Bikey Mikey

Remember, WD-40 is not a lubricant, maybe a very short-lived one, but is a Water Displacement(40th forumula)--thus, WD-40. I use it to help with degreasing and getting rid of water on the gears, but I always use a lube afterwards.

Six jours

I find the residue from WD-40 easy to wipe off. I slather it onto the chain during cleaning, to the point that it drips off, carrying a load of dirt and particles with it. Then I brush the chain thoroughly, hose it down with more WD-40 to "drip off" more dirt, then wipe with a rag and lightly lube .

TromboneAl

Well, 801 miles and absolutely no squeaking. As smooth and quiet as ever.

But I was cleaning the bike and I noticed:

RUST!

I didn't see that coming. It's just a little surface rust, but it's unacceptable.



Rust is one of my two arch enemies (the other being mold). I'm right near the ocean, and everything that can rust, rusts.

Should I do something about that rust first, or just recoat it with paraffin?

This probably means that I'll need to redo the paraffin more often than every 800 miles.

I wonder if a thin coat of WD-40 occasionally would prevent rust, yet not accumulate road grime.

I'll redo the paraffin soon, so stay tuned for a video showing exactly how much time it takes.

Rowan

What is the elongation in the chain?

JohnJ80

Yep. That's what will tell the tale.

J.

Steve Sawyer

Just to update on my parallel "clean chain" efforts - the cleaning of the chain and drivetrain and re-lubrication with teflon lube didn't work too well, at least not from a cleanliness standpoint. I accumulated a fair amount of gunk over the course of a single 65-mile ride. On Friday I repeated the process, trying to clean the chain even better than I had the first time 'round, and used the melted paraffin. I only put 20 miles on the bike on Saturday, but no sign of any accumulated dirt on the drivetrain. We'll see how it goes over the next couple of weeks. Fortunately, I live and ride nowhere near the ocean, though the Great Lakes area is noted for high humidity, so I'll keep my eye out for any rust over the next few weeks.

Zinger

Getting 800 miles out of a parrafin lubed chain beats what I'm getting from aerosol lubes.

Just about anything non paraffin that you use out of an aerosol can is going to pick up some gunk eventually. Some more than others. I wouldn't know about paraffin because I haven't used it yet and with my stash of Sedisport chains left I'm not likely to be breaking chains down to clean them for awhile. I usually wind up cleaning my chain at about a couple hundred miles or more when they are just beginning to get disgusting.

I lube them enough not to hear from them though.

TromboneAl

I'd need to do a much longer experiment with precise measurements to compare that for paraffin versus conventional lube.

In theory, the decreased friction with paraffin and less introduction of road grit into the rollers should lead to longer chain life with paraffin.

noglider 

The less introduction of grit should help, but does it really decrease friction? I don't know anyone who has the equipment to measure that, and I don't really trust most cyclists to give subjective impressions. It seems to me -- not that I'm any expert -- that wax, being a soft solid, would be pushed away by the tension in the chain, leaving little or nothing for lubrication.

TromboneAl

I was basing the friction thing on a recent article which I can't locate now (Velo news?).

I've been assuming that if the chain is squeak/noise free, that it is still lubricated. Perhaps that isn't a good assumption. Most discussions of this say that a wax-lubed chain will (rather suddenly) become squeaky at some point.

noglider 

No, I think squeaks begin after an unlubricated chain has been used for a while. In other words, the squeak means you have been unlubricated, and you should have used lubricant long ago. The metal starts out smooth, then lack of lubrication makes it rough, then the squeaks come.

That's as it seems to me. I'm just theorizing. I hope someone who knows can tell us the truth. This would be a great time for Jobst Brandt to pipe in, because he used to, at points like this.

TromboneAl

That sounds reasonable, but if true, it means I have no way of knowing when I need to re-lube.

noglider 

That's right. And I think it's why we elongate our chains, i.e. because we didn't know they had run out of lubricant. I do it as often as I can remember or as often as I can bother.

Steve Sawyer

I'm going to add some more non-expert thinking here, but one of my other endeavors is woodworking and restoration of old woodworking machinery. Use of paraffin on gears, cranks, chains and other rotating/sliding components not subjected to high rotational speeds (e.g. motor and arbor shafts) is very common and for the same reasons that folks are using it on bicycle chains - you don't get the accumulation of gunk (mostly sawdust in this case) that you get with greases and oils.

The thinking as to why the paraffin lubrication persists is that most metals are not perfectly smooth and have some porosity. The paraffin will work its way into any available surface flaw or porosity and continue to provide lubrication long after any visible remnant of the wax is long gone. I can't find any documentation of the physics of paraffin lubrication in any application beyond bicycle chains and old machinery, so don't take this as gospel, but it seems that the cyclists aren't the only ones that find waxing to be a good lubrication strategy.

