FBinNY 

It depends on a bunch of variables.

How clean the chain is, the type of dirt and it's particle size, how well the dirt is adhered where it is, and how effective the newly applied liquid is at loosening the dirt and lifting can carrying it.

Another variable is how saturated the chain is with existing liquid lubricant, which will keep added liquids from wicking in. Even Bounty "the quicker picker upper" won't absorb anything else once it's saturated.

But then again if the chain is already full of lube, it wouldn't need re-lube in the first place. That's why as I developed Chain-L (Warning - suspicious sales pitch) I wanted to maximize it's working life. Increasing the re-lube interval reduces the risk of wicking dirt in. Also lacking solvents it does a poor job dislodging whatever dirt is glued to the outside.

It's a judgment call, --- if it's typical road dust, it's probably best to wipe and lube, if it's gritty sand and mineral dust get as much off as possible, using as little or much liquid as required.

There's no one approach for everyone, adjust your chain maintenance protocol to your conditions and the chain lube you use.

Artmo 

I hope you wear protective gloves and don't breath the vapor unless you want cancer later in life.

cyccommute 

Yes, you should wear gloves and avoid breathing the vapor. But that's just common sense. You should do that with water based degreasers. But neither kerosene nor diesel are particularly carcinogenic...diesel soot maybe, but not the fuel itself.

DaveSSS 

There is no such thing as excessive cleaning. Any lube inside the chain will quickly be contaminated with road grit and turn into a grinding paste. The clearances between the roller and side plates are large, so dirt will get inside the chain, even without the help of a wet lube. Leaving grinding paste inside the chain is a bad idea.

Any cleaning requires several steps, whether an on-the-bike cleaning device is used or the chain is removed for cleaning. The first degreasing will leave the chain swimming in dirty solvent. A second rinsing is needed at the minimum, to remove as much of the dirty solvent as possible. With a water based degreaser, you need water. I'd use hot water. With a solvent like mineral spirits, or kerosene, more of the same solvent could be used. I prefer to use hot soapy water in an old water bottle for this second cleaning, followed by a hot water rinse.

The 4/1 mix of naptha/oil that I use for chain lube can be applied to the chain after the exterior is wiped dry. It will displace the water and lube the chain at the same time.

mechBgon

If I'm using a Park Tool chain scrubber, my favored method is to clean with Finish Line's citrus degreaser (pretty aggressive stuff), then run "rinse cycles" with hot water and Dawn dish detergent, then blow the chain out with compressed air. It ends up jingly-clean. Then I relubricate with lube of choice.

In most conditions I use Rock & Roll's gold lube. Applying it and wiping off the excess removes the majority of exterior grime, and it doesn't collect dirt very much, so I don't have to resort to using a chain cleaner too often. It is an expensive lube, however, and needs to be applied often in wet conditions. Every chain lube has its trade-offs.

Another tip when using a chain scrubber: if your cassette's dirty, shift through all the gears so the degreaser gets onto each cog, and that's a head-start on cleaning the cassette with hot sudsy water, Simple Green foaming degreaser, or whatever you use. If your cassette's clean, stick a "dummy hub" in your rear triangle so the degreasing and relubing of the chain doesn't make a mess of your clean cassette.

My commuter's not always this clean, but this is fairly maintainable in dry conditions:

DannoXYZ 

Basic saying in O-chem lab was "like dissolves like". Trying to use an aqueous solution to dissolve non-polar compounds (even with emulsifiers) is never going to be as easy as using a non-polar solvent in the 1st place. Using the right solvent reduces it all to a single step and saves you a tonne of time.

Mr. Underbridge

The idea is you use enough sand that the concentration of gunk in the sand is very low, and will act as an effective sorbent for quite some time. Also, the OP mentioned that you'd need something to trap the sand - a few coffee filters would work wonders there. That approach will work far, far better than decanting and will give you many more uses out of your solvent, if that matters to the user.

I'd add some activated carbon or charcoal to the sand for extra effectiveness. I think the result would be quite nice.

If you use something other than inert sand (ie, activated carbon, as I mentioned) you'll end up removing a lot of the other, far less volatile components even if they're dissolved. Also, if they're fully dissolved and low concentration, you likely don't much care anyway. What's the worst case scenario - that you've combined some (now clean) grease and oil with your mineral spirits to make...a nice low-weight cleaner/lube all-in-one that people usually pay $5 for a small bottle?

cyccommute 

I know that you can do all this but why bother? You'd spend more on sand, activated carbon, and the equipment to do the filtration then you'd save. Plus, you'll end up with a pile of sand contaminated by grease and solvents. That's a much worse disposal problem.

