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Shoutout to the guy at the Portland bike co-op who told me I was cleaning my chain wrong
I was spraying degreaser straight on the chain and scrubbing with a wire brush every 200 miles, thinking I was being thorough. He watched me for about 30 seconds and said, quote, you're just pushing grit into the rollers, come back when you want to learn. I was annoyed for like 2 days but then looked it up and he was right. Now I use a chain tool, soak it in mineral spirits, and relube with a drop per roller, and my last chain lasted 3,100 miles instead of 1,400. That extra 1,700 miles is basically a free chain every year and a half. Has anyone else had someone call out their maintenance routine and actually been wrong to be mad about it?
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nancyg1418d ago
Went through the same thing with my old shop buddy years back. I was doing the hose and brush thing every couple weeks and going through chains like crazy, he told me I was wasting money and I told him where to go. What finally worked for me is the park tool chain cleaner with the solvent in it, then a wipe down and one drop of lube per roller while spinning the cranks backward, let it sit overnight and wipe the excess off in the morning. The overnight thing matters more than people realize, that's when it actually gets down in there instead of just sitting on the plates. Rain riding is what kills chains fastest up here so if you do that at all, shorter intervals matter more than the fancy cleaning.
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