How To Clean & Lube Your Motorcycle Chain at RevZilla.com

Hi, I'm Lemmy RevZilla, I'm here to talk to you today about how to

clean

and lubricate

your

motorcycle

chain

. You should be interested in

clean

ing and lubricating

your

motorcycle

chain

if you have a chain final drive on your bike and are interested in preserving your motorcycles. chain that lasts a long time to prevent it from becoming a safety hazard, you will find them on all types of motorcycles, primarily older Harley sportbikes and almost every dirt bike ever produced, although there are some bikes that use different methods of The final drive, the chain, is what we're going to focus on today and that should cover a lot of you who ride bikes.

As for the difficulty of this task, I'll call it a beer, doron, hora, bsd. or beard difficulty scale, most of you should be able to do this job very, very easily. Not only should they know how to do it, but they should also do it frequently. Due to frequent surfing, the range for most motorcycles is usually 3 to 500 miles. It's very important that you know how to do this so you don't get stuck taking it to a store. It can be very inconvenient to have to go to a store for something so small if you have some basic common sense and a few special tools D, you can do the job yourself, okay, before we start tackling this task, let's learn a little about you need to identify what type of chain is on the motorcycle you are working on.

Different styles of chains have different care and feeding techniques so to speak, there are two main types of chains, plain chains and then sealed chains, you will hear of sealed chains like oring chains or x-ray chains or maybe even a chain ziering and long after this. There will probably be all kinds of other cards, but if you have any cards + rings on your chain, they are sealed and were treated a little differently. Let me explain the difference very briefly and in the old days all they had were simple chains and Simple chains, like all motorcycle chains, are made up of two types of internal and external links.

In this chain, you can see here, this gray link is an inner link and this brass colored link here is an outer link and they made chains for a long time to simply connect the two with a rivet or a stake between them, as shown. you can see here. At some point someone had the bright idea to help keep grease inside the pin and bushing cavity and keep moisture, dirt and grime off the chain. and they did this using an O-ring or an X-ring. One of these seals is seen here again. That's why they are called sealed chains.

The only real difference is that they are applied to the pin and sit between the plates. On these they basically sit here sealing that cavity back up, keeping the factory applied grease inside the chain and keeping all kinds of mud and dirt off the chain. This helps those who are bad at maintaining their chain get a slightly longer life. things so once you've identified what type of chain you have, you can figure out how to clean it. The reason that matters is that these seals are probably the most delicate part of the motorcycle chain now, before you start cleaning.

The first thing I like to do is inspect the chain and sprocket. It's a good way for you to examine some of the things around your motorcycle in the places on the underside where most of us don't spend much time. You'll notice that we have this bike on a lift. You don't need a lift to do this job. We just present this to you that way so our cameraman doesn't break his back. I actually have this bike on a lift. its central easel, which you can see here. If you have a center stand on your bike, it can be a big help.

You can also take off your chain to clean and lubricate it or the other thing you can do is chase it. around the driveway a little bit, move it forward one section and do just one section of a time in the chain, any way you do it is valid, this will be the easiest way for us to show you this now that I'm looking at things . I'm going to pay special attention to the chain and sprockets. Spurgeon's chain appears to be in pretty good shape here. One of the things I want to check just with the basic condition of the chain is physically how much plate is what type. so it really is, let me show you off the bike a couple of better examples here's a nice piece of brandy spankin's new chain this is in pretty good shape if I apply pressure from side to side this or any compression attention this will looks nice Well actually there's not much slope or play now, this particular chain looks a lot of miles away, look at the wear on this side to side, you can see this back and forth movement and even if we apply compression and tension, you can really see this guy. from moving back and forth and that's because as this chain was neglected over the years, the round pins and rollers started to warp, they became ovoid and what that allows is again all that compression and tension that you see here now if you multiply that.

All along the chain there are all kinds of driveline whiplash that will make the throttle feel twitchy no matter how much effort you put into fueling, so this can also make your bike ride a little better if you're riding from a really badly neglected stage chained to something that is much better and you start to take care of things a little better. Things like this don't happen, it makes riding a bike a pleasure so the next thing I like to examine after I'm done take a look at the chain also look at the master link. Now this bike has what is called an endless chain.

It is quite common to set it up on many factory bikes. If you look at this, all the links look the same, however, on some. bikes, there is a link known as a master link that might look a little like this, the outside of these links tend to look a little different, it will be a clip on the outside of the link that you know it looks like visually. a little different or you may see something like screw style pieces torn off or you may also see rivets, rivet heads that have been attached with pins, they usually stand out because the link looks a little different than the links that attach it. surround.

If you want to make sure that link is in good shape, either a clip style master link and make sure the clip is in place or it's a rivet style and again make sure the heads are mushrooming correctly and it looks decent, you just want to do a quick double check to make sure your master link is still in place and doing its job. From there I'm also going to examine the sprocket area, this can also be important, chains and sprockets work together as a system and although sometimes you can get away with putting a new chain on the sprockets Older ones, if you have to replace the sprockets, it will usually happen with a chain, terrible sprockets and a new chain is usually a bad recipe, so when I'm examining the sprocket, there are a few things I'm going to look for in particular, the First is what I like to call shark teeth.

