How Often Should I Clean And Lube My Motorcycle Chain

It'due south easy to clean your motorcycle chain at domicile with our detailed video guide.

It's really easy to clean your motorbike chain at home, all yous need are a few tools. Kerosene, a chain lubricant like DuPont chain saver and some rags. You don't fifty-fifty need a motorcycle stand up making it easy to do at dwelling house. Check out our video tutorial and clean your chain today.

One of the more sensitive components on your motorcycle for maintenance is your final drive chain. If you neglect it, your concatenation and sprockets could vesture out and become unserviceable in as little as 3,000 miles.

But with proper care and maintenance, you can see as much as 30,000 miles out of a quality set of steel sprockets, and a loftier-quality chain. The cardinal to getting the most out of your chain and sprockets is to make clean and lubricate it regularly.

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How often should I clean my motorcycle chain?

The schedule that we've adopted is we similar to clean our chain every time we wash the motorcycle or at the very least every fourth dimension nosotros change the oil. You should be lubing your chain every 3 to five hundred miles, or every other tank of gas depending on your riding atmospheric condition.

If yous ride in dusty or wet weather, you'll need to increase the frequency of your maintenance accordingly. H2o actually strips chain lube away from the concatenation, so you should be lubing your chain after every time y'all get caught out in the rain.

What'southward more than, a properly lubed chain will not merely exist quieter, just it volition slightly increase your fuel mileage every bit well.

In fact, a properly lubed chain reduces rolling resistance enough that information technology can actually be seen as a slight increase in horsepower on dyno runs. And at present for the safety message.

Do non, please, please, please, do not, under whatever circumstances, start the engine, put it in first gear and let the motor spin the rear wheel while you perform whatsoever kind of maintenance on the chain.

I personally know more 1 person who has lost fingers doing this. If yous demand whatsoever farther convincing and you take a strong stomach do a few net searches on the subject.

Too many people take lost fingers and have mangled hands from trying to salve a few seconds. It but takes a fraction of an instant for something to get snagged and get drawn in betwixt the concatenation and the sprockets. So, please keep the engine off and the bike in neutral.

Now with that out of the way, for the sake of clarity, we're going to offset by cleaning the chain first.

Is WD40 OK for motorcycle chains?

Despite all that you lot've heard, WD-40 is really not a very good production for cleaning or lubing a concatenation. It tin actually displace the grease behind the O-rings, or the X-rings, in an o-band chain.

Only more that, it'due south probably the slowest and well-nigh time-consuming method because in that location are other products available that do a much ameliorate task of cleaning the chain.

There are lots of products on the market that are designed just for cleaning a chain, and they are more effective than WD-40.

Now, nosotros've tried many of these chain cleaners and they do an okay job. They certainly work better than WD-40, but they still tin can't hold a candle to the product that nosotros've been using for decades. It happens to exist the production that concatenation manufacturers take been recommending and that's Kerosene.

Is it OK To Make clean The Motorcycle Concatenation With Kerosene?

For clarity, Kerosene is not the same as camp fuel. Camp fuel is what's known as white gas and information technology's extremely volatile and a pretty harsh solvent. Kerosene is entirely different. Typically, merely not always, kerosene volition come in a blue can and military camp fuel will come in a scarlet tin can.

Don't use campsite fuel. Information technology'south so volatile that it can be ignited past a hot fart, and as we mentioned information technology'southward and so harsh that it can actually practice damage to your chain.

Kerosene, on the other manus, is much more than gentle, and it'll actually make clean your chain making it await brand new so speedily that you won't believe your eyes.

Something else to consider; concatenation cleaners tin cost around $x and will clean about three to four chains. While the kerosene does price $20 a bottle can last us about three years.

To get the nearly out of our kerosene we will employ a generic spray canteen, available in most grocery stores, so nosotros can spray the kerosene direct onto the chain. But whatsoever cleaner yous choose to utilize nosotros encourage you to avoid any kind of degreaser.

