What you seem unable to grasp is that the vast majority of people don’t wipe their chains. Yes, the one picture I posted was of a particularly bad oil job but my fingers are from people who do what they think is required oiling. Oil, by it nature, is going to end up on the outside of the chain and it’s going to end up on clothing, hands, legs, and anything else that comes in contact with a chain. I will also agree that hot waxing a chain is too much hassle. That’s why I don’t hot wax. I use drip wax…all the benefits of adding oil without any of the filth of oil nor the hassle of hot wax.

Again, that was an extreme case. But oil in general is much messier than wax. It’s not like I’m unfamiliar with oiling chains. I have cleaned many, many grimy bikes with oiled drivetrains…my own and others. I prefer not to clean them but do so because they have been treated with oil. I don’t clean mine now because I’ve used drip wax for the last quarter century or more.

I have my own problems with the Church of the Holy Hot Wax. But you are putting way too much emphasis on what was meant to be a joke. Yes, I know that most oiled chains aren’t as bad as that picture I posted. But from my experience most chains are still pretty bad. I often wash my hands at the co-ops three to five times per 5 hour shift because they are just too grimy. To be honest, I’ve never run across an oiled chain that is supposedly as pristine as you make them out to be.

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.

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.

That is why I have said all along that the type of lubricant used on a chain doesn’t really matter. Chains are going to wear out over about 3000 miles (4800km) no matter what you do to them. I’m not convinced that a totally unlubricated chain wouldn’t last that long. I’m not brave enough to test it but I’m not convinced that it would wear out much faster. The only differences are cleanliness and ease of application. For me, drip wax fits neatly between oil and hot wax in terms of cleanliness and ease of use.

No, I grasp that. You just want to continue to debate things that are irrelevant to the given topic. Your pictures showed neglect, and excess oil, not any issue with chain oiling. The person who will do that, will not take the time to wax their chain properly. In fact, it would take them less time to oil it properly than to wax it properly. So, once again, the pictures you posted are the picture equivalent of hyperbole. Give it a rest. A person can choose to wax their chain, or oil it, both work, but both need to be done properly. Neither take much effort to do correctly. Neother will result in what you showed in your images if done properly.

Give it a rest. No one really cares how long it takes you to wash your hands. Everyone does however, understand fully that there are those out there who do not maintain their bikes properly. THat isn't my problem, nor does it in any way related to the OP's original question. I suggest you go out and actually ride your bike, or take up butterfly collecting. You seem to have way too much time on your hands, and use that time here to derail threads with what become useless information.

You say you grasp the idea that people don’t oil chains properly (compared to you) but still don’t seem to grasp the idea that the vast majority of people aren’t you and don’t do it the way you do. My hands would be a whole lot cleaner if people didn’t use oil but they won’t because that’s the way their dads did it.

Again with the point missing. I do have to deal with people who don’t maintain their bikes “properly”. It’s what I do with my time. I volunteer to fix bikes so people can enjoy riding their bikes. As to derailing threads, you’ve done a marvelous job by complaining about a joke picture. As the great Foghorn Leghorn says “That's a joke, son. A flag waver. You're built too low. The fast ones go over your head. Ya got a hole in your glove. I keep pitchin' 'em and you keep missin' 'em. Ya gotta keep your eye on the ball. Eye. Ball. I almost had a gag, son. Joke, that is.”

Perhaps you should heed your own advice and go ride your bike.

If you're gonna expect me to read each of your posts in its entirety, you'll have to stop writing as if you're paid per word.

Annnnnnd... back on the ignore list. Sorry, I really tried, but in trying toi contribute so much, you contribute nothing. You simply clog up a thread.

Cleaning an oiled chain these days does not take long with the on-bike cleaners pioneered by Park Tools, and copies now available cheap. With oil, after about 700 miles, depending on how much climbing, the oil will have paste consistency, due to metal swarf contamination. I ride in a clean environment, the pasting is all due to the metal, not dirt, proven by a magnet in the cleaning solvent afterward. Just wiping the outside of the chain will not remove the metal dust inside, and I think that matters for wear; This would be a factor if needing to remove the chain for solvent clean, but with an on-bike cleaner, it's all fabulously fast.

When I last melt-waxed the chain on a road bike also ridden in clean environment, I'd rewax it at the first squeak, perhaps 1000 miles by guess. That chain went about 70,000 miles, as I was clueless about checking for stretch, only changing it and reversing the cogs when I noticed cupping on the cog teeth. So I'm sure the chain was plenty stretched. But it continued to work great up until replacement, the cogs wearing into the chain spacing. I don't know what happened in terms of metal particles, if they were shed to the environment, or far less created than with oil.

