Originally Posted by cyccommute

If you are putting on lubricant everyday or cleaning the chain constantly, you are doing something wrong. Life is just too short to be spending much more than fleeting thoughts about your chain. I clean chains once before they are installed and they don’t come off again until I’m ready to change the chain 3000 to 4000 miles later. I use solvent wax lubricants…usually White Lightning…and apply them at about 600 to 700 mile intervals. I refresh after rain but the same should be done for oil based lubricants. The pictures below are testament to how clean my drivetrain is. Not many of them are from tours but this is the general state of all my chains.

About 600 miles into a tour around Lake Michigan. I did apply lubricant at about 300 miles after an all day rain ride.



Normal state of my chain. I have no idea what the mileage on the chain is but this is not a picture of a recently cleaned chain.



Dead of winter chain. You can see the frame isn’t clean but the chain is.

Library - 3391 by Stuart Black, on Flickr

Again, I have no idea of the mileage on the chain but my hands are a lot cleaner than they would be if I were using oil.

2013-07-26 08.06.29 by Stuart Black, on Flickr