Silca chain stripper
 

Has anyone used Silca's chain stripper? I'm looking for something that doesn't smell bad and can clean chains really well. Is this the way to go?

Dave

YES !
After cleaning chains with all the nasty smell stuff as per Silcs'a previous "How to" videos, this product is great.

Barry

Mineral spirits. No smell, cheap.

You need your nose checked. Mineral Sprints don't smell! Even the low odor stuff is pretty stinky.

While mineral spirits get the job done, the Silca stripper works MUCH better than mineral spirits and doesn't smell. I'm pretty sure is biodegradable, or at least more environmentally friendly, than mineral sprints. I've stripped chains with both and the Silca stripper is my preferred method.

Like most Silca stuff, it's expensive but does the job really well.

I recommend you get a container that fits the chain well such that you need a minimum of stripper to cover the chain to minimize waste. You can also reuse it on more than one chain. But depends on how much extra you used the first time and how dirty the chain. I just use it to strip new chains before using drop was. But I'm going to try the Silca no-strip chip (or whatever its called) on my next chain and dip wax it.

There is this false idea out there that chains have all traces of the factory lubricant removed before wax is used because the wax is some how incompatible with the factory lubricant. The factory lubricant isn’t “grease” but is, instead, a wax. It just happens to be a softer wax than the canning wax that is currently in vogue. It’s not incompatible in any way because it is a similar material. Even if oil were used on the chain, the oil isn’t incompatible with the wax since petroleum based wax and oil are part of the same class of compounds. In fact, mineral spirits are part of the same class. Mineral spirits are made up of shorter hydrocarbon chains while oils are longer than mineral spirits and waxes are longer hydrocarbon chains still.

From Silca’s description, the stripper is a water based surfactant. There’s no problem with that but if there is a material that is incompatible with wax, it is surfactants. That is way the chain has to be rinsed prior to waxing. Rinsing with water introduces another step that is actually bad because the water has to be removed as well prior to waxing. That can be done by letting the chain dry naturally which introduces the possibility of rusting of the chain or the chain can be dried with another solvent like acetone or denatured alcohol. But that is yet another step that is unnecessary for actually cleaning the chain.

Mineral spirits is a one and done step. Let it evaporate or drop it into the hot wax, neither will introduce the problem of rusting nor is the mineral spirits incompatible with wax. Minerals spirits is also dirt cheap. $10 buys 32 oz or twice as much as the Silca Magic Juice for a fraction of the price…32¢ per ounce vs $1.68 per ounce, respectively.

Finally, there is the “biodegradability” of the Silca Magic Juice. Yes, the surfactant is biodegradable. The material stripped off by the solvent isn’t. Just because you can dissolve a petroleum based wax or oil with soap (which is what a surfactant is), doesn’t mean that the wax or oil goes away. Mineral spirits should be disposed of as hazardous waste but so should the surfactant solution/factory lube mixture that results from using the Silca stripper. Additionally, any water used to rinse the chain should be disposed of as hazardous waste. And, if the water is chased off with something else, that material is hazardous waste as well. Assuming about a 6 to 1 water volume rinse and about the same volume of Silca stripper as mineral spirits used, each use of the Silca stripper is going to result in about 3 cups of waste. About 1/2 cup of fresh mineral spirits will clean a chain adequately enough for waxing (without a bunch of other steps) and that is all that is needed.

With a lower volume of solvent needed, a lower cost per cleaning, and less waste per cleaning, mineral spirits is better on all points.

Hardly one and done. It takes multiple rinses to get the chain cleaned. With mineral spirits, I usually do about three before I call it good enough.

Except it doesn't strip nearly as well. It just doesn't. It takes multiple rinses with mineral spirits. Each leaving several ounces of mineral spirits to then dispose of in some way at some point. So, no way is there less waste per cleaning using mineral spirits. Of course the left over final rinse of mineral spirits becomes the second rinse for the next time and so on.

And while perhaps technically the water you rinse the Silca stripped chain might be considered hazardous waste, I think that's a bit of a stretch. I'm sure more "hazardous" waste comes off my hands when washing them after doing something messy on the bike. And the same material removed from chain is in both strippers. So the Silca stripper and the mineral spirits both contain whatever was removed from the chain. And the mineral spirits themselves are certainly more of a disposal issue than the Silca stripper.

A single pass with the Silca stripper seems to get all there is to get. While mineral spirits is like an exponential decay. The first pass gets half of the stuff, the next rinses gets half of the half left over and so on.

And drying the chain is trivial. I give them a blow with compressed air then air dry.

