Loobman Installation and Impressions

Since adding a Moose Chain Scrubber to my collection of tools last year, the last headache to owning a bike with a chain has been keeping it lubricated. Cleaning the chain every month or more is a relatively easy and clean 5 minute job. Lubing the chain still should be done more often (debates about whether to lube o-ring chains aside). Face it, lubing is kind of a nuisance even with a centerstand: you have to pick some kind of spray wax or specific lube, and be careful not to spray your wheels or tires, and remember to do it regularly, and carry the bottle with you. My ZX-9R doesn’t have a centerstand available, which makes it worse. I have a homemade bar that I can prop under my swingarm spool for use on the long trips, and the shop stand at home, but its still a headache. At home I use 90w gear lube on my chain rather than spray lube, but on the road I try to remember to bring a small spray bottle.

I have wanted to try a chain oiler, and have read various reviews. There are three or four “fully automatic” oilers available for prices ranging up from $100 up to over $200, but that's a little more elaborate than I need. I'm not an iron-butt rider. I decided to gamble $35 on the cheapest one, the loobman (http://www.loobman.com). I ordered it online, and it arrived in about 1.5 weeks from the UK.

I was not too impressed after unpacking it. A small plastic bag with a bunch of zip ties, a piece of heavy gauge wire, small plastic bits, a bottle, a coil of tubing, and the piece de resistance: two sheets of hand-drawn and hand-lettered instructions which are, depending on your mindset, charmingly idiosyncratic or ridiculously old-fashioned and somewhat difficult to use in these modern times of cheap and easy electronic publishing. Being a tech-support professional, you can guess which type of instructions I favor.

I had been intrigued by the description and pictures of their "dual sided delivery system", but in the flesh it is initially an uninspiring combination of parts: a plastic u-shaped device that accepts the feeder tube, and two small zip ties. I guess I was expecting some exotic thing with little stainless tubes that delivers the oil neatly to the sprocket sides and possibly doubled as a dental irrigation system in its former life. Nothing that fancy. The two prongs on the delivery device are ziptie ends, cut to the proper length and secured to the plastic piece with the rest of the zip tie. They lightly drag on the moving sprocket, and the oil just runs down them from the feedtube. Note that this device is also somewhat different than the ones with metal tips pictured at www.loobman.com (at least in April 2004). Maybe they have changed the initial design to the one I received? The zip tie ends are simple, low tech, and much more easily replaceable when they wear out (or get chewed up by any occasional misalignment to the spinning sprocket teeth). Pretty much any piece of wire would work the same, but would scratch the sprocket, so the nylon ends actually make more sense.

The delivery end is held in place by a wire loop and a small plastic screw/locknut. The other end of the wire needs to be artfully bent in a series of right angles along the top or bottom of your swingarm, and secured in place with more zip ties. (Whoever designed this thing is a big fan of them. I bet he would be impressed with the brake line holders I fabricated from zip ties after installing my braided steel lines.) Once mounted and screwed as tightly as practical using the plastic hardware, you can pivot the device away from the sprocket with a push of your finger. Hopefully it has enough tension to stay in place, but enough "give" to rotate out of the way and not be sucked into the sprocket if it becomes misaligned.

Installation:

I removed the rear wheel and the chain guard, cleaned the heck out of everything (chain, sprocket, guard, swingarm) and then put the rear sprocket and chain in place on the bare axle. This allowed me to work freely and still see where the dispenser is in relation to the sprocket.

I spent an hour or so bending and peering and fiddling and eyeballing and testing the wire mount. Once I got the wire shaped correctly, I zip tied it, and found that with the rubber feet between the wire and swingarm it was not positioned where I wanted (sigh). I carefully repositioned and twisted the end loop a few more times, and it was in place. I spun the sprocket back and forth to make sure the delivery runners stayed put. They do, as long as everything is lined up correctly to within about 1 mm sideways from the centerline. Any misalignment makes them bump into the sprocket teeth and get pushed downwards. If I find that the wire holder is too flimsy to hold the delivery system in place on really bumpy roads, I plan on making a more rigid L-shaped bracket that can be attached to an aluminum bracket (for the chainguard) on the swingarm. There is only about 1 mm of clearance between the outside of the loobman and the inside of the swingarm, so making adjustments and maintenance with the chain guard and wheel in place will be a bit of a challenge.

Figure 1: A really bad picture of the delivery end through the wheel

I reinstalled the rear wheel at this point so that I could see what kind of clearance was available for the oil tubing. The tubing must run at a downward angle in order for the gravity-fed device to work. There is no pump on the loobman to force oil through the tube, so you have fewer options here.

