Yes, 20,000 psi is a scary number but it’s 200 lb of force on 1/100 of a square inch. It’s a fair amount of force on a tiny little area. Any heating would be proportional to the area being compressed. Small amount of area = small amount of heat. Chains don’t develop heat during use thus any heat generated is small. Even without any lubrication at all there is very little to no measurable heat generated. See this Johns Hopkins study.

Hard to say. It’s not a straightforward calculation. It depends on the time of the pressure, the material, the ambient temperature, the rate of transfer of heat, etc. With a bike chain the pressure is transitory. As the gear transfers the chain from one cog to another, the pressure would fluctuate. Fluctuations are going to result in low rates of heating.

You keep missing the point. Wax most definitely is pushed out of the way. That’s a large part of the problem with wax as a lubricant. It flows away. You keep harping on this idea that the wax melts and flows back. Find the heat needed to do this and explain how the heat would be enough to melt a wax at 130°F on the low end and leave no evidence of this heat in the drivetrain.


I’m torn on this one. I partly agree that washing a chain is useless. But, since rosefarts does the same thing to a mountain bike as well as a road bike without the same result, I doubt that the washing is the problem. Frankly the solution to the gravel bike problem is to probably learn how to sign show tunes at the top of his lungs to cover up the noise since nothing bad is probably happening.