As someone who does filtrations every day, I'd pick a paper filter over an elaborate packed bed column any day, unless I needed the column to do some kind of chemistry. Paper filtration is much faster and less messy.

Bent Ben

As a bent rider, a clean, properly functioning chain is crucial. I've had the best results with Gunk's Silicon spray

bkaapcke

So, how often, milewise, are you guys doing a thorough chain cleaning with these cumbersome methods you have outlined? bk

Mr. Underbridge

Why? Harder to dispose of than the same grease and solvents you'd still have to dispose of? I guess it will ultimately be harder if the local auto parts store will take liquid solvent but not sand. Still, you'll have to do it a lot less often.

Also, the cost is pennies. Sand=probably free (surely you have some sand?). Charcoal is good enough as carbon (again, free). Other than that, all you'll need is some plastic screen mesh, coffee filters, and something to hold the column (PVC pipe?), and something to hold it together (hose clamp)? You can probably do it with stuff you already have.

So how do you dispose of the fouled paper? If you subject it to the same scrutiny as the sand above, you'll end up with way more paper than the sand you could have started out with because the column's more efficient. If you throw the paper away, then you should feel equally comfortable throwing the sand away, at which point it's no trouble at all (to you, anyway).

I'd say if you're going to be doing the same filtration, over and over, why wouldn't you use a column? This isn't elaborate, anybody with a pulse should be able to assemble it in minutes and probably get a lot of use before needing to change it out. And there's no more mess than could be solved with a dust buster in less than a minute.

davidad

https://draco.acs.uci.edu/rbfaq/FAQ/8d.2.html
I went a little crazy like I always do when I have a lot of down time and bought a small ultrasonic cleaner to clean my chain. It does a very good job and my drive trains last a long time.
Before that I used a plastic Ragu jar and mineral spirits to clean it. This also does a good job.
I lube my chains with 4 parts mineral spirits to 1 part chainsaw bar oil after I clean and install it. Repeat every 600 to 650 miles.
I tried lubing the chain on the bike and it lasted less than 2k miles.
The chain on my Heron road bike has almost 7k miles on it.

cyccommute 

The sand would have more material on it if you carried this out over several iterations. The sand also have much more surface area which is covered with the oil and grit.

Why would I have sand? You can't just go and pick up dirt out of the backyard and expect any kind of good results out of it. For filtration, sand should be ignited, ideally, to remove any organics in it.

Charcoal is not activated carbon. And again, why would I have charcoal? Both sand and charcoal aren't free if you don't have a need for them.

You'd have to grind it (a very messy process) to get any kind of absorbance efficiency out of it. Then you'd have to mix it with the sand, pack the bed, flush the bed to remove carbon particles. Fine particle carbon is extremely difficult to filter. It will usually pass through filter paper with small pore size (70 micron or so). Coffee filters aren't anywhere near that small. Then you would have fine carbon particles in the solvent. That may or may not be a good thing but it wouldn't be clean for the first few washings.

Finally, in order to elute off the solvent, you'll need quite a bit to begin with. This is a lot of trouble to go through for a cup of solvent. My point on this is that filtration through sand is overly complicated for something as simple as cleaning grease off your chain.

The fouled paper should be disposed of properly...as organic contaminated waste...just as the sand should be. You could, however, burn the paper not that I'm suggesting that. You can't do that with the sand. I mean, you could ignite it if you happened to have a muffle furnace handy but most people don't have those at home

schu777

My winter bike ended up on the patio for the spring and developed a nice rust on it due to me being to busy. So just this last week I decided to see if I could restore the chain and clean/lube the rest of the bike.

As for the chain, I took it off the bike and started with Mineral spirits and just cleaned it by swishing it around and such. After that got all dirty, I dumped it, cleaned the container out and started again - but this time I used a brush to clean it - took a while but managed to get it done. Dumped that out and 2 more cleans of swishing/rubbing it and it was fairly clean. I dried it off with a rag and then decided to soak it in some 10w30 oil - might not be the best choice, but did it over night and the next day I wiped off as much as I could and keep wiping it off as much as I can. It's installed on the bike and going again - most likely it needed to be replaced, but this is a winter bike and I'm just trying things out to see what happens.

I'll have to try to get a couple 2 liter bottles to store the used mineral spirits in and drain that off that is clean to a "used" container, but somewhat clean.

Michael

wunderkind

FWIW, I picked up one of these. Should makes chain cleaning much easier and thorough.

https://www.mec.ca/Products/product_d...45524441774255

sauerwald

Shimano sells dura-ace 10 speed chains for $60 - I think that if I could get people to pay me $60 bucks each for chains, I would suggest that the best thing to do would not be to bother cleaning chains but just replace them when they get dirty.

