What grease to use on bicycle chain?



On Tue, 18 Apr 2006 17:04:12 +0200, Arno Welzel <[email protected]>
wrote:

>Another experience: WD-40 in cable housing - worked for one or two weeks
>and afterwards the cables got even more sticky than before.


That's odd -- I've used it in cable housings for years (usually three
or four times a year, after a period of riding in the rain) with no
problems at all. The housings have some sort of plastic lining and I
usually lube them with motor oil the first time, then WD-40 after
that.

JT

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In article <[email protected]>,
John Forrest Tomlinson <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Tue, 18 Apr 2006 17:04:12 +0200, Arno Welzel
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >Another experience: WD-40 in cable housing - worked for one or two
> >weeks and afterwards the cables got even more sticky than before.

>
> That's odd -- I've used it in cable housings for years (usually three
> or four times a year, after a period of riding in the rain) with no
> problems at all. The housings have some sort of plastic lining and I
> usually lube them with motor oil the first time, then WD-40 after
> that.


Petroleum products often break down plastics, rubber, etc. Have you
seen any of that with your housings? I can't recall lubing a modern
plastic lined housing, so I don't have a personal perspective on this.
 
On Tue, 18 Apr 2006 17:22:04 -0500, Tim McNamara
<[email protected]> wrote:

>In article <[email protected]>,
> John Forrest Tomlinson <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 18 Apr 2006 17:04:12 +0200, Arno Welzel
>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> >Another experience: WD-40 in cable housing - worked for one or two
>> >weeks and afterwards the cables got even more sticky than before.

>>
>> That's odd -- I've used it in cable housings for years (usually three
>> or four times a year, after a period of riding in the rain) with no
>> problems at all. The housings have some sort of plastic lining and I
>> usually lube them with motor oil the first time, then WD-40 after
>> that.

>
>Petroleum products often break down plastics, rubber, etc. Have you
>seen any of that with your housings?


No. Been doing this for at least six years.

JT

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[email protected] wrote:
>
> No matter how clean the roads may seem, even the air itself
> ctonains dust. Run a damp paper towel along the top of a
> window or door frame, and you'll see how much dust has been
> drifting around inside the still air.


This explains why archeology almost always involves digging.

And it explains why housewives dust their furniture. Neglect dusting
for a few millenia, and you'll have to dig in order to find your coffee
table!

- Frank Krygowski
 
[email protected] wrote:

> The grit that damages chains consists of practically
> invisible road dust particles, which are whipped up by the
> tires and swirl around the chain.


Dear Carl,

How do you know? What happens to the metal which comes off the chain
parts resulting in "chain stretch", and how much of the particles which
cause damage are this metal and how much is road dust? Numbers,
please, along with how you arrived at them. Otherwise you are just
guessing, no?

> The dust sticks to any oily surface, just as flies stick to
> flypaper. ...<snip> ... This faint pumping
> action gradually mixes filthy exterior oil with clean
> interior oil.


??? I don't think anyone is arguing with that so ???

> The paper towel with the ugly black streak is smeared with
> oil that has trapped road dust. The particles are so small
> that you can't feel any grittiness when you rub the mess
> with your fingers, but they eventually polish the chain
> innards until a foot of chain wears enough to elongate a
> sixteenth of an inch and needs to be replaced.


Again, agreed but what's your point? Mine is that riding in the rain
cleans your chain. Even if you are putting new roaddust into it --
even as much by riding in the rain as by riding in the dry -- you are
still only putting one day's worth of road dust into it, whereas the
rain is washing away many days of accumulated roaddust. So, even if
there is no difference in what goes in, if you ride every day and it
rains once every two weeks, then by riding in the rain you are cleaning
your chain 13/14ths of the way. If it rains every day in Seattle, then
jeverett's chain is perpetually almost clean.

Furthermore, if the rain does indeed clean your chain, then you are not
even putting one day's worth of roaddust into it in one day of riding.
Instead, since it is constantly being washed out, at the end of a rain
ride, the only roaddust you have in there is a snapshot of the last
moment you road. See what I mean? If there are 10 particles per CC of
water flying about, then at the end of the ride you have 10 times
the-number-of-CCs-of-water-in-your-chain particles in your chain. It
can't accumulate. If this snapshot represents one tenth or hundreth of
the dust available to the chain over the day, and it rains every day in
Seattle, then the Seattle rider's chain is 100 or 1000 times as clean
as the chain of the rider who rides the rain one time in ten.

> No matter how clean the roads may seem, even the air itself
> ctonains dust. Run a damp paper towel along the top of a
> window or door frame, and you'll see how much dust has been
> drifting around inside the still air.


Yeah but are you not guessing again? I mean, how many particles per cc
of air are there on a dry day, and how many on a wet day? Do you
really think that these tiny dust particles are really whipping around
anywhere near the same amounts in a downpour? I don't, but I'm not the
one making the claim. Again, numbers please, and how you got them.

> It's astonishing that such tiny particles suspended in oil
> can wear steel chains, but we have to remember that a
> slow-moving bicycle chain puts a very heavy load on a very
> small part of each pin, so heavy that the metal surfaces are
> expected to touch, despite any lubrication that we slather
> on them. Keeping them apart under such loads would require
> pressurized lubrication.


Uhm...reread the thread my friend. Noone is debating that.

> WD-40 is just too thin to fill up the empty spaces inside a
> chain very well. What doesn't evaporate or run out is still
> thin enough to squish in and out alarmingly well, mixing and
> transporting trapped dust to the worst possible places.


Yeah well that's true but it will attract less dirt too. Still
further, if you were to apply lots of WD-40 every day, you would wash
out a lot of the grit inside in the process. At any rate, more
guessing on both our parts.

dkl
 
Ron Ruff wrote:
> [email protected] wrote:
> > Sounds like the water is cleaning your chain. This suggests
> > that frequent cleaning with no lube will result in long chain life.

>
> Hardly... everything is covered with black volcanic pumic and fine
> reddish grit. I got 5,000 miles out of my previous chain (~1/24" wear),
> but I'd be surprised if this one lasts that long.


I admit I did assume that the conditions you described were the
conditions in which you achieved 5000 miles from your chain.

> Don't know jeverett, but I doubt the road spray in Seattle is very clean either.


See my response to Carl. No matter how much grit in the rain, if rain
puts grit into the chain, then at the end of the ride, you will be left
with a snapshot of that much, not an accumulated amount.

Again, just guessing here, but FWIW my guess is that rain is much much
much (hows that for precise?) cleaner than the same amount of kerosene
after I clean my chain in it.

> The dry sound... and squeeking removes all doubt..


As I suspected. Suggests to me that the chain is not only dry but
clean. What exactly causes the squeaking? two dry solid surfaces? or
a bunch of dry grit? Will a chain which is dry and full of dry grit
squeak?

dkl