Duragrouch

I see from later posts, that you will not do this any more. For general knowledge:

Even tiny amounts of poisonous solvents can pollute vast water supplies, and are relatively impossible to extract once there. Nearly all boats are placarded with small signs near the engine warning of HUGE penalties for dumping oil or similar overboard.

Ideally, you dispose of used solvents at local hazmat disposal sites. Below something like 25 gallons, our local price will take that for free, including gasoline that has gone bad from age.

When I am using a tiny amount of solvent to clean something, like a few tablespoons, I simply leave the pan out in a well ventilated area (away from ignition sources like furnaces) to evaporate, then wipe the dry gunk out with a paper towel and dispose of that appropriately. But in recent years I use only safe cleaners, sometimes a degreasing kitchen soap is enough, however if dissolving petroleum oil or grease, I don't put that down the drain as then that is also pollution, I'll do the same as above, evaporation followed by paper towel. Of late, I save orange peels and squeeze them with the outer peel on the outside, as this liberates drops of orange oil, great for cleaning, or use the hot water from boiling peels for candied orange peel, the hot water combined with the orange oil makes a good degreaser. Or just use citrus degreaser.

yukiinu

I had a habit of "lubricating" my chain by spraying wd40 on it as it passed over freewheel. It leaked into the freewheel and destroyed the freewheel greese and my freewheel. I had to walk my loaded bike 60 miles to a bike shop.

BFisher

@Duragrouch where do the paper towels go? Also, if you get grease or oil on your hands, how do you clean them without causing pollution?

I'm very much in favor of environmental conservation, but honestly this thread is kind of ridiculous.

I ride a bike. Steel production is environmentally hazardous. Steel fabrication is hazardous. Chrome plating is extremely hazardous. Tire manufacturing is hazardous. Tire use causes pollution.

Aluminum production is hazardous. Glue production is toxic.

I wear shoes. Shoe manufacturing is hazardous. Shoe disposal is hazardous.

Home heating is toxic. Home cooling is toxic. Farming is hazardous.

You can go on and on. And frankly, how many well-meaning environmentally conscious people hop on a jet fuel-burning aluminum tube with wings to go ride a bike in some fancy locale?

Not picking on anyone here, and my tone is far from antagonistic. But if we think our "clean" handling of WD40 is making one single difference in the scope of things, we are mistaken.

noglider 

@Duragrouch, thanks.

texaspandj

You're good as it will not get in Hubs or Bottom bracket. There is a possibility of it getting in your freewheel BUT ONLY if you spray directly into your Freewheel BUT that is highly unlikely.

Here's how I've been doing it for years; Using wd-40 Spray the chain about 12 inches, using a cloth as a backstop, then wipe that area with same backstop cloth. Rotate crank arms til you're on the next 12 inches and repeat. Repeat til you've completed the whole chain. Wipe with cloth one more final time. DONE. That's it. You've cleaned and lubed chain all at once. As long as You've never completely removed Manufacturers lube, this method will last about 200 to 300 miles before you need to do it again.
Bonus your chain will look like new.
Another bonus, put the backstop cloth in a ziploc bag and use it every time you do this.

Oops forgot to add, I only do this to my bikes. When I work on someone else's bike I use chain oil 😁. Why, because I can tell by the condition of their bike they're not gonna lube their chain ever again. So I try to give the chain a fighting chance.

Duragrouch

My points were not about zero pollution, but about minimizing pollution.

- A small amount of certain pollutants can make vast quantities of water undrinkable. Some pollutants are toxic at levels of Parts Per Million (PPM) or less, and those pollutants readily disperse completely in a liquid. On the other hand, the same toxin in solid form disperses much less readily, many orders of magnitude less, so are less polluting, if disposed of where rainwater cannot wash them to the sea. If I had toxins on my hands, I would wipe as much off them before washing, and if a serious or volatile toxin as above, not send wash water down the drain. But these days I tend to wear disposable gloves and include them in the hazmat waste.

Of late, it has been determined that salmon are dying near road bridges because of tire dust that blows and washes into the river below. I have known for many years that tire dust is a significant pollutant, and little is being done about it in terms of alternative materials.

When I was too young to understand the impact, I saw people draining their engine oil into a hole in the soil, or pouring it down the sewer drain, and now I know how incredibly bad that is, just to save some effort. Thankfully, used oil disposal is easy now. However the price of new oil has skyrocketed in the last decade, even when oil prices are low. I asked about it. A fellow told me that it was due to oil disposal. I asked if costs for that had increased? He said no, but one company bought up all the others and had a monopoly, and then jacked up prices. I have not yet confirmed that story.

These days, every car and truck tire purchase includes a tire disposal fee, at least in my state. And thankfully, that fee is reasonable and not gone up.

BFisher

See post #38 in this thread.

texaspandj

There is no room for your Logic and Common Sense on this thread.

conspiratemus1

In three feet of snow, uphill in both directions, too.

BFisher

Well, all I'll add further is that the OP needent worry too much, and that those looking for a good alternative degreaser can try Blackjack Asphalt and Tar Remover from Home Depot. Citrus based, biodegradable , safe to handle, and works pretty good.

Although, it does come in a plastic bottle...

conspiratemus1

This thread didn’t go in this direction over spraying a bit of WD-40 on a chain. It was about polluting ground water gratuitously with petroleum solvents out of pure laziness and convenience. Now, if you were the only one doing ir and could prevent everyone else from doing it, then you’d be right — your own actions wouldn’t have any impact. But that’s not how it works. Or do you believe that just because a paper mill somewhere sometimes used to discharge mercury into the river that it’s OK for you and everyone else to dump your engine oil into the storm sewer?

cyccommute 

I really doubt that WD-40 use caused your freewheel to seize. You would need to use a huge amount of it in a very specific locations for it to get into the freewheel. The red arrows below point to where you would have to direct the spray and the wheel would likely need to be sitting with the freewheel pointing up to get the WD-40 to flow through the
mechanism. (The red arrow on the left should be pointing to the back of the freewheel rather than a cog.)