Conclusions:
- Melt-wax is clean, and works, if you want to go to the effort. I plan to, as the on-bike cleaner does not desludge the derailleur pulleys, cogs, and chainrings, which is an issue over time. I want back to cleaner. Pulling the rear wheel on my bike is a pain in the butt, because it uses a claw-mount rear derailleur, plus I don't have a work stand. A cleaner chain is also easier to pull off and on, which makes doing so to clean, faster and easier, especially with a quick-link instead of having to use a chain tool. Not as fast as an on-bike cleaner though.
- Oil is fine too, and easier to do a proper, in depth chain cleaning, without pulling the chain, and quickly, using an on-bike chain cleaner.

Just use this every time you ride. Chain keeps getting cleaner and cleaner the more you use it. Made in Canada. On the shelf at Walmart.

https://www.whitelightningco.com/pro...nts/clean-ride

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.

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.

(above) I respect you doing your homework.

But hot waxing at 200-300 km (125-250 mile) intervals is very frequent, that is what is giving you stellar chain wear. Back in my serious riding days, that would be every 3-6 days. Not knocking it, and with multiple chains it is easier to do.

I think that's fairly dependent on conditions. In nice dry summer conditions, sure. But on gravel for example I've had my waxed chains gunk up so bad a rag was of no use at all. Can't imagine what it would have been like with oil.

Again, conditions. While I've never had a drivetrain look quite that oily I do still remember the deep dark red colour of my wife's commuter's drivetrain every winter before I got to waxing. I originally went with the method of trying to to get the chain wiped down every day. I'd lube it as soon as it began making noise (which would sometimes be every three to four days), wipe off the excess and if the chain was really gunky, try to flush it with oil and then spend fifteen minutes just wiping the chain until the rag didn't come off completely black anymore.

Tried various different oils from super light (finish line red bottle) to heavy (motor oil) and everything in between from ATF to several different specialty cycling chain oils.

Even got a chain cleaner but that meant even more time spent with chain maintenance. Wash, dry, relube, wipe wipe wipe... And it gets cold fast splashing around with water + harsh chemicals when it's near freezing / below freezing. And then I'd need to safely dispose of the spent chemicals too.

I now spend considerably less time hot waxing. I swap chains sure, but that takes a lot less time than lubing and wiping a chain.

It also depends. For my summer road rides that can be one ride. So I do have some leeway if the conditions are and have been good. If a bike hasn't been ridden in the wet and it's not salt season I'll often let the swap intervals double or even triple. So either if there's a cold spell that's cold enough to freeze salted roads or it's dry in the summer time.

Then again if I'm on heating up the slow cooker and I have a cold beer in my hand, I might just swap the chains of every bike we have no matter how much they've been ridden. At that point I'm not particular about the odometer readings. Just need to remember to reset them.

But I do agree that frequent service intervals is key. But that's the beauty of hot waxing in my mind. It's just so easy to pop a clean chain on.

I use drip wax (Silca SS for the last few years and Squirt before that). Easy to apply just like oil based lubes, but I find it cleaner.

For road bikes I don’t think there’s much in it overall, but for mountain bikes I much prefer wax based lubes.

The only issue I have with drip wax is long rides in wet conditions where I find it doesn’t hold up very well compared to a traditional wet lube. My solution is to avoid long, wet rides!

Given a choice, that would be my solution also!

But more to the point, might you have any experience you can share about hot wax longevity for wet rides?

To my thinking the traditional, oil-based wet chain lubes ought to perform well in (water) wet scenarios in that oil repels water. It's the airborne debris under dry conditions that make oil-based chain lubes a maintenance intensive prospect, right?

What is it about drip wax that makes it a less viable lube choice than hot wax when riding in the wet?

IME, wax based drip lube tends to wash off in the wet and that was one of the comments ZFC made in their Silca SS drip wax review. Maybe hot wax is better in this regard, but I've never personally used it.

I don't recall ever saying an piled chain would not gunk up. And I also never said waxing a chain wouldn't result in a cleaner chain overall. What I did say was that the pictures said person posted was not a result of simply oiling a chain properly. It was a result of over oiling and zero maintenance.

I road gravel roads for years, I grew up in Iowa, that's where we rode. I did so before I ever heard about waxing a chain. I never saw any of my chains look like the one posted by said person.

People way over exaggerate the amount of work it takes to care for a chain, both oiling and waxing.

I’m having troubles understanding your numbers and explanation. You have 6000 km on the bike and are using 3 chains in rotation? Wouldn’t that imply only 2000 km per chain? If that is the case, that’s a low use interval per chain even for a chain used under heavy duty. It certainly doesn’t suggest that waxing results in great chain longevity. Even 6000 km per chain would not be excessive chain life.

Again, wax whether applied via hot wax or solvent wax does not wash off. It simply can’t. Oil can’t really wash off either. Wax is a long chain hydrocarbon that has an even lower water solubility than de minimus solubility in water that oil does. Oil can be floated off when water gets under the oil…think oil and vinegar salad dressing…but even that is minimal. That fact has lead me to the realization of how waxed chains wear compared to how oiled chains wear.

