Originally Posted by
Lascauxcaveman
Yeah. And pretty much every bicycle mechanic (professional and amateur) I've met uses WD40 to good effect for degreasing old components. I haven't met one who's complained about it 'ruining' anything. Except maybe a thin and fragile gold colored finish on a chain. And frankly, that's a new one to me, since I've cleaned up a couple of old gold Uniglide chains with the stuff and those chains are still nice and gold-colored. I'm guessing contact time matter quite a bit here.
If you want to make the point that WD40 is not a very good lubricant, I'll go along with you there, as it evaporates pretty quickly. But for cleaning stuff up before you add the lube; it's pretty hard to beat.
WD40 was developed to displace water in electrical equipment thus WD. Back in the 70's it was supposed to have contained some silicone which is a light duty lube???
In those days in New Mexico we used to use WD40 for chain lube. Water was almost never a problem but dust was. Most other lubricants at the time would pick up the fine grit and wear out your chain and sprockets. I applied the stuff before every ride. It helped keep the chains clean too.
Since I was running the shop and we bought Sedis Sport chains on 50 meter and 100 meter wooden spools, I changed my chains every 3000 miles whether they need it or not. They only cost me $3.00 each.
Fortunately I saved the old ones in baggies. I was having some shifting problems with my Ironman with a 7 sp SIS indexing RD. Out of frustration, I bought a Park CC-3 Chain Wear Gage. I found the problem, it was a worn out upper pulley. But Wait! I checked out all the old Sedis Sport chains and they were all good.
verktyg
