Solvents and chain lubes

Life Cars & Motorcycles
1

Thought I’d already posted this, but apparently not, unless it was removed for being terminally trivial/boring. If so, it still is.

Can you get it here, [Edit: This is a reference to Water Soluable Brush Cleaner, the original title of the original thread, before mergers, etc] and if so, what’s it called (in Mandarin)

I mean the stuff that you worked into the paintbrush bristles and after that you could rinse off oil-based paint with running water.

I ask in this forum because I found it good stuff for cleaning bicycle chains, and I have a very dirty motorcycle chain I want to use it on.

2

Not sure about that stuff. Gunk is readily available here, though. But I would just use 92 gasoline. It picks up grease and oil like a charm. :wink:

marboulette

3

Bit pricy, smelly and pyrotechnic using it in a pressure hose though, unless you’re saving Private Ryan.

4

Seriously though, I think diesel or kerosene are better general cleaning solvents. Not so smelly or dangerous, cheaper, and they leave a slight oily film which limits rusting if you leave anything lying around for a while.

My stealth chain-cleaning method (since I’m having to do it in the office)

An RZR chain will just fit in a 1.5 L drinking water bottle (the 2L fizzy pop bottles are much stronger and dont have silt-trapping ribs but the ones I’ve got have all got petrol in them.) add a cup of diesel, PUT THE TOP BACK ON the bottle, and shake, cocktail stylee.

Decant diesel and silt into another bottle (the silt settles and you can re-use the diesel). Repeat with fresh diesel until you get tired.

It would be better to remove the chain and leave the silt behind, but that’s too much chain handling in my situation

No mess no fuss. All contained. unless the bottle bursts.

One disadvantage is you cant use a brush. I do that on the bike using a partly split bottle with a window cut out the side as a solvent trough (chain goes through the split neck and through a hole in the upper side off the bottom)

If I can get some Gunk or brush cleaner I’ll use that next and then maybe finish off by boiling the chain in water.

RZR’s are pretty skinny chains. Other bikes would likely need a container with a wider neck. Maybe a liquid laundry detergent jerrican.

The plastic jerrycans sold empty in hardware stores don’t seal properly. Empties have been tested. Empty fizzies have been pressure tested.

5

I prefer a 50/50 mix of gas and kerosene. :thumbsup: Just take it off and soak it overnight, rinse and repeat as necessary. Then again, a new chain is a couple hundred NT$…

6

Why the gas? (petrol). I’d be surprised if its possibly slightly better performance as a grease solvent compensates for the disadvantages, though I guess some people like the fumes.

Didn’t realise chains were quite that cheap. Couldn’t quite bring myself to just chuck the dirty one, but it’d certainly be worth having one on, one off (soaking/cleaning) , if I didn’t already have two.

7

[quote=“Ducked”]
Why the gas? (petrol). I’d be surprised if its possibly slightly better performance as a grease solvent compensates for the disadvantages, though I guess some people like the fumes.[/quote]
I think when you cut it with kerosene it doesn’t stink quite as bad.

8

Still think you its best to fiinish off with something that renders it water-washable. That brush cleaner was the bizniz. Lots of silt washed out under the tap from around the pins, which I guess is where it counts, wear-wise.

Next time I’ll try it with some Gunk. I suspect they’ve stopped making the brush cleaner.

9

Apologies in advance if I’m getting slightly off-topic, but what is the best thing to use to lubricate the chain? I’ve just been spraying my chain occasionally with WD-40, but maybe that’s not good enough. I kind of hate to put oil on it because I know it will attract dirt, but maybe it’s the best way to go. Will any old oil do, or is one better than another (I was thinking 40 weigh motor oil, since I have some anyway for my chain saw).

regards,
DB

10

WD-40 is not a lubricant, it’s a Water Displacer… that’s where the name comes from. It leaves a film of very light oil behind which protects against rust, but it doesn’t lubricate worth a damn.

The modern strategy with o-ringed or x-ringed chains is a wax-based lube which dries on and doesn’t attract dirt. Unfortunately, an unsealed chain needs to be first cleaned and then properly lubed with grease or oil. Oil flings off very quickly so you have keep relubing it and then washing the rest off the bike. The time-honored solution is use a very heavy grease, one that’s as stiff as furniture polish at room temps, heat that in a steel can until liquid, drop the chain in and let that all soak into the bushings. After that you wipe / scrape the excess off with a rag. I have no idea where you can buy that stuff and I haven’t seen in 25 years. You can buy chain lube in spray cans but it doesn’t really penetrate into those bushings, which is where the wear actually occurs.

Of course if you have a bike with a full-enclosure chainguard you can just paint the chain with EP-90 gear oil and be done with it.

11

I think the exposed motorcycle chain is perhaps the most fuck-witted design feature on a motorcycle, (and there’s lots of competition. Maybe we should run a pole sometime). All that sand on all those moving parts. FFS! Says something for the average motorcyclists mechanical sympathy that its tolerated, and I’d guess its not a cultural coincidence that BMW’s are shaft drive. Germans presumably just can’t stand it.