DaveSSS 

With the large clearance between the rollers and side plates, I think that the critical wear areas of the chain are quickly contaminated with dirt and a proper cleaning could never be harmful. IMO, whatever is inside that roller turns into a grinding paste in just a couple hundred miles. Weekly cleaning is not likely to have any ill effects.

If you do a three chain rotation with chains having a master link, swapping every week would be a 5-minute job. You could easily keep two of the three chains cleaned, lubed and ready to install whenever needed.

It only take about 5 minutes to do a thorough off-the-bike cleaning. I keep mineral spirits stored in a old water bottle for use over and over and use another for my 3 step cleaning process (mineral spirits, hot soapy water, then a hot water rinse). Towel dry then apply homebrew. Hold the chain vertically from the middle and drizzle it down from the top to the bottm.

BCRider

I've used my mineral spirits over and over and just decant into a new jar when it's especially gritty on the bottom. The grity leftovers get swished and dumped into my waste oil from the truck and motorcycles and recycled. Let the folks that do it for a living distill the spirits back out.

In any chain cleaning setup using the "on the bike" gizmo there's going to be at least a small amount of spillage and dripping. I catch this on some newspaper and just toss it. All or most of it will dry from my garbage can before it gets sealed for pickup anyway. The amount of the used stuff that goes missing due to dripping away is replaced with new solvent for the final wash with the chain gizmo. I blot it dry between washings with a paper towel to wick away the worst of the grit and dirty solvent in the chain. Doing it this way even a really dirty chain comes clean with two washings of recycled solvent and one of fresh. The final fresh one is only slightly "grey" with grit.

The dissolved chain lube oil in the solvent doesn't hurt anything or reduce the cleaning ability. At least not in any amount that comes off the chain.

Oil goes on right away after the final blotting. The solvent mixes with it easily and what is still there dries in its own good time overnight or during the ride.

Yes, putting oil onto a chain that was only wiped off will encourage the remaining grit to get deeper into the chain. Wiping a chain off will never remove all the grit. A lot of it will just be pushed down deeper by the cloth or paper towel.

Citrus eco friendly degreasers and Simple Green are all known to encourage corrosion if left on metal even if oiled. The water component of them will evaporate but the active ingredients will remain and mix with the oil and encourage corrosion. To avoid this they must be rinsed well with water to remove any residue. If the chains are then wiped down reasonably dry of water and oil is applied and the chain spun around a few times the oil will displace the water and coat the metal just fine. Oil has a much better affinity for wetting out a surface than water does so it'll cut under the water. A wipe to remove the excess oil and lifted water and you're done. But if you use the citrus degreasers or Simple Green do not omit the use of a couple of water rinses.

Al1943

That machine looks about like a Park or FinishLine machine but I don't see a magnet in the bottom for removing metallic particals.

LAriverRat

After reading how to measure a chain to see if it is worn i decided to clean it first. It had a bunch of black junk on it from about 400 or so miles i put on it since i bought it( its a used bike). I had no degreaser so i just mixed some dish soap, laundry powder, krudcutter and water and applied with a small brush. I had lots of time so i went slow and rinsed often. The chain and cassette and the drive train now are very clean. I measured the chain and it has to be replaced. I lubed it lightly and wiped of the excess and it looks great. After the cleaning the index lever now clicks. The two chain idea is one i might try. Lots of good info on this thread.

cyccommute 

While I agree with you on the contamination issue, I just have to ask why or, maybe more appropriately , on our 3 step cleaning process? Mineral spirits and oils, as well as waxes (which would avoid the contamination issue altogether) are all soluble because they are long chain aliphatic molecules that are nonpolar. As we say...over and over...in chemistry, 'like dissolves like'.

Water and water with detergent in it, for that matter, are polar solvents. Add water to mineral spirits and the mineral spirits are only going to float to the top. The surfactant is going to dissolve a little of the mineral spirits but not as much as you might think. And the real issue is why bother to put water onto a chain that is clean in the first place? You need to add another step for your system to be effective if you continue to use water. An acetone rinse after the water steps would dry the water out of the plates and rollers and keep the chain from rusting.

Or you could stop at using mineral spirits. One step. No others are needed. You already use oil and mineral spirits for lubrication, why displace the mineral spirits with water and the displace the water with mineral spirits. You wouldn't even need the towel step.

DMF 

It needs to be replaced after only 400 miles? You're doing something wrong.

FBinNY 

he's not doing anything wrong. it's just that he's such an AN-I-MAL.

Seriousl.... It was a used bike, and he put 400 miles on it, but who knows how far it had been ridden beforehand.

mtb_man_14

I clean my chain with the lube I use (finish line) so its a win win situation. i put the lube on, get my rag and firmly grasp the chain and turn the cranks 30 times or so and then lube the chain like normal.