Cameleon Chain Oiler - Review Hot

A newcomer into the chain oiling market, the cameleon is microprocessor controlled and does not need connection to fuel systems or other engine parts to do its job

Clever Cameleon

Initial Thoughts

I have always sat on the fence when it comes to chain oilers simply for the fact that they seemed to complicate the matter of adding slippy stuff to a chain, surely you dont need an aid to pop a bit of lube on every now and then? Well now after running the Cameleon for a while I can honestly say I am converted - purely for the fact I have not even had to give it a moments thought before I get on and ride through France, knowing the Cameleon is there doing its thing so I dont have to.

Construction

In the box you get a little funky control box, a line of clear tube and the lubricant to fill this too and a couple of lengths of hose and reinforced hose - this all looks nice and simple!

Fitting the unit is a simple enough affair, place the control box where you can see/access it and cable tie to secure, run the clear hose up and out of the way to a place you can fill it and where gravity can feed the oil to the controller. Then you come to the semi-rigid tubing and it gets marginally more difficult simply because you then have to plan the route it will follow across your swingarm, even so it is not a massively complicated affair - straighten the length up but leave the loop in tact and then run it  to the position you desire approx 1 inch above the chain, you need to fasten this in place either with the grub screw/hooks that fasten into your swingarm or as I did with cable ties - I had chosen a slightly more complicated route for the hose to follow that would take a touch more bending and squeezing but once its on, its on!

Finally you connect up the flexibile hose from the unit to the nipple on the semi rigid tube, make sure you have the rigid tube cut to the length you need and get ready to connect up the power - this is another simple task and just entails finding the wire that powers your tail light and patching it in, this is so the oiler only runs when the bike has power.

On the instruction sheet there is talk of programming the unit, sounds a little complicated to be honest and so I read the instructions about 20 times just to be sure. In all honesty I think the instructions make it seem more complicated than it is but nevertheless I set about doing this (nervously). The process is actually simple and intelligent, turn on the power to the bike and within 3 seconds press the button on the unit, this allows you to choose your colour and you hold the button down for the number of seconds that corresponds to your bike type on the chart provided - 5 seconds for me.

I understand why cameleon chose to allow you to choose your led colour and its a nice little feature but it does complicate things a little, perhaps a better solution would be just to have each colour correspond to a pre-set timing?

Out on the road the cameleon has had quite a few nice remarks as I chose a model that fits colour-wise with my bike and also because I think hardly anyone in the UK has seen one, it does its job quite well and on the right setting you reduce the amount of lube 'spray' you get on your wheel too. I am now marching on for a good number of miles and my chain pratically looks brand new so for a simple to fit DIY unit the cameleon gets the thumbs up, its only real downside is the price and that is due simply to the lack of a UK distributor for the product meaning you buy it direct from the USA - exchange rates vary of course but at the moment the Dollar makes it pricey.