On another thread, I watched the first video below.
It inspired me to go crawl on my arse in the garage and take a short video of my bike's chain, a few minutes ago.
That is the second video below.
Some notes:
1.) Bike has just clocked 15,000 miles, I get slightly less than 3,000 miles on a back tire, so she is not babied.
2.) My chain has never ever been lubed, purchased the bike new.
3.) My chain adjusters have never been adjusted, they are still on the original factory adjustment. When I replaced a tire, those adjusters were put back without any adjustment whatsover.
4.) I only clean my chain when I wash the bike, with a power washer. First soap with the washer, then clean water, nozzle far enough away not to get water beyond the chain o-rings. The power washer cleans the bike and the chain. Right now, both are a bit dirty.
5.) The bike is on stands, so the back wheel is down further than the manual specifiies for chain slack measurement on the side stand. Should I put it on the side stand, the play shown in the video will be quite a bit less. Personally, I prefer more chain slack than what the manual tells us.
6.) I don't intend doing a video, such as the one below. But if I wanted to, I would mix road dust with lubricant, repeat the test with that, measure the amount of iron which will get mixed into the lube with rotation, and show how bad it is for an open chain drive, running close to pavement surface, to have lube on it. Basically, it is putting grinding paste on your chain, and see it wearing out more than twice as fast with the same amount of operating hours.
So in short, I am the odd one out, I look at the first video below and accept that I have never been good at chasing feathers. I have designed more chain drives in my industrial life than I would like to remember, but if we lube, we always enclose, to protect from the environment. The worst thing one can do to a chain drive is run it with lube contaminated with dirt, AKA grinding paste.
So everyone here who are anal about maintaining their chain drives, cleaning them, lubing them, please hate me. It is OK.
It inspired me to go crawl on my arse in the garage and take a short video of my bike's chain, a few minutes ago.
That is the second video below.
Some notes:
1.) Bike has just clocked 15,000 miles, I get slightly less than 3,000 miles on a back tire, so she is not babied.
2.) My chain has never ever been lubed, purchased the bike new.
3.) My chain adjusters have never been adjusted, they are still on the original factory adjustment. When I replaced a tire, those adjusters were put back without any adjustment whatsover.
4.) I only clean my chain when I wash the bike, with a power washer. First soap with the washer, then clean water, nozzle far enough away not to get water beyond the chain o-rings. The power washer cleans the bike and the chain. Right now, both are a bit dirty.
5.) The bike is on stands, so the back wheel is down further than the manual specifiies for chain slack measurement on the side stand. Should I put it on the side stand, the play shown in the video will be quite a bit less. Personally, I prefer more chain slack than what the manual tells us.
6.) I don't intend doing a video, such as the one below. But if I wanted to, I would mix road dust with lubricant, repeat the test with that, measure the amount of iron which will get mixed into the lube with rotation, and show how bad it is for an open chain drive, running close to pavement surface, to have lube on it. Basically, it is putting grinding paste on your chain, and see it wearing out more than twice as fast with the same amount of operating hours.
So in short, I am the odd one out, I look at the first video below and accept that I have never been good at chasing feathers. I have designed more chain drives in my industrial life than I would like to remember, but if we lube, we always enclose, to protect from the environment. The worst thing one can do to a chain drive is run it with lube contaminated with dirt, AKA grinding paste.
So everyone here who are anal about maintaining their chain drives, cleaning them, lubing them, please hate me. It is OK.
