You love riding your bicycle through different terrains, over sandbanks, dirt paths, and in hot, dry climates. But do you ever wonder how different terrains can affect your bike chain? Sometimes your bicycle can suffer from the dirt and dust that gets displaced when you ride. This debris can cause friction in your chain, ultimately affecting your performance. Here at WD-40®, we have the solution! Our WD-40 Bike® Dry Lube is perfect for bike chains in dry conditions. It has been specially formulated as a bicycle chain lube for off-roaders who like dry and dusty conditions. Keep reading below for a guide on how to lubricate your bike chain. So wheel off then. But even with the gentlest of pressure, holding the stubby nozzle right up to the chain, there's still enough overspray to coat both chainstays and rear mech in un-needed lubricant. Yes it will wipe off, but it leaves a detectable mark on even freshly cleaned and degreased metal.

Use a cleaner designed for O-ring chains, or simply paraffin (kerosene in the US). Be careful with stiff-bristled brushes as they could damage the O-ring, and don’t use a jet-wash to blast away the grime – it’ll push past those seals and blow the factory grease out of the rivets. Also, do not use steam cleaners or high pressure washers as well. These solvents can damage the O-rings of the chain. Step 4: Wipe the Chain dry S100 White Chain Spray 2.0 had the best extreme pressure performance in a chain lube, and performs well, as well as giving a clear but not untidy indication of where you have – and haven’t applied it. Reason six: A chain lube will reduce friction – few road riders would notice the difference, but race teams use O-ring chains (except on some low-capacity and classic bikes), and they use chain lube, despite having the budget to regularly replace those chains. When treating your chainsaw with WD-40 Specialist Roller Chain Lube, use the nozzle’s precision stream option to target hard-to-reach areas of the chain.

The Controversy of WD-40

This graph shows the overall performance of the lubes, and the ten that performed the best in these tests… The testing of Scottoil showed it worked very well when you remember that it’s a constant loss system. This isn’t really designed to coat the outside of the chain plates, which while only cosmetic, can get a bit rusty if you haven’t got the delivery just so. Still though, they really do keep the rollers well lubed with little hassle. There are other chain oilers available too, like Tutoro, PDOiler and Loobman, but I don’t have any experience of these. Anecdotally, automatic oilers tend to be popular among their owners. The combination of the WD-40 and wool brush should allow you to fully eradicate any rust on your chain. A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface. If you want to use normal oil, the gear oil that chain manufacturers recommend works fine. But remember that they’re simply suggesting something that they know will work to some extent, and that doesn’t favour any brand, and that won’t lead to litigation if that product changed or didn’t perform as expected. The problem is that it flings off like crazy, and as the testing has shown, that means it offers poor corrosion protection – there’s no point testing rust proofing without spinning the samples first, which is why I did this the way I did.

That's 29 environments/options/methodologies/beliefs, and 13 decisions to make – giving about 67,863,915 possible combinations. No wonder there are as many opinions on what works for lubrication as there are keen cyclists to espouse them. With the chain cut apart, the centre roller can be removed, showing how it needs to be kept lubricated After a wet ride ideally try to clean your chain and remove as much contamination as you can. Start by wiping down the outside, then you can use a spray degreaser to keep the chain on the bike, or remove it and essentially repeat the submersion bath in chain degreaser or white spirits etc until the liquid remains clear. You can refer to the ZF maintenance guide to help you here. What's the best way to apply drip lube?If you are reading this guide you may well know this already. But we will include it anyway. WD40 isn't a chain lubricant and there are far more effective options out there. WD40 (the brand) also makes a range of bike-specific chain lubricants now that are better suited to the job, so save the WD40 (the product) for un-seizing or protecting metal parts. How can I clean my chain properly? It is the Danish company's fastest lubricant. In testing, ZF found it to be very fast with the lowest recorded drip lubricant wear rate of all. CeramicSpeed claims a proper application will be around 180 miles. So this could be a good option to use if you're racing or don't want to reapply / clean chains every week or less. However, do not use gasoline or low flash point solvents for cleaning the drive chain. Using such low flash point solvents can result in a fire or explosion. In short, it's up to you whether you want to invest more in a good chain lubricant, which may have a higher initial cost than others. It is worth thinking about, especially for mid and higher-tier groupsets which most performance road bikes generally have.