I'm prepping my bike for touring the east coast of the US this summer and one item that I thought would be a nice convenience to have while on the road is an automatic chain oiler to simplify chain maintenance. Normally I ride within a 100 mile radius of my house and clean and oil the chain every 300-500 miles at home using kerosene and 80-90w gear oil. It works well and I have no issues with wear even with 5000 miles on a cheap chinese chain adjusted to 5/8" of chain slack. I've read about various chain oilers and some people swear by them and others feel they are a waste of time, then you have some people that just ignore the drive chain entirely and just replace the chain and sprockets every couple of thousand miles. So I figured I might as well install one on my bike and see if its a big deal like some people say it is, or if it just slings oil all over my tire. I figured with a steady supply of oil keeping the chain wet and clean all I would have to do is keep the reservoir full and wipe down the oil fling every so often. I chose the Tutoro because it was simple to mount, required no interfacing with the bike's engine or electrical system, simple to operate (I.E. set and forget), and easy to hide. I'm not going to go into its method of operation, but the fact that it only dispensed oil when the bike was moving made it my top choice amongst the various chain oilers on the market. I don't know how common automatic chain oilers are amongst the members of VFRworld, but in the interest of sharing pictures this is how I set up a Tutoro oiler on my 1984 VF750F. I wanted to mount the reservoir under the left side cover bolted directly to the electrical panel. To do so I had to move the relays out of the way for the reservoir to mount in the center. This required extending the panel with a triangular scrap piece of ABS plastic sheet solvent welded with a doubler to the original electrical panel. As for the applicator nozzle, normally chain oiler manufactures recommend running the oil line down the swingarm and mounting the nozzle against the rear sprocket at a 7-8 o-clock position. I didn't like this approach as that left the delicate nozzle expose to road debris and could lead to a clogged or damaged nozzle. There isn't any room on a stock rear sprocket to have the nozzle resting against it anyway. My approach is to put the nozzle on the front sprocket which protects it from road debris with the bonus of keeping the installation stealthy. So far I've ridden about 100 miles and the oiler seems to be working as advertised.
