Cheap oil.

[Carlton green]

Now let me get this right.......has someone posted that people spend £ 400-00 on replacing worn cassette and chain ?...... If so,why ?A quick scan about finds ultegra chain + cassette for £150-00,surely good enough for 99% of us ?You could,no doubt,shave a few grams off for twice the price.

…. and I can’t imagine even spending half that amount on a freewheel and chain . The SA AW just seems to go on forever, not the necessarily the best or quickest arrangement but it has its virtues .

[rareposter]

Now let me get this right.......has someone posted that people spend £ 400-00 on replacing worn cassette and chain ?...... If so,why ?A quick scan about finds ultegra chain + cassette for £150-00,surely good enough for 99% of us ?You could,no doubt,shave a few grams off for twice the price.

It was me and the exact context of it was :

For most people - especially people on £200 "mountain bikes" or basic utility bikes - of course it'd be a complete waste of money but if you're riding a bike with a drivetrain that cost 5x the price of an average basic bike, having a top end chain and keeping the whole lot spotless makes good sense. Either you can save a couple of £ on the cost of some lube and then replace the drivetrain 2000km sooner or you can buy decent proper chain lube, maintain it and get an extra 2000km out of it. When you put it like that, it's good economic sense to buy the right stuff for the job. And to a certain extent, that's what you're accepting when you buy a top-end bike - the fact that if you break a wheel it'll be £1000 to fix it, not £40; when you wear out the chain and cassette it'll be £400 to replace them, not £30.

If you buy / build up a top end road bike with Dura Ace Di2 or a top end MTB with SRAM XX Eagle then yes, cassettes alone can easily be up at £350.

And if you're riding around on a bike like that it makes little sense to replace worn drivetrain parts with lower grade components.

I didn't say anyone has to go out and spend that much - I couldn't care less if you ride around on Dura-Ace or Tourney or a 3sp SA. I was pointing it out in the context of owning and maintaining a top end bike vs an entry-level bike.

[853]

A major theme in this thread is that using cheap oil and the consequent fast-wearing of components that are cheap (and perhaps also nasty, especially when caked in gritty black oil) is overall cheaper than buying a bottle of much better chain lubricant. Two things seem awry here:

1) The drive train is always going to be filthy and inefficient.

2) The cheap & cheerful approach will generate a large wastage in chains and the toothed parts they run over.

I've been using engine oil, only, on all my bikes for the last 34 years. My best bike still has the Dura-Ace 7700 drivetrain that I bought new. I have not experienced the two points you mentioned, above.

[Pebble]

there is a good point about specialist oils for a new £350 cassette and chain -

But I am halfway through a set of 6 chains and cassette, all chains now out to arond 0.7% wear, some sprockets on casseete now reversed. I will go through all the chains again taking them all to 1.3% and the to 2% at which point I will of had my moneys worth (and that is when they start to fail)
6 chains at £5.99 +14.50 for the cassstte (£50 for 20,000 miles (0.25p per mile))

would a premium oil really help, I guess it probably could when the chains were new (first 500 mile) must experiment on next batch, but that will be well over a year away

[853]

would a premium oil really help, I guess it probably could when the chains were new (first 500 mile) must experiment on next batch, but that will be well over a year away

The best way would be to use a premium oil on one half of the chain, and something cheap on the other half. You'd have to find some way of identifying which half of the chain received which oil, but it would be an informative experiment if you could do it

[nirakaro]

would a premium oil really help, I guess it probably could when the chains were new (first 500 mile) must experiment on next batch, but that will be well over a year away

The best way would be to use a premium oil on one half of the chain, and something cheap on the other half. You'd have to find some way of identifying which half of the chain received which oil, but it would be an informative experiment if you could do it

I’d imagine that with each turn of the pedals, a small proportion of the oil on the chain would be deposited on the teeth of the various cogs, to then be picked up by another part of the chain, reducing the value of the experiment. You could perhaps control for this by adding different coloured dyes to the two oils, and checking with a microscope. Or maybe using a radioactive marker?
However there may be better ways of spending your time.

[Pebble]

if one side of the roller wore faster than the other side, you could end up struggling to pedal in a straight line

[853]

The best way would be to use a premium oil on one half of the chain, and something cheap on the other half. You'd have to find some way of identifying which half of the chain received which oil, but it would be an informative experiment if you could do it

I’d imagine that with each turn of the pedals, a small proportion of the oil on the chain would be deposited on the teeth of the various cogs, to then be picked up by another part of the chain, reducing the value of the experiment. You could perhaps control for this by adding different coloured dyes to the two oils, and checking with a microscope. Or maybe using a radioactive marker?
However there may be better ways of spending your time.

Not if a normal amount of oil was applied correctly, and any surplus removed immediately.