My son started with a regular chain and it was suggested we buy a self lubricating one (it has blue links)
Before the back axle would turn freely, with the new chain not so, everything is lined up correctly so a little unsure of the necessity to change. Do the Blue link chains come in different sizes?
What you bought is an o-ring chain, which has little rubber o-rings in the links. That’s why it doesn’t spin freely. Once they heat up and get some lube in there, they spin much better, but cold they are pretty tight.
They come in different sizes, because you can’t break them and resize them like a normal chain.
O-ring chains do sap a tiny bit of power because of the increased resistance, but they last a lot longer and are less likely to break.
For X30 and Leopard or something of similar power, I like the o-ring chain, but for anything less powerful than those, it’s overkill. A standard DID chain works perfectly fine for Yamaha, KA etc. Even for X30 we ran o-ring for practice and switched to a standard chain for race day sometimes, just to eliminate that resistance a little bit.
2 Likes
Indeed - there’s no such thing as self lubricating. The o rings are there to keep dust out of the moving parts, we pretty much use them exclusively here. We have LOTS of dust 
They do last longer, but do keep em lubed.