After last weekend’s little offroad journey my mountain bike was creaking and squeaking pretty badly, so yesterday I got out the silicone spray lube (no WD40) and an old toothbrush and cleaned a lot of crap off the chain, gears and derailleur components. Made a massive difference.
I’m going to try and be better about this, clean & lube the chain every month instead of “whenever”.
That said, do the little chain cleaning kits (which have a plastic housing with a rotating brush that you feed the chain through, and a special brush to get at all the crevices in the gears) offer any advantage over my low-tech approach? Is there any reason to buy some fancy bottle of “chain cleaner”? I don’t need my bike to smell like oranges.
A clean and properly lubed drivetrain is imperative to get the best performance and most utility from your bike. If a chaincleaner will prompt you to clean it more often then it is a worthwhile investment. They do work.
Someone will come along and say something like “no chaincleaner can beat dissassembling every link and piece in the drivetrain, using a sonic cleaner, 3000 grit polish and reassembleing it all under a microscope, yada, yada, yada, ad nauseum.”
Two words: toilet brush.
DON’T use WD-40, by the way. You chain likes the greasy crap. Really, just holding a cloth around the chain and running it through for a few spins will usually do the job, then reapply favorite lubricant (my favorite White Lightning). Don’t “clean” it til it shines-- just wipe it off and keep it gooey.
Note! Don’t do this with a motorbike chain, and seven times never with the motor running to turn the wheel. Yes, I once knew someone stupid enough to do this. No, it wasn’t me. Yes, he did get his hand caught and lose the top joint of one finger. Oaf.
I use an old toothbrush and Simple Green. be sure to wipe off the excess cleaner (you can spray it with a hose, but make sure you give it time to dry thoroughly). Then a drop of Pedro’s Syn-lube ATB on each link, wiping excess off afterwards.
My bike has an engine, but I use Chain Wax. It’s supposed to last a lot longer than other cleaners/lubricants. I imagine it’ll work just as well if not better on a bicycle.
My experience with waxing a bicycle chain is it’s not so nice as a nice spray-on lube. There’s the fuss of breaking the chain (and with 9- and 10-speed drivetrains you want to limit this), running the oven to melt the wax (and smelling up the house), letting the chain cool and drip, and then reinstalling the whole works. And then you have bits of wax coming off all the time and gunking up the derailleurs.
I used several different rolling brush gizmos and a gadget of my own design to clean my bicycle chain without breaking it off the bike. I always used petroleum distillates of some kind as the solvent. I also always cleaned the freewheel cogs and the chainrings. When I was younger and more ambitious I’d also take apart the freewheel and clean all its little internal parts, and glue all the balls into their races with white lithium grease, and tie the pawls down against their springs with a fine thread run out through the balls, reassemble, and then pull the thread out to liberate the pawls. That was too much work, I think.
But certainly keeping the chain clean with the plastic roller brush gadget and solvent is easy and worthwhile and made things shift very nicely.
On a bike message board, I posted this in response to a thread full of people espousing silly water-based degreasers:
Removing my chain to clean it is facilitated by using a master link designed for that purpose. In my case, I use a SRAM PowerLink, so I can remove and replace my chain in mere seconds.
I have a Park Tool chain cleaning tool and found it to be fairly effective and well built. The one I had before (can’t remember brand, sorry) was cheaply made and didn’t last long, but worked well while it lasted.
Citrus degreasers work well, and easier to dispose of than mineral spirits or kerosene. Make sure you wash it off completely with plenty of water. I don’t think there’s much difference between Simple Green and the more expensive stuff sold at bike shops.
But personally, for routine maintenance I usually don’t bother to clean the chain at all. I just add a lot of ProLink lubricant, wipe off the excess, and repeat. Then again, I only do on-road riding; you probably need a more aggressive cleaning method after off-road riding.
To close the chain, so to speak, I stopped in at REI this morning coming back from my ride and two guys working in their repair shop asked the same question - how old is the chain. I estimate 2 years, with something on the order of 2000 miles on it. They recommended replacing the chain at that point (the chain does squeak a lot - I cleaned and lubed it maybe 3-4 days ago and it was complaining noticeably by today). They also didn’t see anything wrong with my El Cheapo Cleaning Ritual.
Bought a middle-of-the-road SRAM chain (which has the Powerlink that aerodave mentioned) for $25 and suddenly all I can hear is the whirring of the tires on the road. Learn something new every day.
Off to the firetrails of Tilden Park tomorrow…quietly
If you are doing lots of miles, then you would be best running two, three or more chains.
You change them out to clean them in a tank of paraffin, then leave them in a container of engine oil, the most basic kind without all the additives which can sometimes cause build up.
Then you leave it to hang up on a nail or something.
If you do this, the rest of your transmission will last a lot longer, breaking and making a chain is only a matter of practice, once you have the hang of it, it takes no time at all.
If you do this, your sprockets will last several times longer, don’t bother buying expensive chains either, it isn’t worth it if you look after them, take a look at what all the club riders use, avoid Shimano chains as they need a special rivet for making and breaking, and avoid all the hollow rivet chains, too expensive. Something dirt cheap like the Sedis PC48 is ideal, as are the DID and Regina chains
You should treat chains as one of the most disposable parts of your bike, for the price of one expensive chain you can buy three or maybe more of a much chepaer chain, you are far better replacing the chain more often than keeping a more expensive one, it reduces wear on the rest of the drivetrain, which costs a whole lot more to replace, and in some cases it can even make the whole bike not worth keeping if you do have to replace it.
