How does one wipe clean and oil the chain? (maintenance details)

If you don't remove old oil and dirt, then when you add new oil it all just mixes together and soon it all becomes a horrible think mess.

After every ride or once a week do the following:

1. Clean chain with water (no soap, maybe degreaser if you have it)
2. Dry a little with cloth
3. Use a GT85 style oil lubricant and penetrator (must have PTFE or similar, do not use standard WD-40)
4. Clean with brush and wipe excess off the chain with cloth
5. Add new oil on the inside of the chain and spin for a few minutes to make sure oil penetrates
6. Wipe excess oil of the chain by running a cloth on the sides and outside of the chain, this is just to get extra oil off, do not fully clean the chain.

This method can be done on the bike and takes about 5-10mins.

Do not clean chain with water and leave for a long period of time ("I will oil it in the morning...") as oxidisation can happen.

There are other methods and some people prefer some liquids over other but this is the method I prefer.

I'll preface this with the fact that I ride in a cold/wet climate and prefer riding bikes to cleaning them, so this is purely what works for me.

On my winter bikes, I use cheap components, a thick/heavy wet lube and then largely ignore maintenance, otherwise i'd spend half my life cleaning bikes. I accept this is wearing components more quickly, but a winter of riding for the cost of a cheap chain and maybe a chainring works for me.

On my summer bikes I do attempt to keep them relatively clean - but even then, not overly enthusiastic about it. On these bikes I use a lightweight lube that generally lasts ~100miles. So typically I use the single drop technique you mentioned (more below) twice a week. On top of this, roughly once every two weeks, I run the chain through an old hand towel (the fibres help pull the dirt/oil out of some of the recessed areas) before applying new lube. If the outer plates are more dirty than usual i might spray a little WD40 on the towel before using it to help degreasing. I spray it on the towel rather than directly on the chain as I don't want it getting deep into the rollers. Finally, once every 4-6 weeks I give the chain a proper clean with a chain cleaner and degreaser before rinsing, drying and relubing.

The 'single drop' technique refers to using a dropper bottle and slowly rotating the chain to put a single drop on each chain roller.

You do not need to oil after every ride. Depending on the type of lubricant you use, you may only need to lube every 500 miles/800 km.

There are two general categories of lubes: dry and wet. Wet lubes are oily, dry lubes are waxes suspended in a liquid carrier that evaporates. Wet lubes typically last longer but can wash off in the rain; dry lubes are intended to flake off as you ride. Check the label on your lube for expected re-lube distances. It's important not to mix them: if you want to switch from one to another, you need to clean the chain very thoroughly. New chains comes with a heavy wet lube that should be stripped if you want to use a dry lube. My own thinking is that it's more important to clean the chain before lubricating than to wipe it down after. There are chain-cleaning gadgets that you can clip onto the chain and only take a minute to use.

In any case, the only part of the chain that needs to be lubricated is the interface between the rivet and the roller, which obviously is not exposed. Dripping a single drop on each roller is the best way to get it in there.

With dry lubes, you typically do not wipe down the chain after lubricating it, you just spin the drivetrain to work it in and let the carrier evaporate before your next ride. With wet lubes, ideally there won't be much to wipe off, and some lubes come with syringe-like tips for measuring out tiny "doses" of lube.

Just to add a bit to this: I would recommend wiping your chain off after every ride, regardless of lubrication. Just grasp the chain in a clean rag, then backpedal a few times. As you ride, airborne dust or dirt from road spray mixes with the oil. You're wiping off the stuff that's on the outside of the chain. This means that less dirt will eventually work its way inside the chain, i.e. between the pins and rollers. That is where your chain actually wears - those metal items rub against each other, and the more dirt gets in, the faster they wear out.

The store probably meant one drop per roller, as others have said. You backpedal the chain slowly and you target each individual roller - use the master link as a reference point to know when you've lubed the whole chain. In my opinion, one drop per roller after every ride seems like a fair bit of lubricant. If you want a lesser option, just keep backpedaling the chain and release a light stream of oil onto the rollers. Keep that up at least two or three revolutions.

