[QRO]

05 Gsxr 1000 bought the bike in the summer just now taking off the plastics for the first time noticed this sludge should I be concerned is it oil or built up chain lube? The washer on the first pic rotates and almost seems like it coming out of there oil levels full though

Mine had inch thick layers of chain grease from its previous neglect.

I still have not entirely cleaned it up, and partly can't be bothered because the bike is a road bike, not a fancy showroom man-cave bike.

To your question, difficult to say for sure as don't know what the previous user used, but I'd say excess chain lube is a sound assumption.

I ended up disposing of the whole chain it had not stretched I just couldn't clean it!

I used white spirit lightly soaked on to workshop paper roll for the thick of it, and baby wipes with a light spray of brake cleaner to finish it off.

I don't lube my chain. Well, not entirely true. I will wipe it off with dry workshop tissue after every few rides and then check each roller is free, if they are feeling stiff I have (now, once, in ~2k miles) touched up the rollers with marine grease, worked it in and then wiped them 'dry' again after another ride.

Chain grease I have decided is a cure worse than the disease. Chains just don't wear out that quick. Just make sure none of the rollers have locked.

Everyone seems to have their own opinions on chain lube, but once you have nursed a bike out of suffering 'grease disease', you tend to want to avoid that.

Now .. let's see the bike! Or do you want to clean it first?

 

[QRO]

Lol road bike! there are all road bikes.
‘what does man cave and a clean bike even mean?

Ride around the UK in anything other than the height of summer, and you'll know! It'd be easy to spend more time cleaning it than riding it.

 

[QRO]

TBH I was going to go out and take a pic of the state of mine, but it's been so freakin' cold that I am just hunkering down inside. Not sure it is good leaving road dirt on the bike over winter, but if I tried to wash it, it'd freeze up right now.

I probably won't get to wash it now before spring proper, might as well take it out as it is, and at some point it'll rain and get dirtier or wash it off, one way or the other.

Fairings aren't too greasy now, I did a fair job on those before, thick with this sort of stuff, but not too bad I noticed when I took them off to check the anti-freeze situation on the bike.