oily chain set

put the chain in a small plastic drinks bottle with some slightly diluted degreaser, put the cap on and shake it up then leave it to soak for an hour or so.
Next fish it out of the bottle then put in a tray (takeaway cartons ideal) and pour boiling water straight from the kettle onto it and then agitate a bit more. Tip out the water and rinse under a tap then give it another boiling rinse until the water is relatively clean.

The boiling water really does the trick loosening up sticky oily residue and if you use an eco-degreaser this is much less noxious than white spirit and easy / safe to do indoors

There are some strange myths floating round about WD40 and a lot of it is snobbery.

It's Naptha, a light distillate in the same range as petrol with a thickening agent added to make it just persistent enough to prevent surface oxidization. It originally found it's first use preventing corrosion on the unpainted skin of nuclear missiles.

This is true of many similar products such as GT85/Plus Gas/DX Brake cleaner etc etc.

It does not make any of them a bad product as long as they are used in the intended fashion such as removing dry and thickened lube and protecting exposed surfaces from moisture in the air. It was never intended as a lube on it's own for high load metal on metal applications, it is however a perfectly good chain de greaser and lube for light applications. You don't want to spray it on bearings or rubber seals of course but that is true of any penetrating solvent be it oil based, citric acid based or alcohol based.

I use a snap link, I pop the chain off and give it a good bath in white spirit. After a good scrub it then gets hung up and blasted with WD40 or GT85 or similar, working downwards to wash grit out, Then it's left to dry and re lubed when on the bike. The cassette can come off, I find it quicker than cleaning it on the bike. Being stainless steel it can go in a bowl and be scrubbed with boiling hot water and a dash of washing up liquid if it's very badly clogged, same goes for ally chain rings. Just be sure to rinse and dry them thoroughly with boiling water to remove traces of salts in the detergent and clean with WD or similar afterwards. You can even use the dishwasher at your peril.

Having said all that someone will no doubt cherry pick odd words and get in to a pedantic rage about chain cleaning but I just got fed up with the myths around lubes. Most are oil based and come in different weights, WD40 and similar are simply some of the lightest ones, this does not make them the devil.

I find that using white spirit makes for a rusty chain.
I use Park Tools Chain Brite or Morgan Blue's Chain Cleaner on the chainset and cassette. Spray it on and it will quickly dissolve the grease and muck and wash off easily. I spray some cleaner on a rag and run my chain through it until it looks clean and then thoroughly relube.

I wouldn't put WD40 anywhere on my bike. I use TF2 for that.

When I whip my chain off to clean it, I get a bucket with watered down muc off in warm water and give it a few minutes soaking and then giving it a good shake up.

Then the tooth brush comes out. Hang it on the washing line to air dry. Spray it with TF2, let it drip dry. Stick it on the bike and give it a good lube up.

I have an ultrasonic cleaner. I submerge my chain in gunk, vibrate for 5 mins. You can't believe how much grit paste comes off the chain. I then wash the gunk off, airline dry the chain and immediately spray medium density grease onto the chain. Before the solvent evaporates from the grease it has moved into the inners of the chain by capillary action. Once the grease has stiffened I use a clothe to wipe all the excess grease from the outside plates, I even use a lightly dampened cloth of gunk to clean these surfaces as grease is not really required. It takes about 15 mins to do the whole job every 200 miles. Throw the chain away once a year as they are a cheap part.

Baby wipes.

If degreasing is OK why do SRAM and KMC (who also make chains for Shimano) state clearly that you shouldn't?

http://www.kmcchain.eu/maintenance

The white spirit or degreaser left behind will thin any oil you add so the lube won't stay in there as long.

WD40 is a solvent so I only apply a tiny squirt to a rag to faciliate wiping accumulated crud off the side plates. The chain is rubbed dry before any lube is applied.

Sheldon Brown: http://sheldonbrown.com/chains.html

"With bushingless chains, the lubricant flow is entirely different. If oil is applied to the rollers, it can easily flow into both sides of the rollers, because air (and oil) can flow through the gap between the "half bushings". If a bushingless chain is only oiled on the rollers, for instance by a narrow-spout oil can, the oil is able to flow into both sides of the rollers, through the gap and onto the middles of the link pins. The oil then flows out along the link pins to the side-plate junctions. Since the side plates are oiled from the inside, there is a natural self-flushing action that brings dirt and sand out of the chain instead of into it."

Capillary action quite nicely moves lubricant to the inside of the chain, where it's needed.

So don't worry about using white spirit to remove all lube and then re-lube it. You may want to give it two goes with the lube though, to make sure you get enough in there.

BTW, WD40 breaks down other lubricants, so leaving it inside the chain will actually make any added lube less efficient, and expose the rollers to more wear.

Chainrings - what GKam said, and use plenty of elbow grease.

Chain - rub extensively with WD40 squirted onto a rag, wipe dry and relube (I use Green Oil and an old toothbrush on the inside of the chain run, a 5 minute job max).

I never use degreaser on a chain, it will strip the essential grease from between the links and you can't put it back in by oiling the chain externally.

If it is just light dirt/grime then wipe and re oil

To really give the chain a clean remove it and soak it in white spirit, cheap as chips (£2 for 500ml)

It will strip all the oil off the chain, once clean hang the chain up to allow the white spirit to evaporate then give it a quick wipe over then fit it to the bike and apply new oil

Been doing this roughly once a month to shimano ultegra chains for over 5 years now

The chains are used in all weather conditions and each chain generally last 2500+ miles of smooth shifting

Gunk or similar. Soak, agitate with brush, wash off with water, dry, reapply lubricant. Wipe off excess lubricant.

Gunk or similar. Soak, agitate with brush, wash off with water, dry, reapply lubricant. Wipe off excess lubricant.

Degreaser and a brush, muc-off or Weldtite Dirt wash