+1 for Pedros and Park Tools chain cleaners. Had good experiences with both.

BTW, never ever get Spin Doctor chain cleaner from Performancebike.com. It falls apart pretty quickly, breaks up easily!

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Simple Green only pits metal if you leave it on for some time, cleaning a chain you rinse it off soon and it don't harm anythng.

I had a chain cleaner and it was fine, but if you have a SRAM link or something similar it really doesn't end up saving you a whole lot of time. If you're cleaning the chain you might as well clean the cassette too, so you're going to have to get a brush out and do a little manual scrubbing anyway.

I just take my chain off, put it in a bowl, and scrub it with dish soap and an old toothbrush. Doesn't take very long and it gets the chain nice and clean.

Simple Green has no rust inhibitor and rinsing it off will only make the chain rust...but obviously you need to relube it right away to prevent that; better yet after cleaning with SG and rinsing with water, is to soak the chain in WD40 immediately after rinsing then wipe down it down real well and let dry, then lube with your favorite lube. Most bike lubes don't have water dispersion capabilities so you could end up leaving water inside the rollers and pins you never saw.

Plus the stainless steel chains do pit faster then regular steel chains when SG is used; for some reason SG attacks stainless steel more then any other steel. There is also a corrosion problem with AL parts when exposed to SG.

I've never liked SG and will never use it, nor do I rinse off my chains with water after cleaning-but to each their own!

Since WD-40 is a degreaser, would not that make it difficult for the chain lube to stick to the chain?

If you wipe it down and let it dry it's fine, the problem is when you do Simple Green and then rinse with water how are you going to get the water out of all the little kinks? Let it dry? If you do that it will rust, and since most lubes do not displace moisture the chain is going to eventually rust somewhere sometime. In fact the WD in WD40 means Water Displacement. Technically it's not much of a degreaser, if that was true then all you would need to do is clean or soak your chain in WD40 then let drip and wipe off the chain very well then let dry. Once WD40 is dry it's degreasing abilities stop anyway but it's rust prevention continues...supposely.

Right ... I've been using it for years and it works well. Spray it on, leave it on for 10 minutes or so, rinse it off. I believe those are the instructions on the bottle too.

But on one of these forums, I read about some guy, who obviously couldn't read, who left his Dura Ace drivetrain soaking in Simple Green over the winter ... when he fished it out in the spring, it was practically decomposed.

1) Get park tool or pedros chain cleaner system
2) Put chain cleaning gunk inside
3) Run chain through cleaner
4) Look at chain, decide it's still too dirty, buy new chain, install, et voilá clean chain!

Sheldon has a lot of great products showing up on that page [near the end]. I'm especially interested in the POWerwheels:

https://sheldonbrown.com/power_wheel.html

It looks like I can acquire a nearly 80% boost in performance by getting my wheels relaced with POWerwheel spokes!

I use gasoline from the shed. Swish around in a coffee can. Scrub the chain a bit and hang to dry. Evaporates faster than kerosene.

If you let your chain get that dirty, then a chain cleaner will get the surface dirt off, but it's questionable if it'll get the crap out from inside the rollers (and then you have to get the cleaner out from inside of your chain too). Granted if you're mountain biking or touring you may have no choice.

I've noticed that years ago when I used to clean my chain once a week, that it used to get pretty dirty between cleanings and as a result I went through chains fairly quickly (When I'm able, I ride 200km /week).

Now I lube (Pedros Dry) my chain before every ride, (maybe 10 minutes before and then go get changed), then aggressively try to wipe off all the lube with a piece of towel (i.e. a piece of old bath towel with a long nap on it).

My chain hardly ever leaves a mark on your hand when you touch it, I haven't used a chain cleaner in over a year and this 10-speed Shimano chain has over 2,000 km and the wear is less than 0.5% (barely shows on the Park chain tool).

A clean chain also makes for cleaner chain rings and cassette, which are harder to clean. Lube and wiping the chain takes me maybe 2-3 minutes before each ride max.

Since I store my bike in the Living room, the deal with my wife is that that's fine as long as it's spotless (and looks like the most expensive piece of industrial art in the house, which it is. It's also the most expensive thing in the living room!)

I frequently ride a fixed gear, with no derailer to take up chain slack...consequently chain stretch has the obvious consequence of making the chain slack, so I really notice on a ride-to-ride basis when my chain has slackened (stretched). I have found that my chain slackens (stretches) most rapidly on the first few rides after cleaning (with mineral spirits and toothbrush) and relubing the chain (Dumond Tech). Thereafter, the chain maintains good tension until the next lubing. My theory on this is that the capilary action of the lube drags grit into the chain, whereas as the lube wears off, less and less grit is draged into the chain. For this reason, I've adopted the strategy of lubing my chain very infrequently,and wiping the hell out of it after each ride, without applying more lube. As long as there is at least some lube residue inside the chain, the chain will work smoothly. When I am at the stage of having only a residual amount of lube left on the chain, I get essentially no slackening of the chain, even if I take it out on a wet gritty road ride. Even if the chain sounds gritty and nasty, the grit is not being worked into the chain. I clean and relube the chain only after it starts to get noisy. With that strategy my chains seem to last longer than when I used to lube on a weekly basis. Keep the lube minimal and very infrequent.

I just wipe off the junk with degreaser. Wipe if off again with more degreaser. Wipe it off again with a damp rag (that's been soaked in water only). And wipe it off one final time with a clean dry rag. Then I apply lube. Whole process is about five minutes.

I prefer to remove the chain and soak it in bio cleaner, then wash it off with hot water and dawn to get as much of the tiny dirt particles out of it as possible. Let it dry, lube and reinstall. I use a Connex link so I can remove and reinstall the chain easily.

So, after I have soaked my chain in solvent, or used a chain cleaning tool, what do I do with the dirty solvent? Aren't solvents petroleum based? Wouldn't flushing it down the drain be equivalent of doing the same with used motor oil?

So for those of you using petrol to clean, how do you dispose of it afterwards?

put it in a coke bottle and toss it in the fireplace.*





























*are you serious?

Yes it does...just not as bad. I use this method^^ minus the toothbrush. connex and similar links are great! I like the SRAM better but only the 9spd is reusable. Looking into the KMC one.

I started to clean my chain with my Park chain cleaner dealie yesterday and noticed that the main brush cog was broken. I've only used the device about three times, am very careful not to over-stress anything, and have always cleaned it out after use. I'm a bit miffed.

^^ call/email Park. Send pictures.

OK on the Connex and the Coffee Can, but I'm not so sure about the baby otters and the puppies though. I use Fantastik™ to clean, and a mixture of Phil's Tenacious and Tri-Flow to lubricate.

er, that's it…

- Wil

Many automotive degreasers suggest soaking it up with newspapers then allowing it to dry before disposing with the trash.

There are also solvent absorbers available at home stores-like kitty litter on oil spots in your garage.

The third option is to dump it in a small bucket of sand. This is also where I put the old oil from lawn equipment at the end of the season. I use this to clean/lube my garden tools eg. shovel, post hole digger, etc. after use by shoving them into the sand repeatedly.

Nothing I've tried is more effective than Citrus based stuff...

You can filter and reuse kerosene with coffee filters. Otherwise, if you're into camping, you can just burn it in a kerosene lamp.

After cleaning the chain, I blow the cleaner out using an air compressor, about 80 psi.