Have always followed the Sheldon Brown approach of first few rides on factory sticky lube until it gets gets gunky.

Is this still best approach or will a degrease and decent summer dry lube be better for shifting and wear ?

Short answer no. Just fit

Aye, that’s what I’ve done in the past. No point in breaking a good habit I guess !

Is the factory grease not just to stop rust?

Given how dusty it currently is there’s no harm in giving it a quick wipe with a GT85 soaked rag to remove some of the tackiness from the outside. No need to degrease it though, the factory lube is just fine.

Iain, I’m off the bike with a broken wrist and I still wouldn’t waste my time doing this on a new chain. Just ride until gunky.

Cheers all, scotroutes, I’m itching to get that Pedros wax onto it for super smooth shifting !

If you’ve got a brand new chain and it’s not shifting smoothly as lubed by the factory, something is wrong.

I would wipe the outer plates with degreaser as the factory stuff is good but sticky and attracts a lot of debris it’s not like you need lube on the outer plates anyway

I always degrease new chains. That factory gunk just attracts too much crap for my liking and dumps it onto the cassette and rear mech too.

scotroutes had it up there, for me: Wet a rag with some solvent and run the chain through it to remove the “cosmetic” excess – all the meaningful lubrication is on the inner bits

I always degrease then apply my own. Probably comes from one bike I had getting terrible chainsuck with a new chain and the only thing I could put it down to was the stickiness of the factory lube. As soon as I cleaned it off and applied new lube it was fine.

The factory grease is really really good for the inside of the chain. And really quite shit for the outside.

So i wipe and apply something that’s actually suited for the application to the outside.

Most of the mechanics i know do the same. (Except for really really wet shitty races (Belgian cobbles for instance), then they wipe the stock sticky crap off and apply a different grease or heavy oil.)