I decided how to run the tubing, then drilled two spots in the chain guard to hold it in place with zip ties. I routed it up to the location where I zip tied the oil bottle to the subframe, and it was ready for testing. I filled the bottle with some synthetic gear lube I had laying around, and gave it a squeeze. The oil took several minutes to run down to the swingarm, and then, like magic, it ran down the zip tie ends onto the sprocket. I gave the wheel some spins to distribute the oil. You're supposed give the Loobman a squeeze every tank or so, but not less than 50 miles from your destination. If oil is not distributed, the gravity feed makes the remaining oil in the line drip on the ground, as I noticed several hours after my initial test in the workshop.

Figure 2: Bottle, tube and ties on the swingarm

My regular commute is only 20 miles each way. I tried a small squeeze before riding home. There was oil on the chain and sprocket after arriving home, so it worked. In the morning I noticed a small (Harley-esque) oil spot on the floor under the sprocket, so the amount of oil from the squeeze was a little too much. One can position the feeder tube to deliver less oil per squeeze, or one could try some lighter weight oil that would flow faster through the system; it will take some experimentation to get it just right. The good news is that the delivery mechanism has stayed intact and in place on the wire mount for the first 100 miles.

Problems Arise

I noticed some splatter from the oil on the swingarm and chainguard already after two squeezes. Keeping the bike clean may require some extra effort, but as long as its not on the rear tire, I would be ok with it. It is difficult not to overuse this thing; you have to find an interval that works for you. I can see the appeal of a fully automatic pump rather than this squeeze bottle.

After the first two weeks, I was still tweaking it. I found that the hose was too level right at the chainguard, keeping a dollop of oil trapped that will later run out at its leisure. I put a small wedge under the line, which seemed to work. However, in the process of moving the hose I think I messed up the delivery alignment, so one of the teeth was bent and chewed when I got to work. I did the first delivery head maintenance when I got home, and it sucked; can’t imagine doing this on a trip. Since the plastic screw is not held in place, you have to put some needlenose pliers on one end and try to unscrew the plastic knob. Everything is covered with oil. I got the bent tie end out and put a new one on, then reinstalled carefully to keep it aligned.

More Problems

I took the first big trip up to New Hampshire, about 200 miles of very bumpy New England back roads. The oiler mounting failed twice. On the way up, the whole bent-wire-and-ziptie contraption slid forward about 1 cm on the swingarm after being pummeled by the road surface; the spray from the oiler then made a mess out of the rim and edge of the tire. Luckily the tie ends were not damaged. I slid it back into place and slapped a piece of duct tape over the zipties on the swingarm, giving it a really low-tech appearance.

On the trip back to Boston, the mount stayed in place, but the delivery head pivoted downward from the bumps and the tie ends were destroyed once again (and more oil on the wheel). At this point I came close to chucking the damn thing, but I decided to keep working on it.

New Mounting Solution

I decided the wire mount and the stupid plastic screw would have to go. I implemented my idea of creating a new mount out of an L-bracket screwed to the crosspiece that holds the chain guard on. I drilled and tapped a M4x.70 hole in each leg of the L, and a through hole in the crosspiece. The delivery end is now held on with a 1.5 cm screw that is first screwed tightly from left to right through the tapped bracket hole, locking it in place for one-handed maintenance. I put an extra nylon washer on outside of the rubber ones, and then a metal one, and then a wingnut (again for tool-less maintenance). It is now perfectly aligned and not moving anywhere. My only concern regarding this setup is that it may rust, not being aluminum or stainless steel. Finding stainless m4 hardware should be pretty fun. The whole works get covered with a light mist of oil during normal use, so I may be worrying for nothing. The first test was another 200 mile ride over some of the very same New Hampshire roads this past weekend. It stayed in place and worked perfectly.

After about 350 miles, the new mount was still working very well. It has even survived a track day. If it stayed in place during the 120 mph front straight bursts and higher g-forces in the “bowl” at NHIS, it should be good for just about anything short of jumping the bike. I also was able to obtain some stainless steel screws and wingnut at my local hardware store. My last planned tweak this coming is to paint the bracket with some rust-oleum, put the new screws in and re-route the feed hose a little to eliminate the close-to-horizontal section.

The “Splashing” Problem

After several months of use, I’ve finally decided to address another problem. At times I’ve found new oil coming out of the system long after I had squeezed it. At first I thought it was a heating thing combined with atmospheric pressure, so I applied the fix documented in the Loobman instructions: poke a hole in the feed tube inside the squeeze bottle. This didn’t help. I finally decided that the oil was “splashing” up the feed tube to a height that allowed it to run down into the outer tube. This is likely due to the tilted position of the bottle mount (see Figure 2). This past weekend I relocated the bottle mount to a vertical position on the side of the rear fender just behind the left rear blinker. I’m hoping this will keep it from overfeeding the system.