.25% elongation after 10k+ miles! Impressive.

I was happy with .3% at 2000 miles using the shake-in-the-bottle method, a considerable improvement over simply wiping and re-lubing but obviously not as effective as ultrasonic cleaning, by quite a margin.

Two more questions. (1) you write that you use Simple Green. How do you dry the chain before lubricating? You let it sit overnight? You rinse in alcohol? You bake it? (2) Solvents such as mineral spirits can be used almost indefinitely by letting metal particles and other gunk sediment at the bottom of the container. What about citrus-based solvents?

I rinse the chain in water a few times and either sun dry or put in in the over on an aluminum pie plate.
I lube my chains with a 4 to 1 mix of unscented mineral spirits and chainsaw bar oil from Ace hardware.

I agree that the drop in chain checkers have their problems, however, as someone says above, they'll tell you when your chain ISN'T worn out. They're quick and easy to use, use one until it starts telling you your chain is knackered, THEN reach for the ruler.

That's what I use mine for. I have an old tape measure with a hole drilled at the 2" mark with a finishing holding it up. I hang the chain on the nail and get an accurate measurement.

When I've used water-diluted simply green or citrus degreaser I typically have done a quick rinse in fresh water afterwards, let it dry for a while, and then put the chain into an old spaghetti sauce jar with some denatured alcohol and shake it for a bit. That dilutes out any remaining traces of water, and once removed from the jar, the chain dries very quickly indeed. I know the pedants will come out of the woodwork to remind us all that alcohol can contain a small quantity of water, and that's true, but when it's like 5% water 95% alcohol, once I've let it hang for a while to dry I've never noticed that there's still some material quantity of water molecules locked in there somewhere. And if I suspect there might be, I just hang it in the sun till the chain is warm to the touch and that'll take care of it.

Of course, when I degreased the chain in gasoline none of this was an issue and the chain would be bone dry in a very short time (outside of course). Thanks to the encouragement of others in this forum to abandon gasoline as dangerous, and my acknowledgement of the same, I'm not doing that anymore.

Of course if you really want to get dangerous, not just in volatility but also in having to wear a respirator just to avoid killing your lungs, try degreasing your chain in lacquer thinner. Or rather, don't, because it's nasty, nasty stuff. Can't be beaten in terms of performance though.

As far as ultrasonics go, not only are they awesome for cleaning, but when I've waxed my chains I would melt the wax in an old spaghetti jar, put the jar in 80 C water in the ultrasonic, and start the vibration going. You can see the moly particles roiling around in the wax as it vibrates. Put the chain in, and for a couple minutes you see lots of tiny bubbles coming to the surface of the wax as every little nook and cranny in the chain is infiltrated by the wax mixture. Once the bubbles stop you know it's completely waxed, so then I fish the chain out of the jar with a bent piece of old spoke, wipe the excess molten wax/moly concoction off of it with a rag, then hang it up to cool down. Absolutely dead silent drive train this way, nice and dry chain that doesn't pick up dirt or get black crap on you when you touch it, etc. Only downside is it takes longer than simply dripping some oil on the chain, and you have to do it way more often. Works amazingly well though.

I guess I'm just lazy. My '64 Legano that I've had since new has never had a new chain. I have changed the Campy crank and chain wheels to get a more friendly gear, as well as changing to a 6 speed rear. When I built my Raleigh from a bare frame, I bought 2 chains. Used one on the Raleigh, but never got around to changing the Legnano. If rides fine, shifts great, and I did have the chain checked for wear a couple of years ago. The Legnano's old 5 speed chain looks like something off a motorcycle compared to my 10 speed chains, which I have replaced several times on my modern bikes. Someday, I'll get around to doing the Legnano. The Raleigh has around 1400 miles on its "new" chain. I will try the steel rule method. Back in the day I used to race the Legnano, and did lots of miles, now probably less than 500 miles a year.

I have the cheap park tool chain checkers.

I usually run 3 chains on 1 cass and 1 front ring

I swap these at around 0,75% wear, and when all 3 are at that, then i run them to the ground (1,5% or so)

When the chain wears the whole system wears. so a 1% chain will definitely mean the cassette is at 1% too.

With my way of servicing the chains I get about 3-4000km of one chain.

when the chains are new I degrease them and put them in a mix of motor oil, molykote, teflon lube and similar crap.
put them on and run to 0,75%. At 0,75% i degrese and clean once again and put them into the special lube mix. and grab a new one.

Then when all of them are at 0,75% i just run these to the max.

I never clean them at all during this time on the bike I simply just lube them with either some teflon spray or motor oil. like once a month.

I use like 12€ chains and 12€ cassettes but still I like to get as much life out of them as I can.

Imo, a ultra sonic cleaner is not really needed. For a long time, I have used a simple jar with odourless kerosene or similar. Works very well and is safe to use unlike gasoline.

Put in chain > Soak for 5-10 min > shake jar with lid on for ~1 min > remove chain and dry it with an old towel.

The solvent can re reused several times. Just let it sin in the jar and the gunk will fall to the bottom. You can then decant 90% back to the bottle and discard the rest.

I you use water and regular degreasers, make sure to rinse off the degreaser well, or it will sit inside the chain and break down the fresh lubricant.

You are right. I used the old Ragu plastic jar and mineral spirits for years and had good luck with it. Some years ago I bought a cheap ultrasonic cleaner and my chain life almost tripled.

Great story. Sounds HIGHLY unlikely is was due to the ultrasonic cleaner. :-)

I did take apart a piece of cleaned chain and it was perfectly clean. Cant get cleaner than clean.

I was getting about 6k miles on the Ragu jar. When I switched to the ultrasonic I got over 16k miles and over 19k miles on the tourer with fenders.