Originally Posted by
velocentrik
Anyone looking to this thread for advice on "hacking" good chain lubes read this post:
ATF fluids make horrible lubricants, simply because as an oil based lubricant it attracts dirt, grime etc. which will prematurely wear your chainwheels and freewheel/cassette cogs. In lubricating the chain the last thing you actually care about is actually the chain. New chainrings and new cogs with a new chain and you're talking real money. However, that's not even the reason to not use ATF as a lube. There are good applications for using an oil based chain lube, essentially any wet or rainy environment that isn't dirty or gritty. Just not ATF! Why? Simply because people who use ATF are completely ignorant of what ATF actually is. ATF has friction additives necessary for modern automatic transmissions to function. Think about it as being analogous to taking a real chain lube and throwing a handful of dirt and grime into the fluid. ATF would never be seriously considered as a chain lube by anyone who knows anything.
My understanding of ATF is that the friction modification component is a very minimal component to the fluid. If the friction modifiers made it a bad lubricant, it wouldn't be used for many applications that don't need that component such as a power steering fluid. Many applications use ATF for power steering fluid. I also think that the anti wear component of AFT which is important for bike chain use, is also not a substantial portion of the fluid. Likely because it works well at low levels added. Bike chain lubes possibly have more of it.