Wash it in diesel, make my own wax lube

OldNickToo

Ok. This is about money only because I am getting a bit pissed off about paying Aud$15 for 125 ml of wax-in-paintthinners. I also firmly believe that if I am careful, I can use so little diesel to clean my chain, and reuse most of it by settling, magnets and decanting, that I will _not_ pay Aud$12 for some pissy little bottle of "Orange Special". The amount you use would run the average ute about 200 metres anyway....

I was getting the chains dirty quite badly, because of where we ride, and could see the lube/wash costing _far_ more than chains and sprockets, to say nothing of the time spent cleaning and re-lubing.

I still think that even though it gets the chain dirty (and it does), "too much" oil on the chain gives better shifts than anything else I have tried. Without any other adjustments, I rode with oil on the chain and the shifts were like silk. If I was racing for big things, I would simply be using oil, and washing and lubing my chain every race, and buy a new one a little more often. I suppose in a long, really dirty, race, this may not work. I would probably just use the chain with the diesel still on it! <G>

I was also seeing rust starting on the chains because you are told to be so careful .

Having said that, I now make my own lube, and use "too much" of that, leaving a film on the chain. It does aid shifting, and prevents rust, and so far has not picked up any dirt in two rides on gravel/dust/sand.

What I did was to take some Johnson's Traffic Wax (the one WITHOUT the abrasive grit in it!), and make up a thin mix in paint stripper (contains hydrocarbon! <G>). This fully dissolves it. I note that White Lightning is actually a suspension, AFAICS. Seems to me that a full dissolve will get stuff into place better...however.

The result is a dry lube, very slightly tacky, like WL, that does not attract dirt very much. I even shook talcum over it to see if it would stick. It could be blown off, brushed off with a fine-hair paint brush, with no residue.

It probably cost me about $5 at most, for 500ml. It took me about 3 minutes to do, and if I had made a bigger batch, would not have taken much longer. Still only experimenting.

At present I am running two bikes. One gets drip-fed WL from the bottle. Mine will get a toothbrush application, with maybe the occasional full dip, with my home brew. Dipping is known to be better than any other application to get right in there.

Thoughts anyone?

OldNickToo

So I read endless threads about lube, and how much and how to buy it, and on an on and on, and we scrabble about trying this and that and buying this and that and getting ripped off, but when I try something that saves money and seems to work, silence.Oh well....

Dondare

Like leg-shaving and wearing underwear with cycling shorts, this is a topic which keeps coming up. Various people have claimed that petrol, parafin or whatever else fuel-oil is good for cleaning chains, and that gearbox oil, crankcase oil &c. is as good as anything that comes in small bottles with big price-tags. Old cycling books recommend soft parafin wax as an ideal lubricant, melted over a stove rather than dissolved in paint-thinner, with the chain being immersed in the molten wax.
When we by the expensive little bottles we are paying for convenience as much as anything else, but it is also possible that they contain other ingredients that make them more slippery, more tenacious or less likely to attract dirt than motor-oil and Turtle wax.