Chain Olier - Home made.
 

Hi,

So most chain oilers are above £40, the home made ones are mostly less than a tenner, and more fun to make.

So I want to make one, any body got any ideas, or have the detials of a working home made one they want to make public !!!

O-rings
 

I have a shaft drive bike but was just told that Scottoilers don't lube the o-rings on such chains. Worth looking into I think. Linzi.

i dont believe that Linzi, not if they are fitted properly anyway. my scotoiler drops the oil directly onto the o-rings. it then creeps out from there to cover the rest of the chain.

for do it yourself ones, google lubeman its about the most common one i can think of.

Another plug for Loobman
Simple but well sorted system. Tested and proven by couriers.

LOOBMAN - manual chain lubrication system for all motorcycles with regular, O-Ring and X-Ring chains

Go on E-bay and search chain oilers. There is a guy who'll sell you a set of instructions for a really neat, simple solution. He gives the £4 to Riders for Health, so I'm not going to the post the design "Secret", but lets say the parts can be bought at any DIY chain and cost a lot less than the Scotoiler or Loobman.

Scotoilers are IMHO utter garbage. I ran one on the F650 and the flow was totally and utterly uncontrollable. You could have "Sahara in August" or "Exon Valdez", nothing in between. If you set it to dry it would loose it's priming and you had a noisy, filthy, hand burning, smoke inhaleing job to fill all the pipes again. Glad I didn't have to drill a carb to fit this overpriced junk.

Oilers do work. The F650 with the ****oiler then a basic one used two chains in 42000 miles, the Bonneville with a sidecar is now on 15000 miles on the first chain and only halfway adjusted. I expect that to go over 20000 miles.

Of course MZ had the perfect solution. I've had 50000 miles out of an industrial chain with the MZ enclosure keeping grease in and it's a lot easier to strip and clean than a BMW spline.

Andy

Ah
 

Hooli, you could be right. The guy DID say, "The Scottoiler doesn't lube the o-rings". Maybe he meant the one he was looking at. That would make sense. The Scottoiler had two prongs, each at an edge of the chain. That said, the reservoir was empty anyway. I thought I could put in anything-even olive oil, for one journey. Told no, so got chain lube. Linzi

There was a thread here last year which covered chain oilers in some depth. I even posted up my cost nothing diy design which turned out to be based on loobman principles before I'd ever heard of loobman.

It's been working fine for a few years now with no unexpected consequences other than getting a bit messy with oil drips. I'd post a link to the thread except the search function seems to be on the blink for me so here's a couple of the pics I used

http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...chainoiler.jpg

http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r.../_DSC7839a.jpg

I have had mixed experiences with Scottoilers.I have had the one that is fitted on my VFR for over twenty years.I gets swapped over each time I change my bike and has never given me any problems at all.I also have one on the Transalp.I got this one second hand about a year ago.It behaves just as you descibed,either no flow or emptying itself rapidly.Why I do not know.No amout of fiddling with it or trying different oils seems to help.

Hi All,

Backofbeyond, I like what you have going there, can you explain it some more? Why does the oil drip into another container that has an air pipe in it?

One thing about travelling around the place .. it will teach you to think for yourself!

In the diagram .. see along side the bottle with the oil in it .. it says "1. Squeeze the bottle" .. what happens then "2. Oil goes up tube"

You want the other steps ? .. well I'd think the oil going up the tube fills (or part fills) the tube with the air pipe in it... then the bottle that was squeezed is no longer squeezed .. any oil above the oil supply pipe in the tube will be drawn back oil into the first bottle by suction... once that pipe is clear of oil then the first bottle will be sucking air..

Now you have the second bottle with oil in it .. that will tend to flow out to the chain...

Very simple physics...

The second container is made from a 10 ml plastic syringe body "liberated" from my wife's medical bag and has convenient calibration marks on the side. Thats how I know that a 5ml squeeze lubes the chain quite well but a 10ml one dumps most of the oil onto the bashplate through chain fling - I've moved the feed pipe to the front sprocket since the pic was taken.

