Originally Posted by cyccommute

Yes, the factory lubricant can feel like grease but if you do a side-by-side comparison, the factory chain lubricant is tackier than bearing grease.

From what I can glean from Fuchs which makes the formulation for the factory lube, it is not "grease"...at least not in the sense of the same grease you use for bearings and certainly not in the traditional sense of what most people think of as "axle grease" which is an oil in a surfactant. Even modern "grease" is not much like old greases.

Waxes probably aren't what you think they are either. A wax can be any petroleum product that has a high viscosity and can range from semisolid (think petroleum jelly) to solid (i.e "canning" or candle wax). The "wax" used by the factory for lubricating chains is likely a proprietary mixture soft waxes and other additives that provide the viscosity necessary to keep the lubricant in place. By that I mean not having it run off the chain like an oil would.

As for a wax lubricant "washing off", that doesn't happen. The very nature of the wax makes it less water soluble than an oil. Oil isn't water soluble to any appreciable extent but wax, being a high molecular weight non-polar compound is even less water soluble. Wax isn't all that mobile so it doesn't fill in the gaps after water exposure but neither does an oil based lubricant. The oil based lubricant just masks the water infiltration so that you don't hear it. It's there and it's doing damage but you don't hear it. The oil based lubricant should be refreshed after riding in the rain just as a wax based lube should.