Over time freewheels will seize for various reasons. They aren’t very heavily lubricated and water can replace that lubricant over time. Often, WD-40 can be used to get a freewheel to roll more easily. The solvent evaporates and the oil in the WD-40 will remain behind.

conspiratemus1

The “logic” you are applauding is actually the “straw man” argument and the reductio ad absurdum, which are both logical fallacies leading to invalidation of the argument.

conspiratemus1

So until you do, you’ll have to forgive us for assuming he, or you, just made it up.

BFisher

I don't argue online. Don't need or want the last word. Don't need others to believe me.

Ride on and ride safe, all.

Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year.

dddd

Since this thread is about WD40, I believe that different riders have different sound thresholds for what constitutes quiet operation.

WD40 leaves a chain rattly-sounding after one ride. There may be no squeeking (and won't be if it's a decent, modern chain), but the rattly noise of the rollers is very annoying to this rider.
And any excess WD40 of course flies off if not well-removed with a cloth, staining the rear tire (though not noticeably affecting braking performance).

The same is true of any other dry lube that can't damp the free rattling of the rollers, but for sure some cyclists just don't hear this at all.
This somewhat puzzles me because at my age and having played with explosives, arms and having raced motorcycles for years, I still need to have some real "oilyness" in my chain. I lube with a roughly 20% oil in solvent mix (the solvent being hexane with ptfe particulate that I expel into a Triflow or WL squeeze bottle).

I recall that WD40 contains a very low percentage of actual oil (after the kero/solvents evaporate), just too low to make a chain very quiet for long imo.

I also go by the axiom "you can't wipe too much lube off of a chain" using a typically well-used terrycloth shop rag. And I never "clean" my chain, except perhaps after riding in mud (while hosing off the whole bike).

AVolta

Starting with a new chain (or chain cleaned by a number of the excellent method suggested in this thread), I have been using a self-cleaning lube called "lillylube", which I would not have ordinarily tried had I not known its developer, Jason Lilly. This product is designed to be applied to the chain which is then wiped and left to sit overnight to dry, leaving only the lubricant that hardens overnight. Instead of following the directions to liberally apply it while cranking the chain, however, I tie a thread around a chain link for a temporary reference, then I drop the lube/solvent into each chain link bearing one by one. Each drop is immediately wicked into the bearing. It sounds tedious, but doesn't take that long. This, of course, solves the problem of having it accidentally creep into the wheel bearings and axle. Then I wipe the excess off of the chain with a rag and let it sit overnight. I road ride roughly 50 miles a week on mostly dry and sometimes gravel roads, and usually have to repeat this procedure only a couple of times per year. I have found other, paraffin based self-cleaning chain lubes to build up on the chain rings, cassette and derailleur and occasionally chunk off in small black globs onto unwanted places when taking my bike inside, not to mention needing to clean the buildup off of these components as well. My current method, however, does not have that problem and has served me well for years. Since I use so little of the product this way, a small bottle lasts a very long time, and it is for the same reason easy on the environment.

dddd

The big problem with many, many chain lubes is that their dispensing hardware isn't configured and calibrated to make the tidy application of the lube into a fool-proof operation.

At one time, Triflow sold an accessory metal capillary top that screwed onto their traditional black 40z squeeze bottle (see first picture). I kept this and refilled it with my current "lite" mixture, having gone to some trouble to make chain lubing quicker and cleaner with the roughly 4:1 Solvent/oil mix that I find most convenient.
I believe there is some "environmental" improvement in better controlling the application of lubes and aerosols of all types.

Many round squeeze bottles have too-rigid sides, unlike the pliable/ flat sides of the traditional 4oz White Lightning bottle. The lube does not flow out at a steady rate while applying the lube to a moving chain, in further part due to there being virtually no flow restriction at the tip.

The applicator tube that works so well on a Tri-flow bottle (when cut to a shorter length) can be similarly applied to other bottles, but why are they not all sold this way?

Second picture is my shop-worn lube squeeze bottle having the applicator tip that I had to drill out the bottle top to fit. I shouldn't have had to do this imo, just to get the thin, steady stream of thin-bodied lube that can make lubing the chain literally a ten-second procedure!
I also may heat and stretch these applicator tubes to further improve the aim and dispensing rate (for an even easier time lubing my chain, even after perhaps drinking too much!).
The necked-down applicator tube also makes all of my aerosol cans last a lot longer by helping to regulate and pin-point the flow. I can even spray into assembled on-bike cable housings just by flattening the tip of the plastic tube slightly. I can also spray aerosol lithium grease into an assembled cotter crank bottom bracket (woo-hoo no need to fight with the cotters!).

tolfan

take it for a test ride the rides okay it's okay. I think it's really unlikely that you got enough going there heard anything

jgedwa

reductio ad absurdum is most certainly not a logical fallacy.

Jim

conspiratemus1

You are, most certainly, correct. I ought to have said that the other poster was using the fallacious “argument to the extreme”, which is sometimes confused during careless lapses in thinking, as I did, with the use of reductio ad absurdum to refute fallacious arguments. Thank you.

-Leslie

Duragrouch

Paywall in link, but I think that is essentially the same article as I had seen (probably syndicated). Thanks.