This isn't a claim for all / general, but for my transport fixed gear used in all conditions.
Now empirically proved: lubrication makes my chains wear faster.
What is (was) my lubrication: when chain clean (so mostly blinking steel - no black), I put a drop oil on every roller, and after oil seeped in, I regularly wipe the external of the chain off. Shortly after, I have to re tension the chain, indicating that the chain became longer.
This also occurs after a heavy rain.
It is like ANY fluid causes the chain the become longer.
This suggests that fluid makes mobile and so pushes out dirt / worn off particles from the joints, and that these particles, when dry, STAY, and thereby PREVENT the chain to become longer - apparently the pedaling force isn't enough to push them out / overcome the friction that hampers their movement.
My second-last chain replacement was in later 2018. Unlike previously, I did well oil on it directly after mounting. Despite dry weather / clean roads, but maybe sand in the wind, I had to retension the chain quite alot after just a couple days.
So at my last chain replacement, with a new tryout being a motorcycle type 420, begin 2020, I decided to NOT oil it.
But the first rainy day, two weeks later, delivered a rusty chain, because the motorcycle chain wasn't factory oiled, it was some white more viscous grease. So I was forced to oil it, and soon after, retension it, and so on. Every lubrication ment shortly after a retensioning.
Now 3 months ago, I finally found a solution to stop rain from getting on the chain. Due to lack of frame clearance and no mounting for it, a common bike chain guard/enclosed case isn't possible. I found the solution (as usual) in a garbage bin from prefab building construction: a rubber seal with a cross section that looks like a ring with 3 subsequently smaller horizontal lines. These seals are normally rubberglued in sleeves in the concrete of prefab elements, and are ment as water seals between different elements placed next to eachother.
As rurnt out, it proved as doing the job well to direct rain away from the chain.
That is because rain dripping on the circle of the cross section, flows aside and down, where a part of it already leaves, with each time a part of the remaining water that does flow further towards the chain, directed away by the subsequent horizontal lines.
This rubber kinda "tube" protrudes 20 cm before the front of the chainring, so rain is already catched there.
At the same time, I ceased to lubricate the chain. So I'm now riding 3 months with an unlubricated chain, dry bare blinking metal. The chain is in the running since about 18 months, with the bottom bracket eccenter tensioner 3 months ago at about 85% of its range, and now with little difference to that.
I'm sure that if I would now throw a bucket water on it, and then ride some streets, that the tensioner would sit at 100%.
Is this surprising?
Until now it was, for me.
But this empirical proof, and the fact that some (quite more expensive) motorcycle chains have shaped seal rings between the chain link components, keeping out dirt, but also lock up worn off particles, say the opposite about lubrication.
I will probably have a chain replacement now triggered by a broken off cog tooth - those became quite short.
I'll put another such motorcycle one (a Regina 420, an improved version), and rely on that white grease alone. With the rain cover, this is now an option. No oil anymore.
And see what effect it gives on the chains life length.
I will, as usual, keep you informed and entertained.
This was Robbie Williams, born entertainer, live from Belgium.
Now empirically proved: lubrication makes my chains wear faster.
What is (was) my lubrication: when chain clean (so mostly blinking steel - no black), I put a drop oil on every roller, and after oil seeped in, I regularly wipe the external of the chain off. Shortly after, I have to re tension the chain, indicating that the chain became longer.
This also occurs after a heavy rain.
It is like ANY fluid causes the chain the become longer.
This suggests that fluid makes mobile and so pushes out dirt / worn off particles from the joints, and that these particles, when dry, STAY, and thereby PREVENT the chain to become longer - apparently the pedaling force isn't enough to push them out / overcome the friction that hampers their movement.
My second-last chain replacement was in later 2018. Unlike previously, I did well oil on it directly after mounting. Despite dry weather / clean roads, but maybe sand in the wind, I had to retension the chain quite alot after just a couple days.
So at my last chain replacement, with a new tryout being a motorcycle type 420, begin 2020, I decided to NOT oil it.
But the first rainy day, two weeks later, delivered a rusty chain, because the motorcycle chain wasn't factory oiled, it was some white more viscous grease. So I was forced to oil it, and soon after, retension it, and so on. Every lubrication ment shortly after a retensioning.
Now 3 months ago, I finally found a solution to stop rain from getting on the chain. Due to lack of frame clearance and no mounting for it, a common bike chain guard/enclosed case isn't possible. I found the solution (as usual) in a garbage bin from prefab building construction: a rubber seal with a cross section that looks like a ring with 3 subsequently smaller horizontal lines. These seals are normally rubberglued in sleeves in the concrete of prefab elements, and are ment as water seals between different elements placed next to eachother.
As rurnt out, it proved as doing the job well to direct rain away from the chain.
That is because rain dripping on the circle of the cross section, flows aside and down, where a part of it already leaves, with each time a part of the remaining water that does flow further towards the chain, directed away by the subsequent horizontal lines.
This rubber kinda "tube" protrudes 20 cm before the front of the chainring, so rain is already catched there.
At the same time, I ceased to lubricate the chain. So I'm now riding 3 months with an unlubricated chain, dry bare blinking metal. The chain is in the running since about 18 months, with the bottom bracket eccenter tensioner 3 months ago at about 85% of its range, and now with little difference to that.
I'm sure that if I would now throw a bucket water on it, and then ride some streets, that the tensioner would sit at 100%.
Is this surprising?
Until now it was, for me.
But this empirical proof, and the fact that some (quite more expensive) motorcycle chains have shaped seal rings between the chain link components, keeping out dirt, but also lock up worn off particles, say the opposite about lubrication.
I will probably have a chain replacement now triggered by a broken off cog tooth - those became quite short.
I'll put another such motorcycle one (a Regina 420, an improved version), and rely on that white grease alone. With the rain cover, this is now an option. No oil anymore.
And see what effect it gives on the chains life length.
I will, as usual, keep you informed and entertained.
This was Robbie Williams, born entertainer, live from Belgium.
