Originally Posted by
Iride01
That is why I like my method. Just wipe the crud off the outside. I don't even take my chain off. 10 to 15 years between replacement seems like enough life.
Chains aren't sealed. Any wiping of the crud off the outside just pushes some of the crud inside. Any oil with it's carrier solvent you put on it flushes that crud to the inside. Even if you use thick oil without a carrier, the whole point is to replace the lubricant inside the chain with "fresh" oil from outside the chain. That "fresh" oil carries anything that is large enough to get past the gaps in the chain on the outside of the chain into it. Wiping the outside of the chain only rids the chain of the visible particles. The smaller microscopic particles that you can't see are what are grinding away at the chain.
Originally Posted by
Iride01
As for the new chain the OP was asking about. At most the excess lube on the outside visible surfaces can be cleaned off if it is desired to try and prevent dust and grit from clinging to the chain. But a dry rag or rag lightly soaked in a solvent such as mineral spirits or light lube/solvent such as WD40 will clean it dry without removing the lube already on the internal surfaces that the mfr put there. Removing the chain, swirling it in some mineral spirits or other solvent will remove the lube and IMO is just as likely to wash grit into the bearing surfaces of the chain.
Any chain, whether the new one that CarrollB is installing or one the I'm installing, will need to be relubricated at some point in its existence. Doing that once will remove most of the factory lubricant. Doing it twice will remove more of what is left. Relubricate 3 to 5 times and there won't be a nanogram of the factory lubricant left.
Cleaning it with a solvent doesn't wash any more grit into the chain than lubricating the chain does...these aren't sealed units. Removing the old lubricant (especially oil based) with solvent flushes the grit
out of the bearing surfaces that refreshing the lubricant simply can't. The solvent removes the oil
and the grit because there isn't anything there to hold the grit in place anymore.