Commuting in the dirt, chain cleaning?
 

I have done some searches on chain cleaning and it seems to be something of a religious war over in the mechanics forum, so I thought I would ask this here.

My 16 mile one way commute includes 8.5 miles of dirt, dust, gravel, loose sand, etc. If it's been dry a few days my bike gets filthy, especially the chain, on one round trip.

I started with a clean chain I had soaked in motor oil, bad plan got gross in a hurry. So I cleaned it and used ICE or something like that, this product was supposed to dry, then you rub off excess and it isn't supposed to attract dirt, that didn't work either. So I tried just wiping the dirt off with a rag and not re-greasing the chain again, and that worked ok for 2 round trips, but its a mess again. And of course its not just the chain, the cassette is full of junk too.

So for those that commute in the dirt:

what do you do?
how often?
how well does it work?
how long does it take?

I have full fenders on order, hopefully that will help.

Thanks

If it were me, I'd get a bottle of spray degreaser, spray it on, hose it off after a few minutes, and re-lube my chain with a spray lube... wipe of the excess from the outside of the chain after letting the lube set in for a minute or so.

use a cassette brush to clean between the cogs.

Taking the chain off and on, IMO, is a waste of time.

so, my opinion, soap it up, brush is off, spray it down, lube it, wipe it and repeat as necessary.

Similar to what I have - I try not to use too much oil and clean it once or twice a week. This seems to work well. I also have oil with me at all times so that if it starts sounding like it is dry, I will go ahead and lube.

I use one of these on my chain - albeit not very often. Usually I find it's not too messy, I re-lube as and when needed (by sound/sight or just knowing I've ridden through a downpour, etc.). With the chain cleaner, I use MECs Bio-Cycle oil, as recommended, and it's fairly cheap.

I also do a full wash/clean with warm soapy water - with a sponge and an old childs toothbrush for those little areas. The chain device seems to handle the links, but the cassette would need a brush or some such.

For lube, I use "Tri-flow" - I got that over the Phil Wood stuff at MEC purely due to dollar/quantity ratio. Seems to work for me.

I may not do things the RIGHT way, but what I do seems to work. I put 1,000 miles on a 86 rockhopper last year and it STILL has the original chain.

I get to ride about 3 miles of dirt/cinders on my 12.5 mile trip. I never clean my chain much to the anguish of the bikies in the family. *shrugs* I just keep applying lube. You can feel/hear when it starts to dry out. (before it squeaks!) I spray it down with whatever is handy in the garage. I then run it through a rag to wipe off the excess. The current lube of choice is a spray lithium. I've tried fancier stuff, but it just doesn't seem to matter. It seems like the chain dries out in 100 dry miles or 1 trip in the rain.


Summary: I don't clean my chain. I just keep lubin' it and wiping it down about 1/week or after each rainy day. That takes about 3 minutes/week.

I also live in dirt road country. As soon as I get my hand out of the cast it's in, I'll finish the report on the Hebie chaincase.

I have a little over 3 miles of dirt and gravel on my ride. My usual routine is to once a week clip a Park Tool chain cleaner on and do about three complete cleaning cycles, changing the cleaning fluid between cycles. If need be I take a brush to the cassette. I then relube everything and wipe off any excess.

Once a month I pull the chain off and give it a soak in degreaser and go at it with a brush. At that point I also clean the cassette and double check the derailleurs and lube all the pivots. I use Tri-flow throughout and it seems to work fine for me. I get about 2000-2500 miles on chain and cassette with this routine. Still not exceptional mileage, but it is good enough for me. At some point I realized that more time cleaning just wasn't worth it given the price of a cassette and chain.

The other thing that I have started doing is washing my rear wheel down at the end of the day. I have worn through two rear rims. Each lasted only about a year and that is far too short of a life span given their costs. On the advice of my LBS I now try to wash the grit off every night to reduce rim wear from braking. It's probably imperfect and not entirely successful, but if I can extend the life of the wheel by a reasonable amount then I will be happy with the extra work.