Other than price, I don't see mineral spirits being better in any way.

Both get the job done. I much prefer the Silca stripper as it works faster and there is a lot less left over materials to deal with. If mineral spirits work better for you, I'm not going to try to talk you out of it.

I have been using the same mineral spirits to clean my chains for two years now. After bath 1 in spirits and a wipe down, the chain is transferred to bath 2 and then is wiped down one last time and given a blow dry.
Each bath is allowed to settle out the contaminants and the clear fluid is transferred to a clean canning jar. This is how it lasts so long, by settling out the dirt and stuff. Odorless mineral spirits is what I use and it has little to no odor that I can detect.

You completely missed my point that the chain doesn’t need to be stripped completely of factory lubricants nor even of oil if that has been used. There is no reason for it. The wax itself is a solvent if you are using hot wax. If you are using drip wax, the drip waxes contain solvent which dissolves the factory lubricant. This idea that wax and factory lubricant is incompatible is put out there by people who have no idea of what the chemistry of the lubricant is. The factory lubricant will not prevent the wax from sticking the to the chain because the factory lube and the wax are, essentially, the same material. Anyone who tells you that the chain has to have every last trace of factory lubricant removed is, like Silca, trying to sell you something that is unnecessary.

Where do you think the factory lubricant goes when you dissolve it? It doesn’t just “go way”. The surfactant surrounds it in what is called a micelle but that micelle is only a physical state of matter change. It does not bond to the lubricant. Part of the “biodegradable” spiel is that the surfactant breaks down in the environment. When that happens the factory lubricant is released and becomes an environmental problem. It’s not a huge problem in terms of volume but it is a problem nevertheless.

Say, what! Surfactants have a more limited saturation point than mineral spirits does with regards to oil and it is much lower with regards to the longer chain waxes. The micelles formed during the dissolution process have a long nonpolar tail and an ionic head. The head turns outwards in water while the tail turns inward and dissolves the nonpolar wax and oil. You can think of it as a bit like a herd of muskox except that is a three dimensional sphere. There is only a limited number of micelles that can form and, thus, the amount of wax or oil that can be dissolved is limited. If you’ve ever hand washed dishes, you have probably observed this when the bubbles from the detergent (a surfactant) stop forming. In extreme cases, there is a layer of fat on top of the water from the material that can no longer be dissolved. This same thing happens as the surfactant “biodegrades”. The wax it is carrying is released into the water where it floats to the top of the body of water.

Mineral spirits don’t have to form micelles nor deal with a dissimilar material like water. The wax is distributed throughout the bulk of the solvent so that the mineral spirits can carry much more oil and wax. There may be a saturation point but it is extremely high compared to that of a surfactant. You can put more wax in the mineral spirits than there is mineral spirits at which point the mineral spirits is no longer the solvent but the solute. If you were to put a mineral spirits cleaned chain into wax without drying, the wax will happily dissolve the mineral spirits. Put a water cleaned chain into wax without drying and the wax and water will separate.

I find it amusing that people who are so OCD about cleaning every last molecule of factory lubricant from a chain because they think that it is incompatible with wax will not worry about water on steel that has been stripped of every single molecule of factory lubricant. Even a little bit of water can rust the chain and water takes a long time compared to other solvents to dry which increases the chances of rust. Here in the arid west (and at my altitude) water evaporates a bit more quickly than at lower altitudes and higher humidities but the chain can still rust during the drying process. Rust, even a little, is not good for the chain.

​​​​​​​Believe what you want but the science of chemistry says otherwise.

Is that what the kids are calling the study of wear between surfaces these days? My understanding is the surface has to be stripped to bare metal so the particles suspended in the wax can adhere to the chain; leaving the factory lubricant prevents this.

I'd like someone that knows tribology really well to critique Josh's videos. According to one of his recent videos, you can mix some of Silca's lubes with their wax for use in wet weather. Sometimes I'm tempted to just buy into their system, but it is pretty expensive.

Why would the factory lubricant prevent adhesion to the surface of the metal? If the chain is hot waxed, the factory lubricant is melted off with the wax…it is a wax itself. If the chain is being solvent wax lubricated, the solvent dissolves the factory lubricant. As to any particles adhering to the metal, that would depend on the particles suspended in the wax. Teflon, for example, would not bond to the metal no matter what conditions you use. If the particles are something like molybdenum sulfide, I question the conditions needed for the MoS to bond to the metal. Additionally, the MoS is suspended in a wax that will also interfere with the adherence. If the wax doesn’t interfere with the adherence, the factory lubricant…again, a wax…won’t interfere either.