We've seen people utilise really harsh stuff like parts cleaner, the aerosol parts cleaner, and carb cleaner and things similar that. And yep, they do a peachy job of getting the grease off the chain but they're just far likewise brutal to the chain.

They impairment the o-rings and as soon as those o-rings crack or fail, then any of the lube that's really inside the chain from the manufacturer merely comes out. Even some of your real gentle degreasers, similar unproblematic green and imperial power; they're nevertheless merely far too harsh for the o-rings.

So we encourage y'all to merely stick with kerosene, and every bit before long every bit you apply kerosene and see how well it works y'all'll be sold.

The final thing we recommend you go hold of before you start as a grunge brush available from Ama zon . It'due south less than 15 bucks and y'all should be able to find information technology at your local motorbike dealer, and if not it'due south readily available online.

Another great piffling product that will make the task easier is a spiral castor fabricated by Tirox. Available for about the same toll.

Do I Demand A Bicycle Stand?

Ideally, to clean your chain you will need to get the rear bicycle off the ground so the rear tire spins freely. If that is not possible you can get someone to push button the bike forwards and astern to access all of the chain'southward links.

We suggest covering the work area with towels and fifty-fifty a catch tray is a good idea. The point is you want to forbid getting chemicals onto your rear tire. A little flake of paper-thin tin can become a long style.

Utilise your chain cleaner of choice, and liberally spray down the chain, being careful not to spray this stuff onto the tire. Allow it soak for a moment before taking your grunge brush and scrubbing downwardly the concatenation.

To check your progress take a rag and wipe the chain downwardly removing all the black gunk the chain cleaner has released. Depending on how dirty your chain is you may need to repeat these steps several times earlier your concatenation looks sparkly and brand new over again.

We also suggest that yous occasionally remove your front sprocket cover and clean out any build-up that may have collected in there.

You lot can likewise accept this opportunity to clean whatsoever other chain lube buildup on the elevation of the swingarm, virtually the rear sprocket or anywhere else concatenation lube may accept been flung.

Depending on how dirty your chain was, and how big of a mess you made you may want to take the bike outside and rinse information technology off with a depression-pressure garden hose. Once again, no loftier pressure, because high-pressure water can also do damage to the o-rings.

Now the chain is clean and dry we can move on to lubing the chain. We strongly encourage y'all to opt for motorcycle-specific chain lube. Right now we're a big fan of Dupont chain saver chain lube.

What Is The All-time Chain Lube For Motorcycles?

For lubing the chain, nosotros plant this amazing product that needs to be in every motorcyclist garage, nosotros cannot speak highly enough of the DuPont chain saver bachelor from Amazon .

The DuPont chain saver does a fantastic job of placing lube directly over the pins and rollers of the chain without wasting any lube and preventing overspray.

Plus, we can attest that our bondage have lasted longer and held upwardly better since we started using the DuPont concatenation saver and it is a wax-based chain lube with Teflon.

Related Commodity

I have a video on how to utilise the Dupont chain saver to stop your motorcycle boots from squeaking so bank check that out at the terminate.

You lot want to lube the chain on the inside of the chain and so when the wheels are spinning the lube gets drawn towards the outside. It draws the lube in between the plates and the rollers.

If nosotros were to Lube the chain on the outside, as soon as we started riding, the lube would just fling off the chain and go everywhere making a mess.

The ideal time to lube your concatenation is after a ride when the chain is warm, simply in this situation, where we've cleaned the chain and there'due south no lube on at all, we want to lube information technology right now.

Slowly rotate the wheel or push the bike backward and forwards, allowing the lube to slide across the top of the chain until yous have a overnice light blanket all effectually.

Exist careful not to over lube the chain. Also much lube will attract dirt and grit and actually cause the chain to clothing faster.

When you are finished, you should see ii piddling beads of lube direct over the concatenation o rings, between each of the plates.

Video Tutorial

Well, there yous have information technology; a perfectly cleaned and lubricated chain. Thanks so much for reading and we hope you lot can at present clean and lubricate your bicycle chain like a pro.

Cheque out our article on how to employ that Dupont lubricant to finish your motorcycle boots from squeaking.