Chain maintenance

 I have  a year-old Honda 750 ACE Shadow Cruiser and want to know the best
way to maintain the chain.

The manual says to use 90 weight gear oil, which I did for a while, but it
gets very dirty and can fling off onto the saddle bags and hub. Then I was
told at the bike shop one day that no one uses gear oil on their chains -
that I should use the spray on lubes instead (like silkoline). I'm currently
using a blue spray bottle that kind of 'gums up' after being on for a bit.

However, there never seems to be any lube remaining in the center of my
sprockets (where contact is actually made) and I seem to be getting
excessive chain wear for only 8500 km. This in spite of spraying often
(every 200 - 300 km).

Now I'm thinking of switching back to gear oil and applying before every
ride. Is this crazy or what? There is always lots of lube (even if dirty) at
the link-joins of the chain, but seems to be forever dry where the chain
links contact the sprocket.

Any suggestions much appreciated.

Tom

 
Scottoiler.

--
Mark  '01 SV650S  '99 EX250-F13  '86 GL1200A  '81 CM400T

 

What he said. I have one on my SV-650, and it made the original chain &
sprockets last almost 23K miles. I have the dual-nozzle one, and I never tried
the standard single nozzle one so I don't know how the results differ.

It was a pain in the ass to fit though...

-gc

--
Religion: Threat, or Menace?

 

Single-nozzle here ('94 VFR750). It works ok. I've not had to adjust my
chain in 3k miles or so (yes I do check it, and it's always in spec).
There are other brands of automatic chain oiler out there as well (all,
AFAIK, european).

--
Later.
johajohn@indianahoosiers.edu
Let 'indiana' be a 'noln', and 'hoosiers' be a 'solkk'.
Leave only the 'noln' and .edu after the @ to reply .

 Mark Olson wrote:


Doesn't this drip oil on the outside of the chain? I use a different
technique on my chains. I clean them using kerosene, WD40, whatever and
then lube the INSIDE of the chain so fling moves the lube toward the
outside if at all. I can't see any benefit (or slight benefit) to
hitting a running chain with oil placed on the outside run.