does storage time effect chain life?

When I bought my bike, the previous owner told me he bought the bike, put $600 into full tune up and new chain, amongst other things. but then rode it about 1,000 miles total in the next 6 years.

then i bought the bike 5 months ago. it had obviously been sitting for quite a while, since it had a nice layer of dust on it, and a few cobwebs. the chain at that time had a little bit of rust on it, that seemed to go away(or at least be masked by) when i cleaned it and lubed it proper, and had my local shop give it a once over. since then though, i've had to tighten the thing 4 times in 5 months. definitely not normal.

is there any correlation to be made between the bike sitting for so long with no maintenance (ie. chain lube), and what i think is its current accelerated wear?

or perhaps im just doing something wrong and its coming loose? i'm using my factory service manual's instructions.

i have also noticed a small amount of wear on the sprockets, but its not horrible. no rounding off yet. can i attribute that to the chain, or the fact that i ride my bike pretty hard?

i just find it weird that such a young (in miles anyway) chain is stretching this much..

any thoughts guys?

the lube may have deteriorated

Chain stretch seems to be part of the design on these bikes.
My PO put a new chain (had the dealer do it) on at 28,000 miles. I've got the receipt to proove it.
The bike had about 28,500 on it when I bought it, and it's got about 33,000 on it now. I've tightened the chain maybe 6 times in those 4,5000 miles. I keep it clean and lubed. It's not an o-ring chain.

I bought an o-ring chain from Jeff @ Z1. I'm going to install it next chance I get... maybe this weekend. Maybe that one will stretch less?

Unless it's sat out in the rain for years, I can't see sitting around hurting a chain in any way. I think the main reason for frequent chain adjustments are lack of lube, wrong kind of lube (such as PJ1 chain oil), or a cheap chain. Only use oring chains. If it's non-oring it won't last near as long. I'm going for the record, not sure what it is, but I'm over 56,000 on the original chain on one of my KZ650s. I haven't even adjusted it for at least 3-4 thousand miles.

Ron:
So your 650's original chain (with 56,000 miles) was an o-ring?

ltdrider wrote:

Ron:
So your 650's original chain (with 56,000 miles) was an o-ring?

Yes, the KZ650 came from Kawasaki with an endless EK 530 oring chain. The amazing thing about this chain is the motorcycle sat abandoned in the weather for a long time, the chain was original when I got the bike at 25,000 miles and in good shape but several of the rubber orings were hardened and many simply broke and fell off the chain. This was 31,000 miles back and the chain is still going strong which is surprizing.

That's good to know.
I'm hoping that this new o-ring chain will be the last one I have to buy.

Just for the record, as a sprocket wears the teeth don't round off (not till it's totally destroyed anyway), the teeth actually get sharper with wear.

True True but remember something.....

Lubing is not a substitute for cleaning!

I'm a prime example of that:laugh: