19/07/2017 3:44pm
All motorcycle drive chains, regardless of type or manufacturer need to be regularly lubricated. Even sealed O ring and X ring chains still require external lubrication. Why? Because the chain is made of moving metal parts and rubber seals. The seals need proper lubrication to ensure extended chain life and without lubrication, the steel parts will get excessive wear and heat, which in turn leads to metal fatigue and ultimately to breakage. Just like your engine needs oil, so does your chain.
Visitors with long beards and even longer memories will remember boiling chain grease and dropping the chain into the tin to encourage the grease into the moving parts of the chain. This was ok thirty years ago, before the advent of O and X ring chains, but is not a good idea now. If you do it with an O or X ring chain, the heat will damage the rings and the chain will be scrap. There are better, more modern solutions.
Another idea to avoid is chain ‘Wax’ products. Their main selling point it that they don’t fling off the chain, so you don’t have to bother to clean your bike! Well didn’t your mother ever tell you? When something sounds too good to be true, it’s usually because it is! The theory is that as the chain heats up, the wax will melt and lubricate the chain. Hmm, ok so let’s think about our engine again. If you took out the oil and filed it with wax instead what would be the effect? Well in our opinion, the wear on the engine parts before the wax melted would be horrendous and the engine would either seize or suffer massively accelerated wear. Wax also tends to sit on the chain side plates (where it isn’t needed) and gives the rider the impression that his chain is well lubricated whereas in fact the chain rollers (where it is needed) are running practically dry. A customer with a broken chain once said to us that it was a high street available product and therefore must be good. Well so are cigarettes but it doesn’t make them good for you!
Neither we, nor Afam, sell, recommend, or use any type of chain wax and all our guarantees and mileage warranties are invalid if we can detect any chain wax on the chain!
No, what we need is a good quality chain oil. In an ideal world our chain would run in a sealed chain case with a bath of oil inside. But, since we don’t live in an ideal world, we will just have to do the best we can. Our recommendation is AFAM Powerlube used at regular intervals. There is no definitive distance recommendation, but we recommend every 300 miles or so. More often in wet or dirty conditions and more often in salty environments if you live by the sea! Winter road salt should be cleaned off after every journey. AFAM Powerlube is a high performance chain lube that can be used on any make of chain for motorcycle and moped application. Tested in all street, racing and off road applications, it has excellent adhesion to chain parts under all conditions, flows to all parts for complete lubrication and is not affected by high temperatures. It is effective against rust formation, improves chain life and retards ‘o’ ring hardening and corrosion.