Bonneville America Forums Forums Technical Forums General Tech Chain and sprocket cleaning

Does anyone have any recommendations for cleaning up my chain and sprocket. I have a bit of build up on both. Any good cleaners recommended?

First I would reccomend not cleaning your chain with the bike running. There was a sobering post on here a while back with pictures showing what not to do.

Now that the warning is out of the way what I usually do is oil my chain and wipe the excess off after with a cloth and that tends to get most of it off. I remember seeing a chain cleaning gadget for dirt bikes once. I think it clipped to the chain and had some brass brushes inside. It came with a cleaning solvent and you pretty much ran it back and forth on the chain.

To get my sprocket clean I use bug and tar remover. The same stuff for getting bug juice off of cars. It seems to cut right through the chain oil but I don't think it would be good for the seals in the chain. NR

clicky! maybe this will help too?

I just use soap (Dawn) and water and a piece of an old tee shirt while the bike is up on the jack to make it easy to spin the wheel until everything is clean. Then I dry it with another piece of old tee shirt and reapply some lube, wiping off the excess. So far, my favorite chain lube has been DuPont's dry teflon spray but the local Lowe's quit selling it so I have to find a new source. Shouldn't have given that can away...

The grunge brush and a little kerosene does the trick for me.
I put a shallow pan under the rear sprocket after I get the rear wheel up in the air and clean, spin, repeat.
After going all the way around the chain I use an old rag to wipe off the chain and sprocket and any other mess.
I will let it all dry overnight and then hit it with chain lube.

I don't oil it so there is no build up.

I clean with kerosine and re-wax (Maxium Chain Wax) every 500 miles. By cleaning every time I re-wax, it eliminates build up. I also don't overdo adding new lube.

Thanks guys. Some good suggestions and I do have the grunge brush. Will start the clean up process this weekend.

Without wanting to harp on about the merits of the scott oiler, one of them relates to it's ability to keep the chain clean.

This chain has 25000k's on it and besides wiping it once I think (I don't now), there is still very little wear and it'll be interesting to see how many k's I do get on it and the sprockets.

Just food for thought