Finally, all this foolishness is only going to result in marginal gains in terms of wear and chain longevity. Bicycle chains are going to wear out and all the magic juices and magic waxes and magic incantations aren’t going to change that by much. An incredible expensive chain using an incredibly expensive lubricant and incredibly expensive cleaning system really isn’t going to wear slower than a cheap chain that hasn’t be pampered.

I'm not very interested in this discussion, but at least I learned a new word today. Thanks!

Soak chain in simple green - $10 per gallon.

Shake it up in there, rinse, dry, lube.

Replace the chain every 3-4000 miles.

cheap and easy peasy.

THis should be the opening paragraph to every lubrication thread. I'm no chemist (beyond 101 in college), nor am I psychologist (although I have a BA and a few decades of human interaction), but I tend to think that the time and effort - and argumentativeness - put into chain cleaning and lubrication are more a function of one's personality than actual, meaningful effect of the process.

I've been stripping chains in naphtha (Coleman fuel), mineral spirits, Safe T Kleen (when I worked in shops), Orange degreaser and you name it for years. I've posted as much here already. A few years ago I settled on the Orange degreasers as they do a great job and when rinsed in denatured alcohol and dried that chain is absolutely stripped....completely. I can tell you from my recent past experience that the Silca chain stripper appears to strip everything from the chain...with a caveat.

I do not understand how a water-based product strips a grease-wax factory lubricant out of the rollers. So what I did was agitate the chain on top of a clothes dryer. I stripped three chains recently with their stripper. It does a GREAT job! I still wondered though how much of the factory grease-wax it truly removes from the inside rollers though. Upon drying and moving the chain rollers next to my ear, it didn't "sound" like there was any lubricant in there.

But, all of that water inside the chain rollers as the chain was drying concerned me. The third chain I did a final rinse in denatured alcohol to displace the water and leave the chain seriously dry. I couldn't tell much difference from the first two chains that I just used the Silca stripper per their instructions plus agitation on top of my clothes drier as it was turned on. It really is a very easy process.

The conclusion? The Silca stripper appears to do exactly as they describe. I'll report on each bike after a few months more riding if there is any discernable difference in the first two chains and the third.

Here's a curveball: that third chain I "lubed" with the Silca Secret Chain Wax? I dissolved it in MY secret sauce (a solvent) and cold-soaked the chain in my concoction because I think it may sink deep into the rollers and deposit their was deep inside the chain better than their hot wax technique. I won't tell anyone what the solvent is but I will tell you that there is more in that Secret Chain wax than just paraffin.

I agree completely. And, I think my third chain "may" go longer between re-lubings than the first two. We shall see. If it doesn't then I'm going back to plain 'ole paraffin (Gulf wax), dissolved in naphtha and cold-soaked for 24 hours (my usual wax routine since around 2012 when I first started fooling with it (I posted about that a long time ago about "Bergman's Formula" a naphtha-paraffin was used by fly fishermen to waterproof their dry flies - it's the best there is bar-none).



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Just the person I need! To ask something from.

Here's the latest Silca video where Josh goes over how to make a winter / rain wax
I can't abbreviate the content well enough so I suggest you watch it. What I found interesting though was the claim, that different group oils (I to V) interact with paraffin wax differently. Hence using typical mineral oil or leaving the factory grease of chains in the wax would shorten the long molecular chains of the paraffin wax, thus weakening its properties. Silca claims their Synergetic is super high tech high end group V oil that doesn't interfere with paraffin but just kinda hangs out in between the paraffin molecules thus increasing water repellency and cold resistance.

These are all Silca claims.

What I wanted to ask was whether those claims have ANY validity. Because there are some things I've found that may speak for and some which may speak against their claims.

Firstly, group V isn't necessarily as fancy as Silca claims. Apparently silicone oil is a group V oil so there is that.

I initially thought that the oil interaction claim was bull. However then I remembered my own tests with different solvents in my effort to make a tour capable solvent wax. The way naphta and xylene interact with paraffin wax couldn't be more different. Naphta dissolves wax (albeit poorly). However xylene works like a thickener agent. It creates this foamy wax paste.

So now I'm not at all sure.

All this isn't necessarily important since the wax I'm now using seems to be especially developed for wet and cold. But as a forever tinkerer it'd be fun to test different oil interactions if there is any validity to Silca's claims.

Even if it were true - I'll leave it to the chemists to refute - I doubt it makes any difference after the second or third wax treatment. So why go through the effort.