By the way, I didn't use a double boiler OR a crockpot. I used a large soup can resting on a cake pan (to catch drips, or to avert disaster if for some reason I were to knock over the can) in a 170* electric convection oven. It probably took a little longer to melt, but when finished I just put the can on a shelf in the garage and let it solidify until the next time I need to re-wax. The can was only filled about half full, and coiling the chain allowed it to easily fit in the can and become fully submerged.

noglider 

OK, Steve, what you say sounds plausible. Still, we have to guess at when it's time to add lubricant of any kind. We'd probably need a microscope to measure it.

TromboneAl

I just removed the quicklink from the chain, and it seems that there still paraffin on the roller parts of the quicklink.

JohnJ80

Couple of comments -

1. I re-lube the chain when I can hear it. With the lube I use (Chain-L), the chain is literally silent when lubed. When I can hear it at all, I re-lube. This is typically at around 1000 miles on the chain or after I run through some really gritty wet stuff for a long while. I can't remember where I read it, but the elongation is a mitigated with lubrication. With the Chain-L I've been using, I've about doubled my run time on a chain or, in other words, it elongates at half the pace it did when I was lubing with other lubes prior.

2. There is zero benefit in having any lube on the outside plates of the chain. If you have dirt or grease there, take it off. I just squirt some WD40 on a rag and run the chain through the rag until the side plates are clean. This only cleans the sides and does not disturb the lube in the rollers. By doing this, I limit the number of chain ring dirt tattoos on my leg. Works very well, and I would think it would work with any lube.

Finally a thought - if one were to go to paraffin and then to decide to go away from paraffin, I'm not sure if it's possible to get it off of the chain. In other words, is it not a case of once you try it you can never go back?

J.

Steve Sawyer

Yup - I think that's pretty much the situation in any case. Empiricism always seems to work, though...

I don't think that would be any more of a problem than it would be going from a teflon lube to White Lightening, or from 3-in-1 oil to lithium grease, John. Unless there were some kind of extreme incompatibility between the lubricants, I'd think that you could just go back to whatever you were using.

That said, if you're not put off by handling yucky chemicals, paraffin is soluble in ether and benzene. Also, a gentle warming with a propane torch and repeated wipe-down with disposable shop-towels would probably do a pretty good job, but if I go with something else, I'll just slap on whatever I decide to go with next and not worry about the paraffin residue.

noglider 

My God, that's a lot of trouble. I might have said it earlier in this thread, or maybe it was in another thread: if it's going to be too messy or troublesome or time-consuming to clean my chain, I'll just replace it. It's the one place where I'm resource-wasteful. It's just too yucky a job. I've cleaned too many chains in my life. I'm done with that. A new chain is lovely to ride, and it will prevent premature wear of sprockets, too.

Steve Sawyer

Good point about the new chain, but really, this isn't a lot of trouble. Now that I have my can of paraffin on the shelf ready to go, it can't take more than about 5 minutes of actual time fooling with the chain and the paraffin.

1. 30 seconds to put the pan and can in the oven and turn it on.
2. A couple of minutes to coil the chain, bring it into the kitchen and lower it into the paraffin
3. A couple of minutes to fish the chain out of the paraffin and wipe it down
4. 30 seconds to return the can with the molten paraffin to the shelf in the garage to cool and solidify

The first time probably took about 15-20 minutes because I had to clean the old lube and crud off the chain, plus cut the paraffin into chunks for melting, and figure out how to roll the chain up to fit into the can.

That's it.

I can probably do this in less time it takes me to get to the LBS and buy the new chain!

Rowan

Oh please no. The thread would go on forever and become an insult-fest as Brandt paraded his superior knowledge on everything.

Rowan

Yes, in a direct comparison you would need to take precise measurements.

But you need to tell us what the elongation increments have been since you started riding with this chain and this treatment. Otherwise, your assessment of lack of noise and rust appearance is really just subjective. We need those figures to enable us to determine if the chain is worn at all over the period it has been used.

Right now, we have no idea what the wear factor might be (I do have an open mind on this, and it is quite possible that when you put the ruler up against it, the elongation might be 1/64th of an inch, or less).

TromboneAl

I put on a new chain on 4/22/13 and rode with regular chain oil for 275 miles.
I switched to paraffin lube on 5/17/13, and rode 801 miles.

I cannot detect any elongation with the tape measure. My chain check tool of course shows everything is OK.

I could tell you when it elongates enough to be replaced, but I don't think that's going to tell you anything. The elongation depends on riding style, environment, road grit type, etc, and there are wide variations even among riders who use the same lube.

My 8-speed chain only costs about $20, so improvements in chain life aren't as important to me as convenience, lack of chain tattoos, and looks.

Rowan

That is the critical comment that piques my interest.

Agree conditions do have an influence, but we now have a marker for future assessment. Thanks for making the measurement.

TromboneAl

OK, here's the official video:


This concludes my review. I've decided to use paraffin lubing from now on because

(1) It takes less time and bother than oil-based lubing
(2) I don't get chain tatoos
(3) My hands don't get dirty if I need to handle the chain on a ride
(4) I like the looks of a clean chain
(5) I expect that I will get more life out of each chain (less road grit in the rollers.
(6) I don't need to spend time wiping and re-oiling the chain after every few rides (when I'm tired)
(7) It's less expensive