean up the mess that results in using oil.

Doug64

Actually, I just about do this. I don't bring an extra chain, but when I see Sram chains on sale, I'll pick up 4-5 of them at a time. The last time I got Scram 971s for $14 apiece with free shipping.

robow

Nice score !

veganbikes

See your doing it all wrong. Let's say you are on tour and your chain gets some grit on it, what are you to do wipe it in, try to wash it out, leave it on? Your are probably going to be wrong in every one of those instances. What if you use the wrong lube? What if you use the right lube but don't it properly? Your best bet is to get rid of that gritty chain and replace it right away without fail.

Happy Feet

I like to use olive oil because it's supposed to lower cholesterol. And you can find it almost any where. And it's part of a medditeranean diet, which usually tastes delicious.

pdlamb

Not disagreeing with the last part of this (truncated) quote. However, unless you can show that there's a different distribution of particle sizes across the oil distributed over the surface of the chain, your arguments on particle size and composition are irrelevant. My strong suspicion is that the particle composition and size distribution are effectively uniform. Ergo, the more oily lubricant you wipe off, the more particles you'll remove. Of what's left on the chain (in the valleys around the outer plates and pins), you'd have to show that (a) there's more grit in that than was wiped off, and (b) all of that grit eventually works its way into the innards of the chain, to prove that as much gets into the chain as you wipe away.


Good luck.