No advantage in oiling an O-ring chain? You're crazy. The oil will help maintain the o-rings, and reduce wear on the sprockets as the rollers of the chain come on to the teethe at high speed.

And rather than speculating, and passing on stories (some bloke on a ktm...), I'll give you some figures. The last chain I had from new till it was knackered lasted 45,000 miles. I briefly borrowed an identical bike with an identical chain that was on 19k miles, and the chain was already completely knackered. I tightened it up because it was hanging off, and within 200miles it was hanging off again. I was quite lazy looking after that 45k mile chain for the first part of its life so I reckon it could have gone on longer. A guy I know who uses a scott-oiler, but also oils his chain manually most days, got 60,000 miles out of his last c+s. These were road bikes used for despatching.

My theory is that when a chain is looked after, the front sprocket will wear quicker than the chain, and once it deteriorates to a certain level it accelerates the wear on on the chain. The next time I'm looking to get high mileage out of a chain I'm going to replace the front sprocket roughly half way through the predicted life of the chain. Front sprockets are cheap. Food for thought?


The sprocket off my DR350 near the end of my Mongolia trip. Not hard to imagine that it wasn't doing the chain much good.

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UK to Mongolia 2009, on a DR350