Do It Yourself Needle Oiler

Peter Gordon is a member of the International Touring Bicycle Mailing List. He's put together a handy gadget to assist with bicycle maintenance.

Peter's DIY Needle Oiler.
Click to enlarge.

For years, the SFR needle oiler has been my preferred method of chain and cable lubrication. It's main advantage is that only a small drop of oil is required on each link to lubricate it. This reduces the collection of grime on the chain considerably.

This product is no longer available on the Australian market, so I reverted to my previous favourite of Mobil 1 15W-50 oil thinned with about 10% penetrating oil. I soon found that I badly missed the needle oiler from SFR, so I made my own. As the result is far superior to the applicator supplier with any bike oil container and is cheap and easy to make, I thought that I would share it.

I bought a hypodermic needle, (not syringe) from a pharmacy. In the top of an old Tri-Flow bottle top, I cut off the top of the applicator and drilled a hole from the bottom side in the applicator. I then press fitted the hypodermic needle. I then used a 3 cornered file to cut off the sharp point of the needle. (First, I tried a side cutter, but this squeezed the needle closed.) The result can be viewed in the picture to the left of this paragraph.

This allows the delivery of a very small drop of oil to a precise location. The high quality synthetic oil and the penetrating oil work as well as the SFR product, and is much cheaper.

The method should be applicable to most bike oil containers. I used Mobil 1 because I had some. Any high quality synthetic engine oil should be suitable. Any liquid, (not aerosol), penetrating oil should be suitable. I used Penetrene, which is Australian made and, for me, is cheap and easy to obtain.

Peter Gordon

The following message was sent to me one day about a month after this article was originally posted:

"We have improved the SFR need oiler and its new name is ProTecta Precision Oiler. Our new synthetic base far out performs Mobil 1 as it goes to -60 to 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. Go to our website at www.sfrcorp.com. Let me know if I can help as we ship to Australia to our distributor in Sydney all the time. The world champion Italian cycle team uses SFR ProTecta oiler."

Bob Sanborn, SFR Corp

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