A little drop of chain oil ...

[Polar Bear]

On thursday evening we were caught in a bit of a downpour for the last ten minutes of our ride.   Inconvenient but nothing more.

Yesterday I noticed that the drivetrain seemed both noisier than usual but somehow draggy.   I popped a squirt of Finish Line Red (dry) over the chain and remounted.   Not only had the noise gone but so had the dragginess.

Is a squirt of oil really that good?

[mattc]

I think there's already a thread for this sort of thing.

[LEE]
***BONG***
THIS IS NOT THE NEWS

Oil reduces friction in metallic moving parts

***BONG***
[/Lee]

[Kim]

It's readily demonstrated by giving the cranks a good backwards flick and seeing how far they turn before coming to a stop (works better on bikes with long chains, as there's a bit more inertia in the system).  IME well-lubricated chains are second only to really clean chains on this basis.  Gacky chain tubes are a major source of friction.  Shimano chains that have been exposed to Weather and then neglected, even more so.

[IJL]

Is a squirt of oil really that good?

Or is the oil that bad? some of the dry lubes can be stripped from the chain very quickly in even light rain, some of the thicker wet lubes seem to last for an age

[Polar Bear]

We don't normally get wet so it was my mistake not to do a quick clean and lube when the bike had dried out.

I remain impressed though at just how much of a difference a quick squirt makes.

[Jakob W]

I recall a recent discussion in another place where a mechanical engineer claimed that oiling chains doesn't​ actually make any significant difference to the chain friction under load, just to noise; he reckoned the chain pins were so highly loaded any thin oil would be squeezed out from the contact surfaces, and anything thick enough to work would have real trouble penetrating to where it would do any good. For minimum friction his advice was to degrease a new chain, then soak it in melted paraffin wax with some added MoS2 to act as a solid lubricant; a job messy and tiresome enough that only the most marginal-gains-obsessed (TTers and the like) actually bother. It sounded surprising but plausible enough to me; no idea whether it's true though.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Sounds like complete nonsense to me.

The friction doesn't just come from pins moving over bush plates, there are also the plates moving past one-another. That is a significant amount of area, particularly when the chain is running at an angle. Relatively low pressures, too.

[rogerzilla]

I recall a recent discussion in another place where a mechanical engineer claimed that oiling chains doesn't​ actually make any significant difference to the chain friction under load, just to noise; he reckoned the chain pins were so highly loaded any thin oil would be squeezed out from the contact surfaces, and anything thick enough to work would have real trouble penetrating to where it would do any good. For minimum friction his advice was to degrease a new chain, then soak it in melted paraffin wax with some added MoS2 to act as a solid lubricant; a job messy and tiresome enough that only the most marginal-gains-obsessed (TTers and the like) actually bother. It sounded surprising but plausible enough to me; no idea whether it's true though.

If that were the case, there would be no point in having oil in a car engine either, at least not for splash-lubricated parts like cams, oil pump drive gears and, well, timing chains.  The ability of oil to maintain a film between parts, even under pressure, is quite critical.

[Biggsy]

The Progold Prolink lube I use washes off in the wet, and the original grease from my hack bike's chain is long gone, so I'm reminded what a bone dry chain feels like after I forget to relube after rain.  The extra friction is extremely noticeable through my feet.

It's smooth again after applying the light lube (which I use only because it's relatively clean).  The person in the other place is clearly wrong to say it's insignificant.  A thicker lube can last longer, though.

[Brucey]

The peak pressures are very high indeed; high enough that there will be some metal-to-metal contact in a chain bushing when a rider is really going for it.

Fortunately most riders are not pushing hard on the pedals all the time so average loads are smaller, and most clean lubes have some chance of separating the surfaces at least some of the time.

One thing is sure; without lube, a chain will be worn out in no time.  Recently an LBS asked me to examine a chain that a rider had worn out in less than 200 miles. There was nothing wrong with the hardness of the pins etc, it is just that the rider had believed some fairy stories about how the lube on new chains 'is no good' and had carefully degreased the chain. He had then attempted to lubricate it with something that had failed to penetrate the bushings, leaving them bone dry. The wear rate was about x10 faster than normal.

In a test of chain transmission efficiency (you can read yourself by exploring the IHPVA archive) some researchers claimed that a degreased chain ran  almost as efficiently as a lubricated one. It is almost certain that there was some flaw in this result, for example they may have used a Dura-Ace chain which has a baked on PTFE coating.

In all the published tests of chain wear that I have seen, the initial rate of wear is very low, and then increases after a few hundred miles. I think this may be because the factory grease works well for a while and then gets dirty/loaded up with wear debris. At that stage if you were to clean and regrease a chain, you might restore the low initial wear rate again.

cheers

[rogerzilla]

I don't really look after 1/8" chains because they're so cheap - I fit a new one every year, along with a new SA sprocket.  A regime of fitting the chain with its factory lube, and applying "wet" lube two or three times in 12 months, sees it worn by about 1/8" per foot after 2,000-2,500 miles.  That's not brilliant but for £9 the lot, it's not worth doing more.

[mzjo]

When despatch riding (medium/long distance) I knew colleagues that oiled their chains every time they stopped if the roads were wet. There was a good reason why I learnt to get a bike with a shaft; a rainy (or snowy) day with an empty can of chain grease could mean the end of your chain (and sprockets) - which cost a lot more than a KMC 8sp chain!
Some chain lubes washed off a lot quicker than others!

[Ian H]

The peak pressures are very high indeed; high enough that there will be some metal-to-metal contact in a chain bushing when a rider is really going for it.

Fortunately most riders are not pushing hard on the pedals all the time so average loads are smaller, and most clean lubes have some chance of separating the surfaces at least some of the time.

One thing is sure; without lube, a chain will be worn out in no time.  Recently an LBS asked me to examine a chain that a rider had worn out in less than 200 miles. There was nothing wrong with the hardness of the pins etc, it is just that the rider had believed some fairy stories about how the lube on new chains 'is no good' and had carefully degreased the chain. He had then attempted to lubricate it with something that had failed to penetrate the bushings, leaving them bone dry. The wear rate was about x10 faster than normal.

In a test of chain transmission efficiency (you can read yourself by exploring the IHPVA archive) some researchers claimed that a degreased chain ran  almost as efficiently as a lubricated one. It is almost certain that there was some flaw in this result, for example they may have used a Dura-Ace chain which has a baked on PTFE coating.

In all the published tests of chain wear that I have seen, the initial rate of wear is very low, and then increases after a few hundred miles. I think this may be because the factory grease works well for a while and then gets dirty/loaded up with wear debris. At that stage if you were to clean and regrease a chain, you might restore the low initial wear rate again.

cheers

I have always assumed that the manufacturers' lubrication was there for a reason.  I never degrease a chain.  A white-spirit damped rag, then re-oil and wipe is the closest I get to cleaning one.