Thursday, February 3, 2011

Chain and drive train care

Larry spoke with the makers of chains at the recent Park Tool Tech Summit and NONE of them recommended removing your bike's chain to clean it. They spent a LOT of time demonstrating the proper way to install their chains and said the only time to remove one is for replacement! Here's an alternative idea for cleaning your chain if you don't like the age-old idea of using a tiny amount of diesel fuel: Instead of filling up a chain-cleaning device (Park Tool's is shown here) with a super-solvent that will remove all the lubricant from your chain, fill it with chain lube (or save money and use simple motor oil), then run the chain through the cleaning machine, wiping off the excess oil once you're done. Do this BEFORE your bike-wash session and clean the other bits of the drive train with an eco-friendly solvent like Simple Green's "Motorsports" product. We've just switched our parts washer over to this solvent though we never soaked any parts in the old solution for long. Most component makers don't like the original Simple Green formula, claiming it's too corrosive, especially if parts are left to soak in it.

No comments:

Post a Comment