In dry weather 5ml every time you stop for petrol is enough but it needs more in wet weather. Unfortunately that means stopping to give it another 5ml, something I'm unlikely to do and 10mls just wastes most of it so it the chain just has to live with what it gets. A Scott oiler might be better if you're doing long motorway miles in constant rain and you're paranoid about your chain but considering the whole thing cost nothing it's good enough.

I've been using a mix of 90 gear oil and some jetski 2t oil that's had left from my life aquatic. 50:50 has been about right in the winter with more gear oil in the summer to up the viscosity in the warmer weather. Sadly this isn't based on any great knowledge of lubrication theory but on whether I have time to get the bike off my drive before it starts dripping.

Frank, Thanks for the earlier reply, it was very ... enlightening!

Once I'd read backofbeyond's reply I understood why the pipe was there and what function it perfomed, thanks backofbeyond. I'm going to use this to make my own, with some optional extras some time soon, Events Co-ordinator (the wife!) permitting.

:mchappy:

scottoiler
 

ive had no problems with the scottoiler and HCR on my varadero, and i havent had to adjust the chain for over a year. if you take the time to make small adjustments at a time then it works perfectly, keeping the chain wet while not covering the bike in oil.

got it for free, for christmas, looked at the instructions, saw the vacuum fitting was pain, tank and plastics off etc but i got the dealer to do it for nothing when the bike had its 1st service.

If anyone is handy with a soldering iron and wants to make a high tech oiler (speaking a bit of German might help as well) have a look here: The Alpentourer - Mc Coi, the intelligent chain lubrication system

Three words spring to mind: Nut, Sledge and Hammer :rolleyes2:

Andy

Very interesting and informative, I am off to go and make one. Thanks Backofbeyond.

Jerome

Any thoughts on whether chain oilers are good for bikes used off road a lot
 

Any thoughts on whether chain oilers are good for bikes used off road a lot- i.e. dusty or muddy conditions.

I had a Loobman.
It was fine going across Europe and Western Russia but after a few days off road it fell apart, mainly a result of impact from stones, vegetation etc and the bike regularly falling over and being dragged out of bogs and other difficulties. Maybe this was all too extreme for it.
I'm glad it cost under £20 and not £80!

I'd have one again for road use.

I agree with with Tony our loobman's fell apart as soon as we got on the ruff stuff in asia. Worked great until then.

Pete

Brilliant!
In 2003 I designed a similar "system" even simpler than yours. I used 90 wt. gear oil and used vent restriction and exhaust heat to regulate flow. All gravity feed. No squeezing. When things got hot I would reduce venting which would restrict flow. In cold, increase venting for more flow. Gravity did the rest. I found I only really needed it for super long tours, riding huge miles each day. In rain (like in the UK) it would be good too as most chain lubes dissipate quickly in constant rain.

Auto oilers do make quite a mess and that is why I stopped using mine. (I've still got it!). Generally I can make do with one oiling a day (except in rain). Last two DID VM-2 Xring chains both made 22K to 25K miles.

When touring I do bike maintenance at end of day. Fill gas, check oil, clean and oil chain while chain is still HOT. I take this time to do an inspection, just a look see at things. Last is check is tires. Then its off to Beer and dinner.

Now the bike is ready to ride away at the crack of dawn with no fiddling about. Load up the gear and ride.

Yet another one who found the Loobman to not withstand tougher off-road riding.

I used one for a couple of years on two different road bikes, so I thought give it a shot on the trailbike. I read on a different thread last year someone saying that Loobman's can't handle the off-road, but I was hoping to prove them wrong.


Unfortunately I have to concede that spraycan chain lube is probably the most simple way to keep your chain oiled. Using engine oil directly out an oil bottle creates a lot of mess and wastes a lot of oil as well.