Originally Posted by
elcruxio
Heating the emulsion would make no difference, except maybe ruin the wax.
I’m not the one suggesting heating the lubricant at all
for any reason. However using a flame on the chain would have a much more detrimental effect than simply heating the bottle of lubricant. Neither would do much to speed the process of drying.
Yet soft waxes don't work as well against contamination. The wetness or stickiness in the wax, be it from water or solvent does cause particles to cling to the wax and potentially lets them transfer inside. A chain is not sealed so it doesn't take much for stuff to crawl in. Also it's a bit misleading to compare oil in this instance since what is being discussed is wax at its best and wax at its worst. I'd rather not take wax at its worse when the conditions are as bad for a chain as they can be.
I don’t agree that soft wax doesn’t work as well against contamination. A soft wax still isn’t a liquid. A liquid can entrain particles and carry them into the chain. Any wax, soft or hard, can carry particles on the outside but neither is very good at entraining the particles so that they travel deeper into the chain. Wear with wax use isn’t from grinding of grit but by another mechanism.
It would appear that this is not really an issue. After the water dries, the wax particles get compacted into a more solid form when the chain is used, so there's no real way for water to get inside the now mostly homogenous wax. Also emulsifying wax with water requires aggressive machinery, like a high shear mixer. Once the wax has been dried and compacted, the conditions inside a chain and some moisture are nowhere near the conditions where the wax would turn into emulsifiable particles again. Once the wax has dried and has been molten and spread inside the chain, it's just like your regular old hot wax. It'd take quite a bit to emulsify it into water again.
Nope. Not at all. Your whole premise is just wrong. First, the wax isn’t going to “compact”. The particles of wax as suspended in an emulsion and, as the water leaves the emulsion, it’s going to leave behind an open structure. The water doesn’t evaporate from the surface of the emulsion but from the body of the emulsion. The emulsifiers don’t go anywhere either. They are always there to do the job they were meant to do. Additionally, a chain is a pretty good shearing device. Further, as I posted in post 98 above, the emulsifier contains morpholin and ethylene glycol, both of which are hygroscopic. They literally suck water out of the air.
In a solvent wax, the same open structure would exist but there is no emulsifier around. The water has zero chance of making the wax mobile again.
5000km is definitely reasonable. But it's also not the best you can achieve with chain wax apparently. With short enough intervals the chains don't really have a chance to develop wear. But my waxing interval isn't because it's based on anything other than how much the wax lasts before the chain begins squeaking on the worst possible conditions (salt slush) when the bikes are used for commuting. I just go with that. I'm sure I could get a lot more out of a chain in during the three months we actually get nice weather or if the bikes got hosed down after rides, but trying to evaluate whether a chain could go on for 100 or 200 miles more during that time is more trouble than just swapping in a fresh chain. Except when the wife or I forgets and a chain is ridden a double or triple distance.
I don’t believe the claims that waxing a chain makes it last significantly longer. Zero Friction has made astonishing claims of up to 12,000km based his bench studies. But he also says (elsewhere) “
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.” One third to one half the bench test 12,000km is 4000 km to 6000km or about the same as I’ve estimated.
I also don’t agree with your statement that chains used for short intervals don’t have a chance to develop wear. That would be true if you disposed of the chain after that short interval but if you are using the chain in rotation, it will take a similar mileage to wear out as a chain that isn’t rotated. In other words, if you have two chains in rotation, they may take a combined mileage of 10,000 km to wear out but that’s not a doubling of an individual chain’s mileage.
Anyway, not one of our chains registers any wear since I started this whole hot waxing thing three years ago (I think. Could be four...). Even the e-cargo bike that now has around 2000 miles per chain doesn't register any wear whatsoever on any of the chains. And the chains on that thing are seeing a lot more abuse than what could be achieved with a non electrified bike.
I started following my chain in April 2023. I currently have almost 2000 miles on the chain and it is still showing >0.75% wear. And that is will only 4 lubrication applications.
I mention the cargo bike, because that computer on that one has actually stayed on the bike for the time we've owned it. For the other bikes I have no clue because bike computers break, or don't work or get stolen etc.
I keep track of all mileages on my bikes but I don’t keep track of the chains except on one (so far). My previous claims of about 3000 miles of chain life are based on estimates and memory, as are most peoples’ claims. That’s why I started following my chain 3 years ago. It was to get some reliable data. I figure I’m about half way through the chain so I’ll have results in another 3 years.