You'll notice that the teeth on the sprocket here look quite similar from front to back on a bicycle. that is accelerated hard maybe not decelerated very often or just a very old chain on a bike that rides fairly smoothly, the leading edge right here on the teeth may start to wear down as it wears down, but the part back of the tooth doesn't give a weird kind of shark fin look, you will effectively get shark teeth, now it compounds this situation and sometimes for those who slow down a lot or maybe like to downshift frequently, they can Note that not only the leading edge of the tooth is worn but also the trailing edge. when that starts to happen you're going to get teeth that look a little bit pointy and the reason I say they look pointy, if you look at the teeth up here, there's actually a pretty decent size at the top of the teeth, both on the front as in the back. side of the tooth socket where the roller is, it makes those sockets a little bit bigger, they expand more and more to the point where this plane here disappears and the teeth really start to look pointy and sometimes, They can actually get so sharp that they can cut you.

If you have sharp teeth on the sprocket, it's time to replace the sprocket and chain. There really isn't much point in trying to maintain an already broken chain and sprocket system, so inspection should be one of your initial tasks. steps in terms of taking a look at your bike and making sure everything is in good shape before you start. Now we are going to start with the cleanup process, so I want to remind you that before it was important for us to identify the chain and The reason we do this is again because different chains have different types of processes to clean them.

If you have a simple chain, everything is made of metal. They are pretty hard cookies. I've cleaned them before and something just as hard. like gasoline, however, if you have a sealed chain, they are the most modern motorcycles. Don't you want to use something like that? You want to check whatever your chain manufacturer tells you to use on your chain and I think one of the things you'll find is that you can use a commercial chain cleaner like the one we sell at RevZilla or you can also use kerosene. Many of the major chain manufacturers simply recommend plain old kerosene, it's gentle on the O-rings and again.

This will help give your chain a long life, which is really the goal of this whole exercise, so to begin, what I'm going to do is start soaking the Spurgeon chain and sprockets in some kerosene to clean them. a little messy, so again, if you just cleaned your bike and it looks great, you might want to remove the chain if possible, but again, you might not want to do that at all, soak the chain in kerosene, like this I'm going to start. spraying and moving that chain and sprocket to soak this puppy. I'm not going to be shy about this, it's worth ten cents worth of kerosene.

I want this to be nice and sticky. The only reason we are loading this with kerosene is to help dissolve some of the existing lubricant and then we will also float the dirt particles so they rise to the surface and come out, basically we are trying to remove that stuff detergent style to that you can Notice that this chain is already starting to look a little better and the reason it's doing this is because we're removing a little bit of dirt and as we do this you'll see dirt collecting all over the place, that's good now.

Those of you who have exceptionally clean motorcycles can probably stop at this point. They may be able to just take a rag, give it a promise to lick, wipe most of the dirt and grime off there; however, for those of you who tend to use thick or heavy

lube

. that can harden or those of you that really get out in the dirt or dust, you're probably going to need to do a little more cleaning, you need to scrub this chain, there's a couple different ways you can do it again if you're swinging a single chain , you don't have to be so careful, you can attack that baby with a brass brush and clean it all off, sometimes a brass brush can even remove a little rust if it forms.

It's not too bad there, but any surface rust shouldn't be a big deal, but again, if you have a modern sealed chain like this, you don't want to use something as aggressive as a brush with brass bristles, but rather something like a soft nylon . The brush is probably the way to do something like this for those of you who like to make your life a little easier. Maybe they want to investigate something like a grunge brush. I must say that this is a product that I really like. You can see the The brush itself has three sides here, so it quickly allows you to clean three of the four sides of your chain.

Look how easy it is to put this puppy here and start spinning this wheel and as I'm doing that, I can get started quickly. By scrubbing this chain, I'm removing the snot gunk from here and this chain cleans up very easily. I'm going to beat this a couple more times just to make sure I get everything here and from there. I'm going to take my nylon brush and get into this puppy and start doing the same thing on the top of the chain face that I couldn't reach with the grunge brush, you can always flip the grunge brush over.

Actually, I won't. I'm doing it here just so you can see, you can use a regular brush if you want and I'm trying to give our cameraman a clear view to see what I'm doing here, so I'm scrubbing this puppy. It looks pretty good, as you can see a lot of dirt and mud coming out of this. I don't mind putting the scrub brush on that sprocket too and removing as much dirt as I can. We look pretty good here, andthat? I'm going to do the next thing, you can see here before we get to that point, you can see all this dirt starting to come off of this, that's a great sign, that's exactly what we're trying to do is remove the dirt. of the chain so what I'm going to do next is spray us again with some kerosene and start drying this again trying to get the grease out of there to do exactly the same thing and if you look under the sprocket you'll see I'll notice the big black puddle of nasty Ness coming out of this bike, that's cool again, this gunk that builds up there, that's what kills the chains, especially those O-rings, so what we're doing here is maintaining them. soft, flexible rings and removing any grit that might act as an abrasive to them, look at how that thing is at this stage of the game I want to say this is a reasonably clean motorcycle chain.

