How to lubricate your bicycle chain | Cycling Weekly

Lube your chain to get it running smoothly and quietly. All you need is a rag and some lube
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Hi! My name is Al and today I’m going to
show you how to lubricate your chain. Now before you say that’s ridiculous, of
course I know how to do that, you’d be amazed by the amount of people who get
it wrong. There’s a few pitfalls that you might come across and for most mechanics
that work in bike shops majority of bikes that they’ll see will have the
chains lubricate incorrectly. You don’t really need any tools to do this you’ll
need a rag and some oil. One of the biggest issues with lubricating a chain
is that people don’t clean their chain first. There’s lots of different ways of
doing it if you change fairly clean already then you can use a bit of
degreaser or perhaps some alcohol on a rag and just run the chain through it or
if it’s really dirty and even washing your bike won’t get it completely clean
then you can use something like this chain cleaner from Parked really good
scrubbing the chain clean other alternatives are to remove the chain
from the bike and give it a good soaking overnight in a takeaway container with
some degreaser something like that give it a good scrub make it nice and clean
before it goes back on the bike. This chain is pretty clean so we’re just
going to use a bit of maintenance spray put it onto a rag and I’m just going to
run the chain through it get nice and shiny and ready for some
fresh proper oil. Your choice of oil is really important, forget about using
WD-40, GTA 5, TF2, all those kind of maintenance lubes are great for
dispersing water but they don’t have any lasting lubricating properties just what
you need on your chain. Basically in the winter when it’s wet you want to be
using a wet lube, something like this, and in the summer some kind of dry lube
something that will evaporate and when a tractor something like this. Whatever you
use make sure you give it a proper shake before you apply it there’ll be lots of
different ingredients in the oil and if they’re not dispersed correctly then
you’re not going to be applying what you need to be applying to your chain. So
we’re going to be applying this lube for right now
it’s always easier to use a bottle. Spray, cans get lube everywhere if you’ve got
disc brakes on your bike they can contaminate your brake pads make a big
mess and waste oil so we’re going to apply the lube to the inner run of the
chain and we’re just going to backpedal a couple of passes is all we really need
and then we’re just going to work the oil into the chain or pedaling back. What
we’re aiming to lubricate is the inside of the rollers of the chain the outside
of the chain doesn’t need to have any lubrication. The only benefit of a bit of
oil on the outside is to help prevent it from from corroding so once you’ve
worked the oil into the chain we’re going to wipe off any excess, if we don’t
do that it’s just going to attract dirt and we’re going to end up with a grimy
paste that will just wear everything out super quickly. So yeah just remember: keep
your chain clean and lube sparingly. So that’s it! All done, chain nicely lubed
and ready to go out and hit the road. Thanks for watching! Cheers!