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(I don't care if this is a ruse, I'm going for it!)
Yes, I too have tried motor oil on my bike chains, but I don't like it precisely because of what you've observed. (I do, however, know a guy who swears by M1 5W-30 on all his bikes, but he's "eccentric" beyond even my standards.) The biggest problem is that it's tacky, so it holds a ton of dirt & grit. It quickly becomes a gooey, sticky grinding paste instead of a prime lubrication barrier. It's also nasty to try to clean off ANYthing.
As far as wear goes, mixing good parts with worn parts really does just force the good parts to wear extra-fast. As a bonus, they often don't work as well together as all the worn parts did. Unfortunately, you may be stuck having to replace more than you want (if you haven't already). Often, the chainrings are good enough to keep, requiring only chain & cassette replacement. I usually replace my chains when they've worn almost an 1/8" over 12". I always get at least 3 chains to every cassette, usually more. And spin, don't mash. Keeping your cadence high & your torque low will extend the life of both your bike parts & your knee parts.
Now for the fun stuff. Lube-needs change with the type of weather. Keep in mind that this is based on my experience riding thru Colorado's extremes of 10*F frozen-ness, near-freezing slush & rain, & dusty-dry dirt. Your conditions may be different, but I suspect the lube will react the same.
The basic idea for warm, dry, dirty conditions should be to keep dirt out of the drivetrain, rather than keeping a coating of goo on it. I've found the liquid wax types to be the best here. White Lightning, Krytech, Ice Wax, whatever you like. They protect but don't allow nearly as much dirt to stick. And as they wear off, they take any dirt with it. Reapplication is most frequent with this type, but they excel at drivetrain cleanliness & wear prevention.
For either sub-freezing, or warm-weather wet, dirty conditions, you want something less brittle & more tenacious than wax. Here I've found that a "dry" lube works best. I like Finish Line, but there are others too. They're not oils, but a mix of dry lubricant coatings in a thin liquid carrier. The carrier soaks into & coats the link parts, then evaporates, leaving the dry coating on the pins, rollers & plates. It holds more dirt than wax, but not as much as oil. (Of course, this doesn't apply to Iditabike-style competitions. I've heard they need the next type of protection.)
For the worst conditions an exposed drivetrain can suffer, near-freezing road slush or rain/grit combinations, you need something which hangs on. A typical fortified oil works best here. My two favorites are Tri-Flow & One Lube. Tri-Flow's lighter, so it doesn't hold as much dirt but also doesn't stay on as long. One Lube's almost as sticky as motor oil, but has Teflon added to it & cleans up easier. It's also got to be the hands-down best value in a fortified oil; I think the last can I bought at K-Mart was $3 for 12oz.
For application with all of these (watch out for drips on braking surfaces), fully coat the chain & then wipe as much off as possible; you want lube IN the chain more than you do ON it. Frequent applications will also flush out trapped dirt, keeping the grinding to a minimum & extending the life of your parts. Wax lubes are a little different in that you should only wipe the top & bottom of the chain, leaving some wax on the sides for when it gets shoved into gear by the derailleurs.
Oil analysis usually consists of the "how hard was it to get that crud off my hands?" multi-washing test.
posted by 216.160.177...
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