Chain scrubber

I have one and love it.  Works great getting the chain clean, and saves a lot of time.  Although i still go over the chain with a toothbrush to get into the pivot points of the chain a little better.

I give those things a big thumb's down.  If you fill them with some kind of cleaner / degreaser, then they tend splash & ooze that stuff all over your derailluers, and even leak down into your BB.  That's no good - you don't want that stuff degreased or exposed to solvents. 

Get a chain with a Power Link (or equivalent) - then just pop the chain off and clean it to your heart's content all while well clear of the rest of your bike.   

Outside of Bike Lust, cleaners/degeasers/solvents/soaps are only applied to my bike parts when they are disassembled from the rest of the bike.  Keeps everything working smoother and happy

Cheers, Chris 

a rag and degreaser works very well.  The video shows a trick where you bend the chain a bit in the rag...this gets a lot of the grime out.  I do have the degreaser you speak of but I am too lazy to get it out...I just clean my bike and chain by hand every weekend after the long ride.

Crap.  Am I supposed to do bike maintainance?  Any good posts on maintainance schedules?

You'll want something more aggressive than my mountain-bike maintenance schedule.    I bought it 12 years ago, and used it sporadically (only once for MTB) since then.  I did no maintenance in that time.

This year, after a good 60 miles of sweet, sweet singletrack, it was getting noisy.  And, not just a little noisy.  I sounded like a WWII Panzer coming down the trail.  I thought it was the little bearings in the derailleur, or the bottom bracket making all the noise.   Turns out, it was the chain.  I replaced the chain with an SRAM PC8xx chain. (with a power link)

Smooth as butter now, and QUIET.  Sometime in the next 12 years I'm probably going to have to lube my shift/brake cables, too!

I worked at a bike shop for 5+ years and also owned one of the scrubbers personally. Never once have I seen it cause a problem to a deraileur or bottom bracket. Any decent components are sealed bearings anyway.


They work great and get the job done much quicker then removing the chain and scrubbing it by hand. Which you also have to remember there is such a thing as too much cleaning.

About every other week I take my bike out on the lawn and use the chain scrubber on it. I take those blue towels you buy by the roll and wipe up anything that drips onto the crank, frame, etc.

Usually that ends up with "Damn, I made a clean spot" and I take the foaming bike cleaner and the towels and detail the bike.

I can't imagine seeing the dribble on the bottom bracket and frame and not cleaning it off. The bearings are all sealed so that's not an issue.

I have one.  I like it.  No problems with leakage/drippage.  The only place it could 'leak' from is where the chain exits the chamber.  I wrap a rag around it there and the rag catches anything that might otherwise get out.

I bought one- and it now sits gathering dust.  Total waste of effort- & potentially damaging to chain IMHO.  The solvent (whatever cleaning solution you use) must get throughout the chain to flush out the grime.  So you MUST get all that solvent out from all the link pins or chain would be MORE susceptible to rust & wear.  Many don't do that but just run the cleaner then lightly lube outside of chain- leaving the inner pins & links unprotected.

Over the years I've gone back to traditional rag & lube technique every 250-300mi (or anytime chain gets wet or noisy):

1. Take rag & wipe off chain (while spinning crank backwards to get entire chain)
2. Drizzle lube on chain hitting each link
3.  Wipe down chain with clean rag
4.  Repeat until most gross grime gone (3-4x is typical).
5.  Wipe off excess lube with clean rag
6.  Wipe gross grime off chainrings & derailleur jockey wheels

What lube to use?  Take your pick.  I happen to like ProLink, but also use White Lightning for my MTB (seems to pick up less trail dust).  I've also used home brew (car motor oil:mineral spirits in 1:3 ratio) which works well, is cheap enough to bathe the chain regularly, but is a bit dirty compared to ProLink.  I also use (HORRORS) WD-40, but only as a solvent after a wet & dirty ride.  I use WD-40 spray to flush out the grit, let dry, then apply chain lube.  WD-40 alone is only a very light lube which doesn't last on bike chain. 

Results?  I've been riding ~5k mi/yr & consistently get 3-4k mi out of Ultegra or DA road chains (to 1/16" "stretch").  Current Wippermann chain is over 4k mi with no measurable "stretch".  Of course, MTB chains wear faster due to trail grit. 

You yourself admit the horrors of WD=40 on a chain but tell people not to use a chain clean because it gets too deep into the pins/links? What do you think WD-40 does times x10? WD-40 is a much stronger solvent then normal bike degreaser and will do a lot mor damage "flushing" out the grit especially with the force it can be sprayed into the chain.

WD-40 is like duct tape, sure it can get a job done but its never the right tool for the job.

For routine maintainence, I like the chain scrubber. I take off the rear wheel, and use a tool the holds the chain in position so the cassete doesn't keep getting the chain dirty, and scrub the sprockets at the same time.  As others have said, you don't get the chain as clean as taking it off and soaking it or shaking it up in a bottle of degreaser.  But that's my end of season deep clean.

It does tend to drip, but not get into anything sealed.  I usually scrub first with degreaser, then with detergent in hot water, then dry with a towel.  After I clean the rest of the drive train (and usually the whole bike), I pop the wheel on again and then re-lube.  Wait 5-10 minutes, then wipe off the excess.

I take off the chain; you do this by removing the master link.....just use degreaser and re lube the thing. I do this quite often.

WD-40 is water-displacing solvent which leaves some light lube (oil) on evaporation. Chain scrubber cleaning solutions provide no rust-prevention nor lubrication.  Park Chain Scrubber (among some others) even suggests using water-dish soap as cleaner.  Chain links/pins don't move as freely following cleaning/drying with chain scrubber as after WD-40 after drying.  To me-seems easier to get chain lube worked deep into chain after WD-40 cleaning than chain scrubber cleaning. 

Just trying to share what works for me.

The problem is that much of the solvent in WD-40 does not come out and that light lube is not enough to keep parts from wearing. This means that after cleaning with WD-40 you'll continue to have wear from the solvents and light lubes. The light lubes can block a good heavy lube from getting in and doing its job. As you said it seems that you can get the lube in better after using WD-40 but if its already moving a lot you can't really tell if its in there.

Also a chain scrubber is not supposed to lubricate or offer rust protection, it has one job and that is to clean a chain, your description of it being stiffer afterwards means it did its job and did it well.