Free Speed! | How Much Faster Is A Clean Bicycle Chain?

we've come to mock us hq to answer the question of is a clean chain more efficient than a dirty chain and if so by how much and to help us out today we've got lewis from the r d team who's actually in charge of optimizing the chains himself so he handles the change that riders such as egan bonnell and felipe gana have used so let's head down and see what we've got right we're at mukhoff's r d center to test the difference between a clean chain and a dirty chain lewis is here he's going to help me out so brought in my nice dirty chain from home this is actually off my girlfriend's bike and it's been riddling for maybe like 200 miles or so so i think what we need to do is get this dirty chain onto the dyno so we've got a clear baseline reading of what we've got to work with and then you're going to give it a thorough clean aren't you over at the uh ultrasonic base and then we're going to re-measure it to see what the difference is between the clean chain and the daily chain so this is for you thank you very much um you can do all the hard work ready to go we got the dyno running but i don't mean dino is in dinosaur so here at mukhoff's cutting-edge research facility they have what's called a chain dynameter a tool that can measure the resistance and friction losses generated by our chains and is able to measure as accurately as five thousandths of a watt the first thing that strikes me as we've got no rear derailleur on here no so we've just taken the raw components of the the rear block and the the front chain rings just we're just purely measuring the chain itself so we're gonna keep those components the same way they're the same on on most bikes but uh yeah no mech and you were saying you were surprised it's not as dirty as you thought i might have bought it's not as dirty as i thought but i can definitely hear that there's not much going on in those rollers and those pins yeah i mean i've only been there for a little bit of time and i can say that is quite noisy isn't it yeah um but obviously you know far more than me so we'll leave this running for what we're going to do 10 minutes 10 to 15 minutes yeah that's a good measurement it's either gonna keep going down or it's just gonna level out and then we're gonna take it off give it a good clean and leave and go from there cooling treats is coming up look at the computer what we got so what is that so this is 5.4 watts is a lot of power not that bad it doesn't sound that bad for for an old chain this this or it's not that old but a chain has done a bit of work um and it's not overly clean that's that's not bad to be fair so what we've got going what power we got going in we've got around 250 to 300 watts going around that um i would say it's more than your average rider isn't it yeah yeah yeah yeah it's i would say it's a a keen cyclist yeah and at the moment that's obviously just keeping it as a linear thing and we can see this is obviously is this live as we're recording so yeah this is live this side here these are chain tests that we've done before yeah uh but this is live going in it's measuring every 25 seconds yeah and we can change that we can we can measure it down to five seconds but 25 seconds is giving you a good data point every time and we get plenty of data from that and we can work from there i'm intrigued to see how it goes after you're saying although it's worn and a bit noisy it's not too bad isn't it no it's not too bad as well i'm intriguing to see what you're going to hopefully get some more out of that nice definitely cool so there we go we've done our ten minutes measurement what what are we out so far give us some numbers so you're losing five watts on this chain isn't that too bad it's not too bad but you possibly have cheated a little bit it's not that dirty it wasn't the filthiest chain was it not really but let's uh let's give it you should know i do maintain my bikes very well yeah yeah and of course so we're going to get this cleaned up next uh so in the ultrasonic bath and we'll leave that for how long we're going to do 10 minutes either side so deep deep clean and we'll see what we get out of this chain cool come on i'll lift that up for you thank you very much and it goes so the last little bit we'll just give it a last little scrub has come out of the tank it's been in there 20 minutes should be nice and clean now so what we're going to do rinse this off a bit of fresh water airline it off then we're going to put it in the oven [Music] so this is your chain all clean all dry yeah if you hold your ear quite close to this and you can actually hear it the rollers and the pins in between so there's rattly that's very clean very clean chain uh nothing in there no dirt that's why it's rattling there's no lubrication so there's space space for the loop to sit in now nice right so we're gonna leave this chain i'm just gonna get my magic plank this is the most low-tech bit of equipment we have in here yeah but the history that comes with this plank is phenomenal so this is just a bit of wood just a bit of wood this is the lubin plank okay so what do you do on this we're going to lay the chain out yeah so this is the most low-tech bit of kit you've had it for a long time yeah yeah so every chain goes on this every chain goes on this from bradley wiggins our record ghana's chain from the giro this year yeah when he smashed everybody by 10 seconds so here's actual chain and the wiggins outwards have been on this piece of wood yep every chain that goes through this r d unit in here sees this that's incredible isn't it right um we're going to loop this up so we're going to leave