The next thing I want to do is start drying it. You have to remove all the kerosene for the lubricant to be effective, so I'm going to dry this up. I'm just going to use. a rag, you would be very careful to look at your fingers all the time and that actually brings up another mention. I've seen some idiots try to do chain maintenance on a motorcycle that's on, sometimes they watch a bike throw. team terrible idea never touch your chain while your bike is at risk it's too big changing sprockets they're pretty good at hurting people make sure your bike is off no matter how difficult this job may seem, you're not going to save time doing it that way, as you can see here, I'm drying this chain a little bit and it's starting to look good.

I'll give it a few more passes real quick and then we'll be ready to start lubricating. I've removed lots and lots of dirt from this. I cleaned up Spurgeon's wheel a bit here. I definitely cleaned some of the dirt and grime that had built up on the riser and also left the chain clean and completely dry now. I can see that I can actually touch this chain if you look at my hand, it's completely clean, that's usually a good indicator that you're getting to the point where you've removed most of the mucus and grime from the chain.

Now we are ready. to lubricate now before you know it's really cracking the lubricant. I'm going to go back again to the chain identification section, the video we're talking about, to determine if you have a sealed chain or if you have a plain chain and The reason I mention this again is because the lubrication techniques for both They are a little different, so let's talk a little about the old days, when everyone had simple chains and everyone knew that the best way to keep a simple chain that lived a long and happy life was to maintain a constant flow of lubricant, the more lubricant had there, you better be doing it, so single chains really love a lot of grease, dropping a bunch of that stuff in there.

However, for those of you with modern bikes that use a sealed chain like this, the

lube

serves a very different purpose than having to load everything up with grease that you don't really need and you're really only using a little bit. of lubricant on the outside to keep rust off things. Now those techniques will also apply to the type of lube you'll actually end up using, which is why there are all kinds of chain loops on the market and all kinds of homemade products. things that you can also use and everyone has their own opinion about it.

I guess it's a lot like motor oil. I like to use an item called chain wax, which makes this the ultimate. I discovered it when I was 17 and it worked very well. I've been using it since now so you know I'm not standing here trying to pedal you. There are other things you can use; some are cheap and for others we don't even sell one of my favorites. the single chain is chainsaw bar oil. Any of you who handle a chainsaw know that the stuff is pretty sticky and hangs pretty well on a chain. The reason I like to use chain wax instead of something like chainsaw bar oil is that the wax is much less.

It is likely to be thrown, as this chain moves around instead of shedding chunks of lube that dirty your equipment and possibly dirty your motorcycle, the chain wax is applied as a liquid in a spray form and then tends to become waxy. It's paraffin based here, so it's a lot harder for the chain to shed little bits of lube, so let's go straight to the lube again when we were cleaning, we cleaned four surfaces of the chain, we're going to do the same thing. sew with the lube again because this is a sealed chain. I don't really need to flood this thing with lube, but there will probably be a little more time because I'm going to try to be thorough, so one of the things that I think makes it easy is that if you take the straw and point it toward the cog , that will help get the top surface of the chain pretty easily, we're going to put some lube in there and run this thing over. until I see a chain enter that has already been smeared with lubricant.

We talked about the heat earlier. It's not very necessary, especially with a sealed chain like this, but some people like to take their bike out for a quick ride to warm it up. chain to help draw this into a simple chain, which is a valid way of doing things, so I'm starting to see some lubricated areas there. I know I have the inside surface of this ready, now I'm going to get to work. on the outside surface and this is going to get a little messier, but you can see these things happening, it has that brown color, so it's pretty easy to identify when it's actually gotten to a couple of links and if you just look In a moment you'll see some of that brown lube appear again, which means we've done that side of things too.

I'm going to repeat the process on the top of the links, the outside of the chain and then I'm going to give them a quick tap here on the inside and it gets a little sticky as well. You'll probably have to clean up a bit when you're done so this chain is now well lubricated. In fact, I would even say it's over. lubricated the fact that we see lube building up down here is not that bad for a flat chain, but this is not a flat chain, it's a sealed chain, so we're going to clean this up and then what I'm going to do is take a separate rag here, I'm just going to wipe off a little bit of the excess here anywhere that SuperDuper is dripping, so we're looking pretty good there.

I've removed most of the excess, but you can still see there is a good amount. of residue here now the last thing I have to do because I used a paraffin based lube is wait a little bit for this to stick a little bit so I can test it if you used a strictly liquid based lube. bikes ready to rock and roll now if you are looking to learn a little more about chains check out some of our reviews read articles on final drive we have a couple on there that break down what final drive methods are used on motorcycles if you want to learn a little more about your bike's final drive and of course if you're looking for another project to tackle, hop on over to our playlist and check out all of our great how-to videos if you need immediate help because you're waiting to take your bike out for a ride and enjoy a nice sunny weekend day, give one of our gear experts a shout, visit us at

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.com or you can always call us on the phone two eight seven seven seven nine two nine four five five I'm leaving I'm leaving from here