I’ve been using tri flow on my road / tri bikes and my drivetrain always seems dirty and dingy, I have a black calf, etc - even very soon after I clean it. I went to a local bike race yesterday and everyone else’s drivetrain was silver, clean, shiny, etc. Is it the lube? Am I maybe using too much and attracting dirt? I have always used white lightning on my mtb but for some reason I haven’t considered it a road lube. Thoughts? Other options? Thanks.
I use 3-in-1 oil, the stuff you can buy at any hardware store or probably Target/Wal-mart. I did some testing and found it to be as good a lubricant as boutique bike lubes at a fraction of the price. Plus the life was much, much better than any bike lube. Does it get dirty? Sure. But I just wipe the chain down every few days. For a race I’ll degrease and re-lube. For training, the stuff works so well I only need to lube about every 1000 miles.
I’ve been using tri flow on my road / tri bikes and my drivetrain always seems dirty and dingy, I have a black calf, etc - even very soon after I clean it. I went to a local bike race yesterday and everyone else’s drivetrain was silver, clean, shiny, etc. Is it the lube? Am I maybe using too much and attracting dirt? I have always used white lightning on my mtb but for some reason I haven’t considered it a road lube. Thoughts? Other options? Thanks.
I just clean it really really good with detergent. Good ole’ dish soap and water. Then, dry it really good. Bone dry. Once clean and free from any dirt, I leave it alone. I don’t use any lube whatsoever. The key for me is to keep it dry and clean, not soaked in dirt-attracting lube.
I use Demonde tech or lite. Spin my chain i a rag every 100 or so, always clean. However I think how you lube the chain makes a difference. I have watched people just squirting oil while pedaling the chain. No wonder it attracks so much dirt.
I use Demonde tech or lite. Spin my chain i a rag every 100 or so, always clean. However I think how you lube the chain makes a difference. I have watched people just squirting oil while pedaling the chain. No wonder it attracks so much dirt.
My aforementioned preferred lube job is performed as follows:
- degrease chain, scrub, wash down
- spin the chain, bounce the bike, etc to get as much water out
- let dry overnight
- a drop or two of oil on each pin connection
- let it sit overnight
- wipe down before I ride
- wipe down after I ride (some of the oil migrates out)
Lube really does the trick. Metal-on-metal as SuperDave appears to do is a recipe for increased wear. You’ll likely get friction coefficients of 0.5-0.9 quickly compared to 0.1 or so for a good liquid lube. The key is that some liquid lubes break down and also hit that 0.5-0.9 value.
Were you posting to me? Also I get a lot wear out of my chain, cogs ect, I never have had to degrease a chain. I do not let it get that dirty. Even two drops a link is to much, unless you spin out the chain in a rag before you ride.
“Metal-on-metal as SuperDave appears to do is a recipe for increased wear”
Not according to MIT.
i just use white lightning/dry lube on my road bike, with the exception of races. keeps it reasonably clean.
Winter: tri flow
Summer: Boesheild t9
.
“Metal-on-metal as SuperDave appears to do is a recipe for increased wear”
Not according to MIT.
Show me your data and I’ll show you mine. The loading in a chain is sliding friction (or more appropriately fretting) - a link pin rotates back-and-forth relative to a lug surface. The early stages of sliding wear are indeed benign. But at some point you will experience a buildup of wear particles (unless the design carries away the particles, which incidentally is the purpose of something like motor oil in an engine…). Eventually the buildup of particles leads to significant plowing of the surface and friction shoots up.
I’ve done plenty of metal-on-metal testing in both dry and lubricated states. These tests were done on a lab quality pin-on-disk tribometer to assess sliding friction coefficients. Combinations of materials are all unique, which is why I had a large range on the friction coefficient. But in all cases, once Mother Nature decided enough micron-sized wear particles had been generated, she rapidly and without warning increased dry sliding friction from .05-.15 (early stages of metal-on-metal) up to levels like .5 and above (steady state condition). Wipe the wear particles away and friction drops, though it will again increase if there is no mechanism to remove the particles. So again, for many mechanical systems the purpose of a lubricant is to act as a transport mechanism for debris particles.
Recall that “chain stretch” is not actual stretch. It’s the mechanical wear of the surfaces creating a looser fit.
If you want a good MIT reference, I suggest Prof. Nam Suh’s book Tribophysics. Prof. Suh has been a professor in the mechanical engineering department at MIT for several decades. I had the pleasure of taking one of his courses at MIT and found his knowledge quite helpful. He has excellent qualitative discussions in this particular book regarding the various stages of friction. I believe you can find snippets on books.google.com.
Are you wiping the excess off the chain real well? I use Wolf’s Head 10x 30 and switch to ATF in the winter, or use chainsaw bar oil or whatever is at hand. Clean the chain, oil it and wipe it off.
I use 3-in-1 oil, the stuff you can buy at any hardware store or probably Target/Wal-mart. I did some testing and found it to be as good a lubricant as boutique bike lubes at a fraction of the price. Plus the life was much, much better than any bike lube. Does it get dirty? Sure. But I just wipe the chain down every few days. For a race I’ll degrease and re-lube. For training, the stuff works so well I only need to lube about every 1000 miles.
