On Thursday, July 18, 2019 at 4:39:48 AM UTC+1, AK wrote:
I spent about 3.5 hrs. cleaning my chain and everything it comes in contact with.

The last time my time was available by the hour, before I changed over to a retainer-only system, about 1980, it was £2000 (probably about $5000) per hour, door to door, including travelling and sleeping time.

For lubing I spend zero hours. You can too:

1. Get a hub gearbox. It costs less than a fancy derailleur gruppo and lasts much longer.

2. Fit a Chainglider. This is a hard reinforced rubber-like complete enclosure of the chain, sprocket and chainring. You can now ride the bike in your street clothes without transferring oil to everything. I routinely ride in pale cream clothes in summer.

3. Ride the bike. Do nothing else. Do no service whatsoever. Ride the chain on its factory lube until it reaches about 0.5pc elongation, which will be at up to three times the mileage you got on an open, cleaned, serviced, lube chain. Fit a new chain, refit the Chainglider, ride bike, do nothing else. Save the bother and the wasted time. For chains I use the common, cheap KMC X8-93. There is no need to buy the X8-99 which is fully nickel plated because the half-nickel stays bright inside the Chainglider. If you can get the Z7 single-speed cheaper than the X8-93, that's also an excellent chain.

The reason for not taking the chain to its 0.75pc elongation as on a derailleur system, or beyond because a proper hub gear installation is longitudinally adjustable as the transmission parts wear together and you can thus, theoretically at least, run everything until the chain and sprockets fall apart, is that chains are cheap and new sprockets and chainwheels are a hassle to fit even if they aren't in themselves expensive (I run a standard Rohloff sprocket, very long-lasting, and a Surly stainless steel chainring, ditto, as more labour-saving devices). After over 10,000km on my everyday bike, the Rohloff sprocket displays zero sign of wear, and the stainless and steel chainrings I've used on this bike ditto, the steel ones even still having their black paint, this despite having a high-torque central motor fitted. Contrary to the first reaction of the OCD toothbrush-strokers among the roadies, mine is a low-abrasion regime. Compare with getting a third the mileage I get per chain now from the (time-wasting) waxed Shimano Nexus crank, sprocket and chain-sets I used before.

Simple, really.

Andre Jute
Lateral thinker