Originally Posted by
cyccommute
Did you miss the part where I said (rather endlessly) that the wax chain starves the pin/plate interface of lubrication resulting in greater metal-on-metal wear? Reports of chain life by others as well as my own experiences with chain life do not suggest that waxed chains have a longer chain life than oiled ones.
I think the opposite, but that may just be due to the fact that in my situation maintaining chains is so much easier with hot waxing as opposed to oiling that they just get maintained more and thus last longer. But then again I used to spend quite a bit of time cleaning and oiling chains back in the day so who knows.
Even Zero Friction’s real life tests with waxed chains do not result in significant increases in chain life. While he does report some ridiculous chain life…like 25,000 km…based on his bench tests, he has not seen that kind of life in the field. On
page 2 of his Single Application page, he states “Real world road riding vs lab testing tends to indicate that lab test claims for treatment longevity may be around double to triple vs what may be assessed in field testing.” In his data he has lab tests vs field tests. With Silca Synerg-e, for example, his bench tests suggests it takes 9400 km to reach the wear allowance. The real world takes only 3140 kms to reach total wear allowance. That 3140 km (1900 miles) is pretty appalling in terms of chain longevity. And that’s the best example.
I checked out the test brief for the single application test and what's interesting about it is A) the jump point and B) the wear allowance is actually only 0.1 % as opposed to the typical 0.5 %. So even if the real world longevity of Synerg-e was 3140 km, that's only 0.1, which means that the actual real world longevity would be 15700 km.
Also according to my experience the argument that chains only last 1/3rd of the bench test, especially with the extreme conditions test, is wrong. There can be variation, but that variation doesn't reflect what's happening with the bike we have that gets the most punishment.
Our cargo e-bike has now been ridden 6000km. It is the bike I personally opt for when the weather is bad. The bike itself weighs 50 kg. I weigh 115 kg. With both of my kids on board the complete system weight is easily over 200 kg. It has a Bosch Cargo Line motor with 90 Nm of torque and that torque is frequently used to full effect (as in, I get to max assist below 25 kmh with Sport or Turbo mode). Six months of the year the bike rides in the most extreme conditions imaginable for a chain (water, road salt, gravel, sand, asphalt dust etc). The chains are not dried or cleaned after wet rides. They are not waxed immediately after wet rides. They get ridden until they reach the swap point (200-300 km) and then get put to wait for a good time for waxing. The rear mech jockey wheels need to be swapped every year. And mind you, the cargo bike gets significantly less mileage in the summer months when other more fun bikes are better options.
I currently use Rex Black Diamond hot wax with the 11+1 mix. I used typical paraffin before I got the Rex. The bike in question has three chains in rotation. All have rust on them. The quick links look atrocious. None of the chains register any wear with any of the chain checkers I have (different types of checkers from Park and Shimano). If the ZFC brief is to be believed, the "real world" jump point of Rex 11+1 mix is at 100 km and the real world distance to wear allowance (0.1) is 201 km. If the ZFC 1/3rd rule was in fact correct all of the chains in rotation would be near 1.0 % wear. Even combining with the dry gravel / mtb / cx of summer, they should be at 0.5 %. They're not even close to that.