Second - 3-in-1 oil. Based this choice on info from Biketechreview and common sense. (Tigermik - is it your research posted on Biketechreview?)
David K
I use three parts mineral spirits, one part lightweight motor oil. Got that idea from roadbikereview.com forums. Very cheap and will last for years.
I’m just curious as to why you want to degrease a chain.
Do you feel that dirt is getting in between the pins/rollers/plates?
jaretj
I use 3-in-1 oil, the stuff you can buy at any hardware store or probably Target/Wal-mart. I did some testing and found it to be as good a lubricant as boutique bike lubes at a fraction of the price. Plus the life was much, much better than any bike lube. Does it get dirty? Sure. But I just wipe the chain down every few days. For a race I’ll degrease and re-lube. For training, the stuff works so well I only need to lube about every 1000 miles.
Second - 3-in-1 oil. Based this choice on info from Biketechreview and common sense. (Tigermik - is it your research posted on Biketechreview?)
David K
Yes that is data from “my” tribometer at BTR.
FYI, there’s a nice presentation at MIT which shows much of what I mention. In particular, look at slide 4 for typical data (friction as a function of distance slid). Slide 15 is a qualitative graph of what happens when you remove wear particles (I’ve seen the exact same thing quantitatively in the lab). Slide 29 provides a short list of benefits of lubrication. What’s interesting is that the slide says mu=0.1 for a lubricant. All my data for various lubes hovers closely around this value. First time I’ve seen this presentation, so it’s a good check! Slides 30-35 show a novel design for rotating systems to control wear, which could actually be implemented for chains I expect.
The most important thing about friction is that it’s not constant like many references will have you believe (a function of material, surface treatment, temperature, contact pressure, humidity, and so much more).
BTW, I do wipe off the excess. The oil does push out during use, so I wipe off after the first few rides. After that, it’s good to go for many, many miles without wiping. I degrease for 2 reasons: 1) helps get rid of dirty oil and gives a nice, pretty, and shiny chain and 2) water alone doesn’t seem to remove oil, so the degreaser seems to help carry away the old oil and any residual contaminates (wear particles) with it. It may do squat (haven’t looked under magnification to see) but ultimately I like the pretty chain look.
I’ve got a horrible habit of “just adding more oil” when in a pinch. I’m in a time crunch and got a local time trial right after work… Just dab on more tri-flow. Pretty stupid.
I used to have a great mountain bike rig that I used White Lightning on and loved it. That stuff you can actually just add a dab every once in a while and keep going.
I realized I would probably be more successful changing my lube to fit my habits instead of changing my habits to fit my lube. I degreased several of my bikes last week and put White Lightning on. Long term road test hasn’t happened yet, but I’ve done one road and one off-road ride and it worked great.
My only questions are -
- Does degreaser remove the wax? For when I want to clean up the frame and deep clean the chain?
- No problems with using it on the rest of the bike, except where you’d use grease, right?
Superdave. Thanks for the response. I definitely don’t want to get into the wear debate, but what about rust? Will a totally dry chain not rust in moist air?
I’ll admit that I’m a little old school. I went through all the White Lighting, T-9 Boeshield, Pedro’s Ice Wax, Tri Flow, Krytek, Pro Gold, and several others.
I live in a slightly humid climate where I get rain, mud, dirt, etc., but not dry and dusty so I’m sure that there’s a better lubricant for that application. I found that everything else I tried either they didnt last very long or developed a waxy buildup that was hard to clean. That or the build up would “fling” off while I was riding on the indoor trainer and smear onto the carpet
I use the simple Finish Line XC oil with the green cap. I then use the Finish Line EcoTech to wash it off. Using that combo, the oil comes off pretty quickly and I just put a drop on each chain roller after it dries. Pretty basic and I think the trick is “often”. Plus there’s less overspray as most of everything else come in a spray bottle or is very viscous.
The stuff I do/use is not fancy, but it’s fast, clean, stays on for at least 400 miles, works in the rain, and it’s quick enough to do it before a race without taking more than 7 minutes to do it.
I ended up throwing away some chains/cassettes because on lubricant in particular tried into such a nasty wax, that I had to resort to scraping it off with a knife and just got tired of dealing with it.
Take it from someone who has tried them all - and get Purple Extreme: http://www.purpleextreme.com/
.
Of all the lubes I’ve tried (many, but surely there are a few others I’ve missed over the years) my current favorite for my race/Tri bikes is ProLink… Doesn’t seem to attract much crud or build-up, keeps the train running smooth & relatively quiet, lasts fairly well but also wipes of pretty easily. Like above, though, the disclaimer is I’m in an area where rain/humidity is more of a concern than the moon dust you get in more arid climes. For heavier-duty applications in the winter (rain trainer and/or commuter), I’ll go with something “stickier” like Finish Line XC or even Phil Wood’s Tenacious Oil if it’s really pissing.