Drive Chain Oiler

I had a word with Spree and he has very kindly agreed let me post this article on a product which i dreamed up after being presented with the problem of oiling your chain without a centre stand.
Now i know i dont actually have a chain on my current machine but my last bike had a chain and no centre stand and my next one (F800GS) will be in the same boat.
Anyway it all started with me one spring saturday morning carrying out the ritual wash (and if it was lucky, a polish) of my Bike ,at that time a Kawasaki Versys. Following the wash a bit of a check over and some routine maintenance including lubing the chain.

The method being (in the absence of two large strong mates to lift the back wheel for me) spray some lube onto the area of chain exposed, push the bike along abit and repeat until sure i had some on all the chain as well as a good 2 yard long sticky mess of chain lube on the drive in exactly the right place for me to put my foot down a slip over when getting the bike out of its shed.

I had thought about buying a Scott Oiler when i bought the bike but since the garage wanted nearly £60 to fit it and a further £70 for the scot oiler I thought "I could buy alot of tins of lube for that!" so i did'nt do it. Why didnt fit it myself?, well the bike was under warranty and i just wasnt willing to risk invalidating that by doing it myself.

Surely, i thought, i can make something to do this?, after all as it says on the chain guard "oil your chain every 300 miles", ok so all i want is to drip a limited amount (not too much or it will get everywhere) of oil onto the chain say once a week, i dont need to drip oil on it all the time, simple! :-)

Now im lucky to have a good workshop so thought i would knock something up to do the job myself, a couple of hours later i had a small plastic oil reservoir with a simple flow tap leading to a feed line, cable tied to the frame, a quick top up of the reservoir, turn on the tap and away I rode, a few miles later i stopped and looked at the chain which was now beautifully oiled and the reservoir was empty.
Great! no pools of oil under the bike, no spraying chain lube everywhere, my chain and sprockets look set to last a very long time and i can use whatever oil, even old engine oil, to do the job.
So that was it, monday morning off i went to work parking it up as usual with all the other bikes in the works carpark. Later in conversation with a couple of the other lads i mentioned my time saver device which we all dutifully trouped out to have a look at giving an excellent opportunity for some nocotine starved colleagues to come along too .

So there we all were standing round the machine in time honoured fashion looking at motorbikes (any excuse) when one of the lads very generously said that ..if i liked i could make one for his bike too
at which several others agreed that they would also extend that particular honour to me.
What luck i thought, amazing!, well thanks guys , you mean that i could get to spend my entire next weekend making these for you as well, Great!
I declined the honour of working all weekend for nothing but it did get me thinking, what if I injection mold them?

I have small plastic injection molding machine which i made some years before and a small CNC milling machine so last July i completed the mold and squirted afew units out for those who wanted them at work, and bouyed by this sucess put one on eBay. To my amazement it sold straight away, I made more and they went on eBay too.

I continued to do this, gradually refining the mold and process, until sept 07when i had to stop as i was moving house.
I started again in a modest way in late March and the Oilers- called the TUTORO (which means Top UP, Turn On, Ride Off) are again in a small way, i hope, saving several hundred people time and money from Scotland to Spain.
I continue to develop the idea and refine the molds and process.
You can see lots more at the website here
www.chainoiler.org.uk
please feel free to come and have a look around.