this chain up lay it out nice and flat we're going to do each individual roller yeah one side then we're going to flip it and do the other side and the chain lube we're using is so we're going to get a mark off wet lube because i didn't tell you earlier that was what we have in there originally yeah we want to like that yeah [Music] [Music] so we've got our super clean chain back on the dyno after uh lewis is giving a good going over and what sort of readings have we got so far at the minute we've got about a half watt saving which is actually quite good even though we compressed there they're cleaning forever on it no we haven't got hours unfortunately today so there's still a good improvement not bad but like you said earlier i did kind of cheat slightly yeah gave you a relatively clean shake yeah definitely cheated on that one but i've got something up my sleeve we've got this very very dirty chain that is very day isn't it is this on your bike unfortunately i don't want to say yes but yes off my bike last couple of weeks so we're going to measure the efficiency of this yep and then what we'll do we'll give that thorough clean and see the sort of differences we can make because i guess that's representative of a chain that someone really hasn't cared for especially for a week or two weeks maybe exactly a few rides yep [Music] so we've got the filthy chain i've been riding we've got it on the dyno yeah and we're gonna see where we get with the numbers hopefully you'll hear how dirty it is as well oh that sounds rough doesn't it yeah that's the sort of noise that reminds me of um like your winter training right yeah whenever i was out grinding around you've gotta fill the chain and towards the end of your other couple of hour ride you're riding uphill and you can hear everything wearing away yeah [Applause] so we've had this machine running for a few minutes now and this is running about an eight watt loss in efficiency yeah yeah so this is a philly dirty chain so compared to my idea of a dirty chain which i bought in that was with about 5.8 5.1 what five one yeah so quick maps off the top of my head obviously yeah um it's about fifty percent worse off yeah it's this filthy data chain which is a big change isn't it huge in terms of yeah like percentage that's a monumental difference massive yeah so that's the difference between riding a bit slower or going considerably faster for less effort yep cool almost like free speed we then cleaned up that filthy chain to find out how much better it could run so lewis we finished running our super clean chain so i left that with you guys and this is what's come out of the ultrasonic cleaner isn't it yeah yeah so this is the this is the drivetrain cleaner that that chain went in yeah and you can see that a lot of the dirt grime road grime has settled at the bottom so it doesn't look very nice does it but the chain is looking good and clean on there so we just finished running that on the dyno and the efficiency machine yep and also before we dive into the results which we've got here we need to point out that this was just the uh the standard wet loop that was on all the chains to start with and you haven't cheated you've just used this straight away again so you haven't used anything too fancy no no no so we've got the results here which you've kindly printed out for us so the first thing we looked at was the chain that i bought in and after treating it lubricating it we've improved the efficiency of the chain that i bought to you yeah by nine point five percent yeah that's quite good that's quite a good saving but you did point out i kind of cheated a little bit it wasn't that dirty was it so what we got here this was our dirty so this was our mega mega dirty jeep yeah that was disgusting yeah uh i'm not very proud of that i did so with a with a good clean um we've managed to save 38 so that's a huge improvement isn't it yeah so obviously that was like we were saying is the sort of chain when you're out and winter rides it gets covered in the market you can break right sand green so that's a huge improvement isn't it 38 and in terms of a rough estimate of the realms of those sort of power losses that this change now are you sort of under five watts so we're at round about 4.6 watts which is super efficient isn't it yeah yeah and like you say you could already continue to improve that but you can get more out there yeah you could spend more time cleaning it we could run it on the equipment for longer and of course you could use a lot more of your super fancy that you've got which will again improve the efficiency even further so as a baseline figure that's a good thing about the job yeah there is more to come more to come nice so there you have it lewis and i have proven by the power of science that a clean chain is far more efficient than a dirty one if you've liked this video give it a big thumbs up and let us know in the comments section down below if you're gonna go and clean your chain now that's it from us see you later

Channel: GCN Tech

Views: 232,001

Rating: 4.5296059 out of 5

Keywords: muc, off, muc off, muc-off, clean chain, chain, dirty chain, lube, lubricant, chain lube, watts, efficiency, power, loss, worn, worn chain, drivetrain, drive train, cassette, chainring, chain ring, dyno, dynometer, dyno meter, saving, watt, wax, ultrasonic, ultra sonic, faster, fast, speed, free speed, GCN Tech, GCNTech, Bike Tech, Cycling Tech, Road Bicycle, Retro Tech, Retro Bike, GCN Cycling, alex, paton, ஔ, 4366, Ѯ, Ҫ, Ҁ, Ѿ, Ә, ҁ, Ѩ, gc21s, c1, ᠫ, ፕ15, ଙ, ସ, ው, ꖐ, ළ

Id: xSCXyE5cnFo

Length: 10min 32sec (632 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 19 2021