Yes, waxed chains will generally squeak after water exposure but that is because of the exposed metal in the pin/plate interface that results as a waxed chain is used.

Squirt might be the exception to water solubility. While it is a wax, it is also treated with surfactants (soap) to make it soluble in water. In the presence of water, surfactant could be reactivated and the wax would wash off.

He’s still having problems with getting the joke.

Ok fair enough. Maybe I should have said my drivetrain just gets very noisy after running in the wet when using drip wax. I don’t ride in the wet often enough to care, but I wouldn’t be using Squirt or Silca drip wax if I did a lot of wet riding.

That is what I read so often here on BF, but ...

Last Saturday, I was caught in a torrential downpour, and I rode again on Sunday when the roads were still completely wet. Surprisingly, my recently waxed chain (~150 miles before that weekend) sounded completely normal on Sunday. And no rust when I took it off for a wipe before OMS baths and rewax.

My theory: Immersing the chain in hot melted wax, penetrates the areas needing lubing, then once cooled, forms a solid cylindrical bushing that cannot physically fit through the small passages to leak out. It's there for the duration until worn away.

Drip wax, i.e., some wax in a solvent solution or emulsion, applied, then the carrier liquid evaporates leaving a VERY thin wax coating that is not a 3D solid shape, only a very thin coating where the molecules are not bonded to each other. Even if water is repelled by the thin wax, water can still wash it partly away, such as by forming a new emulsion with the wax and water, and easily leaking out the openings in the chain. It's like... if you replaced a solid bronze cylindrical bushing, with finely ground bronze powder; That powder will leak out as the mechanism cycles/moves. If you want it to stay, ideally, the lube will be solid and in a shape and size that cannot leak out.

This is also why I feel that chain melt wax mixtures using things like tallow (as seen on some tins from over 100 years ago), if changing the consistency to less-than-solid at operating temperatures, may not work as well as paraffin that is solid at op temps.

That's a very interesting claim, and it is contrary to other claims I've seen. Lately, I've increased my effort to keep my chain clean. I've been using oil to lubricate. As a result of your advice, I'm close to trying a squirt-on wax lube, but maybe I'll wait until my bottle of oil runs out.

I mostly skip what others write on this topic and read what you write since you have both theoretical and practical knowledge.

I had squirt-on wax lube many years ago. I got it in a bike shop in France in 1981. In the intervening years, I didn't see it here in the US. Now I see the market has many offerings.

I won’t disagree with that. However the wax is soft and plastic. Additionally, the bushing moved in an elliptical fashion around the plate as the chain travels around the drivetrain. This is going to cause the middle of the “bushing” to expand over time with the excess being squeezed out of the chain. It won’t squeeze into the pins and plates because the material is being pushed out of that contact. This plug of wax does prevent infiltration of grit unlike oil.

Your mechanism would only work on a wax that is emulsified with water. There’s only one example of that kind of lubricant that I know of…Squirt. I disagree that solvent wax will form only a very thin wax coating. Solvent wax may not completely fill the bushing but it will be there in more than just a thin layer. The application of solvent wax is usually a flooding of the chain rather than a drop application. The solvent will be trapped in the bushing of the chain and the solvent will evaporate leaving behind quite a bit of wax. There is still protection against infiltration of grit to a waxed chain.

As to the “thin layer”, that is all that is needed. That’s all that is there with hot wax. Even oil only has a thin layer at the contact point. That’s all that is really needed.


The reason to add something to soften the wax would be to increase the wax’s elasticity. A more rigid, but still plastic, wax is going to be squeezed out of the chain. A softer wax is more plastic but it moves internally a bit differently. Think about how a rock reacts to impact with a hammer vs how a piece of rubber reacts.

That said, additives probably won’t have that large an impact on performance nor chain durability. Nothing really has that much of an impact on performance or chain durability. Oil, wax, or solvent wax are all going to perform about the same and have about the same duty cycle. Wax is cleaner than oil and solvent wax is just a clean as hot wax with the added convenience of application like oil.

(above) Let us assume that drip wax works as well as melt wax.

I use mineral oil in my on-bike chain cleaner when using oil lube. I tried dissolving some wax in the mineral oil, so I could clean and lube in one shot, but it didn't dissolve (at room temp). To grow-my-own drip wax, I want a docile solvent, as my bike is stored in my small bedroom, so non-toxic evaporation is a critical requirement. Paraffin wax is non-polar, so solvent must be same. I don't want to use toluene or xylene. White gas (Coleman fuel) is petroleum naphtha which may work, and also contains rust inhibitors (in Coleman and better quality generics) which could be a big plus. However, that still poses an inhalation risk, unless the solvent evaporates fast, like one long ride, so could lube chain right before that and safely store in bedroom after. I may try this if I get some Coleman fuel, I've been out of it for years.

I sure wish mineral oil would work, I have tons of tiki torch fuel around.