Originally Posted by
Duragrouch
Mixed feelings. Grains of dirt, if not held in place by a thick or sticky lube, should get flung off when riding at high speed, or turning the crank backward even faster, at the tight bends at the rear derailleur rollers. Heck, I use one of the thicker lubes, 90 weight gear lube, and fresh after lubing, there is still some flung onto the rear rim, so plenty of centrifugal force to do that. (Perhaps I should wipe down my chain after lubing.) But any dirt that remains, I'd wonder if any merit to wiping down. My lube gets kinda pasty after about 600 miles, but I don't think wiping it down will improve things, what matters is the lube between and inside the links. I ride in dry and faily clean conditions. The black pastiness of lube after about 600 miles, is due to very fine suspended metal particles in the lube, forming a (colloidal?) suspension. I know this because, after using an on-bike chain cleaner with mineral oil, I dip a magnet in the fluid and all that black sludge gets pulled right out of solution, sticks to the magnet. My point being, dry lube should accumulate less dirt, and either dry or wet lube, I'm not sure the merit of wiping down the outside. Unless it's water and you're trying to speed drying by reducing the amount of water. I'd be curious if any of the lube or chain makers have done tests of chains in various states, wiped down versus not wiped down.
Thank goodness for on-bike chain cleaners, they really speed things up. However they do nothing for the big pasty buildup on the derailleur rollers, cogs, and chainrings. I do miss how clean those all stayed when I wax-lubed.
I get no flung oils on Dumonde or on the previously used Rock N Roll, the only time I ever got flung oil was using wet lubes. Neither of those two lubes I just mentioned got pasty, unless you don't wipe it down after every ride and let it go for several rides then they might. I had that problem with ProLink ProGold lube though, it felt a bit sticky when I wiped it down after each ride, I would have hated to seen what that would have been like after a few rides.
All lube companies that I have ever had and read from their instructions say to wipe down the chain after every ride, I assume the lube manufacture knows what they're talking about, vs what I might think otherwise, so I follow their directions. Even on my touring bike, which when touring with a load is rough on chains, I getting so far 7,500 miles on the chain, everyone else I have spoken to that had and used touring bikes for touring, averaged only 2,500 miles, (some only got 1,500, some got more), so I think I sticking with Dumonde Tech Lite! Once I saw that mileage on my chain starting to exceed well past 2,500 miles I switched all my bikes to Dumonde.
I had heard of Dumonde before but that was from forums, but I really learned about Dumonde from first hand reports from a couple of touring guys that were touring together, they claimed they averaged 10,000 miles on their chains, and I think they're probably correct, because my chain is almost 75% used up, but I'm using a lower quality chain, when it goes kablooey a local bike shop in town told me of a much better chain to use, but I can't recall it exactly, I think it was KMC X or something, but they claim it should last 25 to 50% longer then the lowend one that came on my bike. So should I decide to do a cross country trip, a new chain using Dumonde should take me all the way and back without having to replace it.