Brucey wrote:I have hypothesised about this before but I wonder if out in Cornwall they use a lot less road salt than in other counties? Anywhere near the west coast there are far fewer frosty nights and in Cornwall this goes double. In addition whatever road salt there is could be washed away more quickly by the (fairly frequent) rainfall.
Certainly by contrast the worst chain wear where I live comes in the wintertime when there is road salt present. If the temperature dips to zero in the wee hours they go out and grit the roads anyway, even if there may only be a few places that will actually freeze hard. It has been recorded that some counties use excessive quantities of road salt in a typical winter. Most forms of chain lubricant are simply overwhelmed by road salt and anyone that goes through a winter without seeing 'brown-ness' (from rust) creeping out of their chain at some point is doing pretty well.
cheers
There certainly is less use of road salt in Cornwall, again this winter we have only had a handful of frosts so in general corrosion is less of a problem for all road vehicle parts*. I grew up in Suffolk and remember that the infrequent rain seemed to be caustic to bike parts back then, but not the chain so much as long as you kept it oiled with dad's car engine oil.
On the other hand the rain can be heavy enough down here to strip a chain of lube completely in a few miles, particularly when combined with the presence of a gritty slurry on the country lanes in some places around my local area, probably related to the mining history. This stuff can also cause issues with shifting due to getting in the under BB cable guide and best protection IME is a deep front mudflap. If you do not clean and re-lube a chain exposed to those conditions when you get home then it will start rusting internally and even seize, summer or winter, road salt or not.
*Unless you happen to live right on the coast e.g. in a fishing village where air full of sea spray can result in an ever present coating of concentrated saline solution which has a disastrous effect on all ferrous metal objects- it used to be common to see advanced perforating all over body shell corrosion on very late examples of vehicles kept in such places. Probably the worst environment for a bike chain that I have ever seen is the sandy shared use path along the top of the beach from Marazion to Penzance on a wet and windy day.