My comment about letting the wax cool just a bit, was not so that you avoid losing wax to wastage, but rather so that enough wax would stay within the bearings or rollers of the chain to provide the lubrication you need.


After I have a wax setup(which may or may not be just Squirt), I'm thinking of cleaning the chain every so often by running it through a Park Tools Chain Cleaner, where it has been filled to the appropriate level with denatured alcohol.


Your thoughts on that?

My first encounter with it was aviation, later I've caught it used in the production assembly plants. Figure if they trust it for such use that a bike might be extremely light duty in comparison & wanted others insight for any cons I may be overlooking.

Smoove is another drip-on wax you might want to check out. It's supposedly longer lasting than Squirt. I'll probably give it a try when I run out of my current supply of Squirt. I'm pretty happy with Squirt though.

Thanks for the heads up. :thumb:

To retain the most wax in the chain, let the wax completely cool, then meticulously excavate the chain from the wax using very fine tools.

I think there is a better middle way than that. :p

My crockpot must be hotter than yours. When my wax is melted it's very thin with a consistency like water. When I pull the chain out of the pot it's hot enough that it stays very flexible for a few minutes. I just wipe a paper towel over it a couple of times and hang it up to cool.

As soon as you start riding the layer of was on the relevant parts of the chain is very thin. Any excess will just flake off so I don't see any point on leaving more wax on the chain than necessary.

How to easily clean/wax your wheels in 1 step. Easily removing any chain lube. When did you last lube your chain? A properly lubricated chain is one of the best maintenance tasks for your bike.
Listen, if you're going to ride six inches from my back wheel for two plus miles at least have the courtesy to lube your damn chain.
Check out this cool blogpost about the Bikewash, which Squirt Chain Lube ran at Battle On The Beach XC MTB Event...
Do you think that the Chain Lube ACLSC can be used to lube the tracks of household garage door tracks?

When I read the method from the Molten Speed Wax guy, they specifically said to leave the chain in long enough for the temperature of the chain to rise to the temperature of the wax to ensure that the wax gets all the way into the rollers. Seems to work, as I get excellent mileage out of each dip-- and have no measurable wear on an 11-speed chain with nearly 2,000 miles on it.

The Little Dipper crockpot holds at exactly 265º, which is a decent amount above the "optimal" temperature for paraffin (195º) but good enough for me. Dropping a room-temperature chain in the wax will drop the temperature about 30 degrees. So while 195º is the optimum according to MSW, I think getting the entire chain above 212º ensures that there's no incidental moisture inside the chain or the crock pot.

Besides using the Molten Speed Wax method, are you also using Molten Speed Wax itself or a paraffin mix with added ingredients or just straight paraffin?

Paraffin + powdered PTFE now. I did straight wax for a few chains, then for a few chains I was also adding molybdenum disulfide, but didn't notice any difference other than it leaving little black flecks of moly on stuff. The wax + teflon seems to work as well as with the moly, but is completely clean.

I weigh out my PTFE powder, but the amount doesn't seem to be as crazy as what MSW ships on their chains-- I saw a race-wax chain on Gaimon's bike in one of his Worst Retirement Ever videos, and the drivetrain appeared to be absolutely caked in teflon. But I'm not super interested in the racer aspect-- I just like a clean and quiet drivetrain.

I always run my chains dry. Whether it was road bikes or pedicabs the chain was always dry. I worked briefly in karting where the chain was always lubed. But I have a problem with this:

on my motorbike, lubing a dirty chain always leads to it elongating rapidly and eventually breaking. If I want to clean a chain, I soak it in gasoline and clean with a rag, then repeat, then dry it off and soak in chain lube... then wipe it off. But I stopped doing that after a while.

I think it has to do with Jobst Brandt's theory: lubing a dirty chain causes the dirt on the outside to make its way inside the rollers, causing rapid wear.

Oh, please. Have we really fallen to this level?

:D

Paraffin envy?

Are hotter crock pots The Future of Road Cycling ™?

Any interesting podcast with the friction facts/ceramicspeed founder, especially in regards to wax and rain. https://cyclingtips.com/2017/01/cycl...nd-chain-lube/

Interesting people's experience with its use in rain, and their suggestion to coat the outside of the chain in grease and teflon powder. Seems like wax and water don't do so well together after all

Anyone like this stuff? Seems not to collect so much grime. Finish Line Ceramic Wet Chain Lube

does it bring all the chains to the yard?

Beef fat as lubricant? Tallow'd be thy name.

Dogs already chase me. More help I don't need.

It's not meant to be slathered onto your legs.

8-speed chains are wider than 9-speed chains, which are in turn wider than 10-speed chains. I couldn't find any information about 11-speed chains. But I wonder if there is any evidence that the narrower a chain gets, the faster it wears, all other factors being equal. There will be less surface (load-bearing) area as the chain gets narrower, I would think. With higher loading, I would expect wear to occur at a greater rate. Is this reasonable?
Steve

11 speed chains are narrower than 10. But I'm not sure that is going to make the pins wear faster. The load on each successive chain is closer to the center line of the pin. The plates are nearly the same width in each case. That should reduce wear as there is less torque on the plates.

That said, the tolerances for the chain to do it's job of moving back and forth between gears is tighter and any wear would be more detrimental. The slightly reduced wear of the pins may not be enough to overcome the requirement of tighter tolerances.

On the other hand, I suspect that you'll get just about the same mileage out of an 8 speed chain as you will out of an 11 speed chain.

8,9,10,11, and 12 speed chains all have the same chain width - 3/32"

Chain width ≠ outside width dimension