Honda recommend EP gear oil, Haynes manuals grease or “proprietary chain lubricants” which I think are melt-in, as described above, but I dunno where you’d get them. Haynes also worry that the oil will get on your tyre, which seems a fair point.

An engineering reference I saw recently agrees with Honda that oil is the better lubricant even allowing for its grit attraction, since grease/wax is displaced from the rollers, but oil gets pulled in by capilliary attraction.

I melt candle wax in a can and then run the (clean, dry) chain through it and hang it up to set/drip. It sets pretty quickly and handles OK afterward. I dont wipe off any surplus. I don’t know how effective it is. After that I oil it in use. An automatic oiler would help (though it doesn’t solve the messiness of total loss) and could probably be improvised (The Scot Oiler UK market leader is ludicrously expensive). If I end up using a motorcycle much I’ll try and make some.

There were some bicycle greases on the UK market which contained teflon microspheres, but I doubt theyd penetrate if melted, though I’d think they’d be good in a pre-lubed O-ring chain, unless the forces are great enough to flatten the spheres.

I have another clever idea that I havn’t tested yet, that might be a bit of an improvement, but the only real solution with chain drive is an enclosed chain,and thats difficult and potentially dangerous to engineer on a DIY basis. Large forces, small clearances, quite large movements and difficult shapes.

Buy a Yamaha SR 150

Edit: Which oil? I THINK its not critical since the situation is crap anyway, and applying something is more important than what you apply. Heavier is better. EP-90 is probably best but its reasonable to use 40W motor oil if you have some. That’s what I’m using at the moment, applied with a brush. Since I’m running a 2-stroke, the gear oil doesn’t get dirty like on a 4-stroke so when I get around to changing it I MAY start using the old stuff if it looks and smells all right.

I wouldn’t do that on a 4-stroke, though some people do. Dioxin and other carcinogens/teratogens, plus it looks and smells like creosote.

Alternatively I’ve got a lot of 65W hydraulic oil so I might use some of that.

12

I should point out, just in case anyone else considers trying it (unlikely I know) that I’ve never cleaned a chain I lubed with melted candle wax. The bikes were always nicked or otherwise disposed of before re-waxing time, so I dont know what, if any, solvents would dissolve the wax. I didn’t see any indication that the wax was trapping grit, but it may be a bad idea to put something on a chain if you’re not sure you can get it off again.

On the other hand, if chains are only a couple of hundred NT, perhaps it doesn’t matter.

I’m pretty sure xylene, which is in carb cleaner, would work, but I wouldn’t want to use a lot of that. Expensive and unhealthy. Not sure about petrol/kerosene. I’m fairly sure diesel wont shift it

The RZR chain I cleaned recently had been treated with a wax (probably from a spray), A good rolling boil might have shifted it efficiently, but the cheapo hot plate I was using could only manage a simmer and didn’t do a very good job. I should have spent a bit more and got a more powerful inductive one, which, if I understand them correctly, would have heated the metal chain directly.

Edit:Actually after I water-wash the chain I dry it under the grill, so most of the wax is going to melt off anyway (kitchen towel?). I suppose to be thorough I’d wash it AGAIN to get rid of residual grit unstuck by the departing wax, but its already a bit of a palaver.

13

:bravo: I fully concur. My nomination for number 2 on my bike (Sanyang 150cc Wild Wolf) is no fuel gauge. Number 3 is the chromed metal bar behind the seat that doesn’t have any rack (so I can’t tie on a box or other cargo with a bungee cord) - it was the first thing I replaced. Number 4 is the lack of a fuel on-off/reserve valve under the gas tank (I added one for NT$550).

You wonder if the people who design these bikes have ever ridden one.

regards,
DB

14

:bravo: I fully concur. My nomination for number 2 on my bike (Sanyang 150cc Wild Wolf) is no fuel gauge. Number 3 is the chromed metal bar behind the seat that doesn’t have any rack (so I can’t tie on a box or other cargo with a bungee cord) - it was the first thing I replaced. Number 4 is the lack of a fuel on-off/reserve valve under the gas tank (I added one for NT$550).

You wonder if the people who design these bikes have ever ridden one.

regards,
DB[/quote]

No fuel guage OR reserve does seem to be taking the piss somewhat. Cutting costs, presumably. Is there a low fuel warning light?

Those are a bit model-specific though, and they’re the sort of thing you might miss/overlook pre-purchase. I was thinking of more generic and obvious things, like, in no particular order:-

No facility for carrying anything (which you mention above) is pretty general.
Exposed chrome forks (i.e. no fork gaiters) almost guaranteed to suffer corrosion pits and chewed seals
No crash protection (eg crashbars, sliders)
Steel fuel tank, almost guaranteed to suffer corrosion (most scooters , but few bikes, have plastic tanks)

I’ve got a Haynes manual for the CG125 somewhere that grumbles about “the unfortunate dictates of fashion” re exposed chains. If that’s what it is, I guess “consumers” get what they, as a group, deserve.

