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I ride less than 200 miles a week, and I'm at about the 200 mile mark on my new road bike. Most of my riding is done on the road in an urban city, so there is a lot of odd, unnatural debris. My LBS told me to lube my chain every 150 miles, but I've read conflicting opinions.
How often should I be lubing my chain?
Lubricate when needed. I don't think it's possible to put a mile marker on when to lube. I think most people add chain lube too often. Too much can cause debris to build up on the chain. Too little lube can cause unnecessary friction; but you'll know pretty quickly by the looks (and possibly sound) of it if you have too little lube.
Hints:
Tips:
^ [*]. Wiping off the chain is best done in a work stand or while the bike is in a position where you can rotate the crankarm such that you can hold a rag to the chain while the chain is moving.
Definitely lube the bike after cleaning the drivetrain, or after riding in the rain. In terms of adding lube in between cleanings, every week or two should be fine, more often if the drivetrain is getting noisy. Just a few drops of lube should be enough, unless you ride on very dirty roads.
I would say that it is best to clean and lube your chain after every ride. The better you maintain your chain the longer it will last.
To clean your chain you can either use a chain cleaning tool, I use this one from Park Tool which is excellent:
(source: parktool.com)
The alternative is to put a SRAM powerlink in your chain:
and remove your chain and clean it in with a solvent like paraffin (kerosene to Americans)
The choice of lubricant is also debatable, speak to someone at your LBS and get their recommendations for your riding conditions.
Every 150 miles sounds like an awful lot, but then I guess I don't cycle as much as you. "Little & Often" is the best advice I've heard.
I ride 250KM a week and I give it a squirt just before my long ride on the weekends. You can't really damage it by over lubing the chain. Sure if you store it inside too much lube can make the chain drip. If you do it just before a ride then no dripping in the house.
I only lube after I clean the chain. I ride around 100 miles per week on average. My bike has been holding up well over the years. I clean and lube once every 2-3 weeks.
Usually 100 - 150 miles is ideal on a road bike that has not seen rain or bad weather. Also, the kind of lube you use makes a difference. For example, WD40 Wet Bike Lube for me worked, but would only get me about 120 max before I felt it was best to clean the drive train (e.g. caked on dry black chunks on the drive components vs. just liquid black dirt emulsified within the grease).
Finish Line Ceramic gets me closer to 150-175 miles between services. I have tried exotic dry lubes and avoid them because one splash from a puddle can render them useless and waxes seem like overkill plus cause other issues later on in terms of contamination.
If you do get caught in the rain using a wet lube, I would recommend drying the chain with a rag and adding more lube to the chain (1 drop per link) and then shifting through all the gears. This will drive water out away from the drive components.
Below is a short video of the drive services I do ever 100-150 miles. I put it together cause a lot of people wonder what they should do to maintain their expensive bikes. Furthermore, even if you take it to a bike shop I find they usually will do a minimal cleaning (i.e. slap on the chain tool with degreaser, dry the chain, lube it, and shift through the gears vs. cleaning things like the cassette, derailleur, and chain rings where a lot of dirt gets trapped).
The steps I use when cleaning components are summarized as:
You can spend more time cleaning components, by removing the wheel & cassette, but usually what is shown outlined above is sufficient to keep things clean for most people.
Hopefully that helps.
I have a couple of different lubes. One is for dry weather and is prone to washing off if it gets too much rain or puddle water on it, it's easy to tell when that needs replacing because you can hear it squeak. The other one is a wet lube which I tend to use from autumn to spring but it's a lot stickier and even with a good wipe down after applying, it will collect dust, dirt and grime.
If I notice too much build-up it's time to clean and re-lube. I will often clean with a rag, spray with GT-85 to displace water for a bit and then wipe down before applying lube as per the other posters' recommendations. Leave for 2-5mins before wiping off the excess.
Put simply, lubricate when needed as @42-17 said. I ride until I hear the chain squeal, which I sometimes don't notice as it slowly gets louder over time.
When commuting in nice dry California weather, I can go months and hundreds of miles without needing any lube. On the other hand I've lubed one day and had the chain start squealing a few days later if I was in a dusty or wet environment (or I didn't lube it up right).
I use my bike for commuting, so I don't do any unnecessary maintenance that takes a lot of time for little reward. In this context that means no need to lube too often or do a complicated chain wash. If you're a racer maybe you'll have different needs.
How often should I be lubing my chain?
There are two reasonable chain care strategies, depending on the type and price of the chain.
The first strategy was reasonable long time ago when chains were expensive, labor was cheap and chains had bushings and non-punched removable pins. Those bushings made a properly cared-for chain last for a long time. This strategy works as follows:
What made the strategy reasonable was the high expense of bushing-type chains, cheap labor and the ability to reuse the same pin when putting back the chain. This careful cleaning meant you get as much miles out of the expensive chain as you can.
In practice, you can't reasonably clean the chain on the bicycle. You must remove the chain. There are several on-the-bike chain cleaning machines but all they do is making a huge mess where you clean the chain, so they cannot be considered "reasonable".
However, today chains are cheap, they are of the bushingless design that doesn't allow them to last long no matter how well you care of your chain, and labor is expensive. Furthermore, the pins of chains are punched, meaning you cannot reconnect a chain with the same pin, you must buy an expensive reinforced replacement pin.
Because of these reasons, the current reasonable chain care strategy is:
There is no reasonable chain care strategy that is based on oiling every N miles whatever the value of N is. You must never oil a chain that doesn't squeak. The reason is that an oily chain has surface dirt. You cannot remove the surface dirt without fully removing all dirt AND all oil from the chain with degreaser. The only ways to do this are chain cleaning devices (making a huge mess) or removing the chain from the bicycle (requires purchasing a new reinforced connecting pin). So if you want to oil a chain that doesn't squeak, be ready to reserve an hour for the job. Given the cheap price of today's chains, this doesn't make sense.
Most people who oil a chain based on miles omit the all-important cleaning step, doing only a 3-minute oiling job. All this does is allowing the oil to carry the surface dirt inside the chain, where it will form a grinding paste that wears away your chain in no time. Accelerated chain wear also means accelerated sprocket wear. So the repeated quick oiling soon becomes very expensive.
This comment will cause a stir. I'm not a mechanic or one to fiddle with my bikes, I just ride. Before mtb'ing I raced enduro motorbikes. I was told only ever to use WD40 as a chain lube, so after every race I'd blast the bike with a high power jet wash, spray with WD40 to displace and then spray again before my next ride. Nearly every weekend I rode in wet boggy Wales with nothing other than WD40 as a lube. Never snapped a chain once. But now having read all of the debates about this product, for my mtb I use it to dispel only then I lube with currently a dry lube as I'm in Morocco. Final motto. 'Never doubt the name on the tin but doubt the comments you read'
I have done thousands of miles on chains that I just cleaned with a liberal squirt of WD40 every 300-400 miles.
