Just wondering everyone’s chain maintenance practices.
Not enough
For day-to-day riding, I usually do it every 3 fuel fills or so. That’s right around the 5-600 mile internal that most manuals state. For long road trips, I’ll do it every night.
I clean the chain when I clean the bike. maybe once a month. I put oil on the easy to get to parts of the chain every couple of rides.
Dirt bikes get WD40 on the chain every ride. Just keeps the water off.
Roughly every 300 miles. For my Trident 660 that means about every other fill up.
I just wiped down the chain with a cloth and lube with a 4 drops of 90w gear oil each link every 500kms. Since it’s been cleaned so frequently and not dripping with oil, it doesn’t get dirty enough for kerosene.
When I had a chain drive, every 500mi is for street riding. Around 300mi when I took my dual sport down dusty trails.
I use the trip B counter to know when I’m over the 500km. Usually around 800 it gets very noisy and harder to manoeuvre it by hand.
If chain has sand or dirt I use the Honda chain cleaner, otherwise just put more Honda chain lube on every roller on the inside of the chain( on the bottom part of chain lube the roller from the top). You don’t need much lube, specially if you put it on the inside, with the centrifugal force it will spread it around.
Afterwards rotate the wheel couple of times with a paper towel resting against the outside of the chain to remove some of the old lube.
Love the feeling of pushing by hand a newly chained bike and the silence when coasting
Road bikes - I have a reminder to clean and check the chain every 500 miles, and I do it religiously.
Every 500km, gets gear oil (90) treat, every 1000km creaned squeaky clean with kerosene then soapy water and let dry before oil treat (as recommend in the owner’s manual).
Cleanup with wd-40 and lube with gear oil every time I think about it, usually when it starts getting noisy when coasting.