This is the process I use and I documented it in another answer. It is quick and pretty through without having to remove the wheels, cassette, etc.

https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/a/73794/54110

An alternative answer - use wax instead of oil. Doesn't collect as much grit, doesn't leave as much mess and keeps everything lubed for longer in almost all conditions.

Refer:

The easy maintenance is as follows:

1. Wait until your chain start to squeak. Yes -- you won't want to oil an already oily chain. The reason for this is that it's hard to get the dirt out of an oily chain because the oil holds it there, whereas dirt readily falls off a squeaky chain. The only ways you can clean an oily chain is to first remove all of the oil, which requires using solvent, either removing the chain from the bicycle and putting it to a solvent bath, or using one of those chain cleaning machines that make a huge mess and thus can't be used indoors.

2. Now your chain is clean from oil and dirt on the inside because the motion of the squeaky chain has pushed dirt out, there being no oil to hold it in. You can take a look at the chain rollers and observe how clean they are -- they are very shiny! The only dirt on the chain is on the outside.

3. Use a rag, rotate the cranks backwards and clamp the chain inside the rag, letting it run through the rag. The outside dirt on the chain should be removed then. Note the rag won't hold all of the dirt, so some of the dirt falls to the ground or the floor, so do this outside unless you want to clean your floor immediately afterwards.

4. Now your chain is clean on the inside, and nearly clean on the outside. Now it's time to oil the chain. Use thixotropic motorcycle chain lubricant in a spray bottle. Spray the lubricant on the top of the lower run of the chain, and rotate the cranks backwards to expose new lengths of the chain. It is important how you spray the lubricant: if you spray it on the side plates, it won't get to the chain innards very well, and it picks up some of the remaining dirt from the side plates. If you spray it on the top of the chain, on the rollers, it can easily penetrate to the innards of the chain, and the path to the innards of the chain is relatively clean from dirt.

5. After the chain is oiled, use a new clean rag (not the dirty old one!) in a similar manner you used the old rag, but this time the purpose is to remove the chain oil from the surface. You don't want chain oil on the surface as it attracts dirt. You only want chain oil in the inside of the chain. This removal of the surface oil can't be completely done so do it until you feel not much oil can be anymore removed. There will still be a very thin layer of oil that will attract a small amount of dirt.

The worst mistake you can do in chain maintenance is to put chain oil on a chain that doesn't squeak in a "preventive maintenance". A chain that doesn't squeak is dirty, and all the new oil does is carry the dirt to the inside of the chain, leading to rapid chain destruction. The ones who believe such "preventive maintenance" is a good thing see their chains wear early, whereas the ones not doing such "preventive maintenance" see a long chain life.

The second worst mistake you can do in chain maintenance is to not wipe the excess oil away. The excess oil will attract dirt that soon will be carried to the inside of the chain, leading to rapid chain destruction.

Use a chain washer if you want to wash your chain really thoroughly, especially if you used a wet lube before.

You do not really need to fill it with 100% degreaser even if the manuals tell you so. Most often you can either strongly dilute it or you can use a dish-washing liquid in some reasonable dilution.

After wiping the wet chain with a dry rag you must let it dry - you can speed it up with a stream of air from an air compressor. Do not lube a wet chain.

Apply the lube of your choice. Do not believe people telling you that there is only one particular good lube that you can use. That is NOT true at all. There is place for both wet lubes and dry lubes. There is place for racing lubes and for ordinary lubes.

You might want to use different lubes depending on the weather and the time of the year. With the extremely dry springs in the past few years in Central Europe it would be nonsensical to use oil-based wet lubes. There was way too much dust everywhere. The main concern was always to wipe all the dust from the bike. But in this years autumn the weather was very wet and a wet lube was in order. Simply ignore people who tell you that there is only one good lube. Even very cheap mineral oil can often work well.