Thruxton Rear wheel lift on Thruxton for chain maintenance

After trips in the winter chain maintenance becomes more frequent and rather than have to remove the sprocket cover and fit the Abba stand each time I wanted a simpler way to be able to rotate the rear wheel to clean/lube the chain.

First I wrapped a bungee cord around the front brake to lock the wheel:


Then using the car jack that I normally lift the front end of the bike with when using the Abba stand I positioned this below the end of the swing arm with a block of wood to compensate for the angle of contact and to protect the paint. A few turns of the thread after contact and the tyre was free of the ground:


A piece of card behind the chain and I was able to spray whilst slowly rotating the wheel. I've painted one of my links in red so that I can visualise a full run of the chain:


I always spray the inner face of the chain and coat the outer link faces as the WD lube creates a good protective coating with little fling. To get at the inner chain link face a couple of minutes with my heat gun enabled me to reform a spare aerosol supply tube to achieve a suitable angle of attack:


All sorted in a couple of minutes and now I can coat the chain after a ride when the chain is warm as needed.

Hope this may be useful to other riders.

 

Thought about a chain oiler and even bought a Loobman system but re-sold it on eBay as I didn't want to clutter the bike with extra plumbing. For my frequency of riding I find that manual lubing works fine and just forms part of my routine maintenance. When using the Abba stand I have to remove the front sprocket cover so take the opportunity to clean behind there and sort any chain issues at the same time. Chain wear has been minimal in 7000 miles of riding. If I were using the bike more often then a Scottoiler or similar would be on the cards.