Originally Posted by
DrIsotope
I never intended to imply 30k out of a chain, as that's absurd. I get, historically, around 3,500 miles out of a waxed chain, regardless of manufacturer.
On wet lubes under the same conditions, typically 3,100-3,200 miles.
Wax has the additional advantage of easily running pairs of chains (one is waiting in the crockpot while one is on the bike) so I get at least a year's mileage out of one pair of chains (split between two bikes.)
Wow! That's good to know. According to the following data based on 20+ lubricants tested, it is quite interesting how low the stretch is after 100 hours of usage : 0.05 for the home-maid one, close to 0.2 for the Molten Speed Wax (MSW) one and somewhere between 0.9 and 1.0 when using factory lubricants. I would be interested into seeing after how many hours would the waxed chain reach 0.5 and 0.75.
-.05 .9 equals to 18 times more stretch
-100 hours at an average speed of 30 km/h equals to 3000kms (or roughly 1900 miles)
Riding conditions will most likely greatly affect these numbers (wet roads, dirty roads, stress put on the chain, rider, etc.). Moreover, we don't know if these tests were all done using the same drive train components and riding environment though. They were probably not.
*Credits to Oz Cycle for providing this table in one of his Youtube videos