Unfortunately, I get it too, and so do you.

15

[quote=“Ducked”]

I’ve got a Haynes manual for the CG125 somewhere that grumbles about “the unfortunate dictates of fashion” re exposed chains. If that’s what it is, I guess “consumers” get what they, as a group, deserve.

Unfortunately, I get it too, and so do you.[/quote]
A very long time ago I read a great article about how, when surveyed, motorcyclists will tick all the boxes for things like maintenance-free drivetrain, weather protection, silent powertrain etc. etc. Then, when they go to the showroom the red-meat-and-testosterone-fueled side of their brain takes over and they buy the noisiest, fastest, least comfortable and most short-lived piece of junk they have.
Human nature I’m afraid. Very few motorcycle buyers are interested in practicality.

16

Back on the sub-topic of motorcycle chain maintenance.

As mentioned above there a wide difference in recommendation between Honda and Haynes, and there’s a lot of “religious debate” to be found on this subject on the net.

It would seem to be pretty easy to design an electrically powered test rig to model bike chain usage and get some hard data on optimum lubrication, but if anyone’s done it, AFAIK they havn’t published the results, so it seems there are few definitive answers available.

Given that 'MY guess is as good as yours", heres some speculative observations.

I cleaned my recently acquired RZR chain on the bike, with diesel and a tooth brush, using a split bottle as a drip collector, then I oiled it with suspect 2-stroke oil (looked ok but was from the sludgy oil tank) because I didnt want to risk this stuff in the engine, and at the time I didn’t have anything else. Then I revved it through the gears on the centre stand. Obviously it flung off, but oil flings off mainly at the two sprockets, where the chain is undergoing angular acceleration, and its fairly easy to collect it there to reduce the mess. Repeat with unthinned 2-stroke

I’m wondering if such a combined cleaning/lubrication treatment, with relatively thin lube/wash, repeated at regular intervals, would reduce the grit build up. A bicycle article I read somewhere suggests oiling one side of the chain only in the “hope” that grit would be washed through the pin bushings

Further fling-off in use MUST have occurred, but didn’t make any obvious serious mess. From the back sprocket it’ll mostly be left behind, from the front there seems a risk it’ll get blown back onto the rear tyre, but if it did it wasnt obvious.

Clearly thinned 2-stroke is likely to be a poorer lubricant than EP90, (2 stroke is often quoted at about 20W unthinned) but if its good enough for inside the engine, it could be adequate for a 200NT chain.

One could of course use other oils beside 2-stroke. The basic idea idea is to use a large excess of thin/thinned oil in the hope it will wash grit off the chain under “controlled fling-off” conditions.

Variations:

(a) There used to be a DIY car rust treatment called Waxoyl on the UK market that was a spray-on wax dissolved in white spirit, the idea being that the white spirit evaporated leaving a wax coating. I didn’t think much of it as a rust treatment, preferring a kerosene (or diesel) /oil mixture, but using a volatile carrier (maybe fuel) with oil might reduce oil fling-off if it’d dried overnight before use.

(b) Use vegetable oil on its own or a cocktail component. Vegetable oil polymerises slowly in air, unlike mineral oil which has had a few million years to get used to its chemical composition. When fully polymerised its rubbery (spontaneous generation of “o” rings?) and probably pretty useless as a lubricant, but partly polymerised/mixed with other oil it might help resist fling-off. I’m experimenting with sunflower oil as an exterior assembly/maintenance/antirust/locking lubricant, so I might try it on the chain as well.

Anyway, speculation, and its probably impossible for an individual (certainly impossible for me) to do enough miles to draw firm conclusions, so it’ll remain so.

17

I’ve been using Finish Line Krytech dry wax lubricant designed for bicycles on my chain for the past two weeks for its dry, clean properties. The chain hasn’t broken yet and it’s running well! In your opinion, exactly how foolish is this? I’m hoping it’s safe as the CPI has only about 20 horse, and I’m reapplying every couple of hundred kms.

18

Should be fine. I’ve used velo chain lube when I was out of moto chain lube many times.

19

That’s because it actually leaves little lubrication on the chain. Lubricants attract dirt, some additives or compounds attract less, but its just one of those stubborn qualities of the stuff. If you have lack of greasy dirt, then there is a chance that it is because you have insufficient lubrication on your chain and that it is not to do with having found the ultimate chain lubricant.
Even those using full chain guards such as myself will tell you that there is plenty of dirty grease to be found when opening it up for servicing. Only frequent servicing and cleaning will eliminate the build up of such stuff. You must always keep a chain oiled or greased to increase its useful service life and so will always have to clean and re-grease or oil it when necessary. This dirt is often a combination of worn components and dust or grit as well as other airborne containments.

I think we are recommending you consider some more suitable lubricant for your chain.

20

A little off topic there boys.

Mod: Why are these posts not being removed like always happens to mine?