What do you mean after the second or third treatment? What I'm discussing is the presence of oil in the wax in general and not just factory grease on the chain surface.

I wonder what's in the initial grease. Grease is usually a combination of oil and soap. From what I see online, most industrial lubes include paraffin. My simple mind interprets that to mean that most oils combine okay with paraffin. I believe this article describes what Josh talks about in the rain wax video. https://www.machinerylubrication.com...ase-oil-groups

I think grease is a mix of oil and wax. Soaps are surfactants that emulsify and remove organics - the last thing you want in a grease.

A bottle of that stuff is more than a new chain. Two even, depending on what chains you run. You cant possibly be that gullible?


Any number of, cheap as chips solvents do a perfectly fine job cleaning dirty chains and cleaning a new chain before waxing isn't even needed. Just dump it in straight form the package. Makes no difference.


The argument that you can use the Silca stuff more that once sounds compelling, except mineral spirits, turps, etc. can too! :-) You either pour the used stuff back in the bottle it came from, or in a used solvents jar. In a week or so the gunk will settle to the bottom and the liquid becomes clear, ready for another use. An old shaker bottle is perfect for cleaning cleaning bike parts and chain and managing dirty liquids.

You can find this from many sources, but here is wikipedia:
"Grease generally consists of a soap emulsified with mineral or vegetable oil"
If it was wax and oil, we probably wouldn't be having this discussion. Also, apparently it's not the kind of soap you would want to wash your hair with. I haven't looked into it too deeply

Personally, I love threads like this both for the fact that they are "stealth trolls" and because of a second type, their opposite number, the equally entertaining threads on how to ensure adequate lubrication of the chain.
Chain lube seems to have a Schrödinger's cat type existence. If cleaning is the topic any lube has the tenacity of DNA, or long half-life atomic waste nothing will get it off a chain. In the second type of thread, nothing will keep adequate lube on a chain. To read those, a heavy dew is enough to remove the lube and rust the chain into a useless, high friction artifact.

And here's me with hundreds of thousands of miles of road riding and never having to clean chains while getting better mileage than most people report. I use the "oil in odorless mineral spirits" lube recipe, flooding the chain until it drips, pedal for a minute or so to loosen all the grit, and wipe, wipe, wipe the chain. Lube every 350 miles or so and it keeps the chain reasonably clean while never having to remove the chain from the bike. All this chain cleaning stuff seems more like a cult activity to me :)

Aww, isn’t it cute when people play chemist! Honestly, about 75% of what he says is horse apples (which is what my Dad used to call the stuff coming out of southbound end of a northbound horse). The other 25% is sorta correct but it is obvious that he has no idea what he is talking about. Let’s start with the most obvious. Wax does not break down in water. You could put a 1kg (2 lb for the metrically challenged) block of wax in large lake (like Lake Superior here in the US) and it wouldn’t dissolve in years and years…if ever. The reason wax seems to “wash off” is because the wax is forced out of the pressure points and doesn’t flow back like oil will. The pressure points on the chain get starved for lubrication and are exposed to water that infiltrates into the chain. The wax should fill the gaps in the chain but because the chain is moving, cracks form and allow water to come in contact with the bare metal of the those starved pressure points. Rust forms eventually and the chain starts to squeak. That’s not to say that oil is better because oil collects abrasive grit and pumps it right into those same pressure points where it grinds away at the metal. Water also gets emulsified with the oil which forms rust as well. The oil just masks the squeaks.

Next, neither oil nor factory lubricants “break down” the wax into smaller and smaller chains. Wax is a hydrocarbon with a very long molecular chain. It is usually saturated which means that it has as much hydrogen attached to the carbon chain as possible which means that the only bonds in the molecule are single bonds which are the very strongest bonds that chemistry observes. The energy to disrupt these bonds is incredibly high and there is little that will actually disrupt these bonds and certainly there are no ambient conditions that will break them. For some indication of the strength of the bonds, wax typically boils at 350°C (660°F). For some indication of how much energy it takes to disrupt the bonds, consider that the hottest part of a candle flame is 760°C (1400°F). I used to do ash determinations during analysis and the furnace (note not an oven!) was set to that temperature. It burns up all the carbon. You can break the bonds in wax with catalysts and high temperatures but you aren’t going to experience any of these conditions on a bike ride.

Wax is extremely stable chemically and nothing in the factory lubricant nor any oil…along with few other chemicals (I can think of none right now)…are going to cause the wax to break apart and degrade. The wax simply isn’t “incompatible with factory lubricant”.

Next up is the oil groups. While there are oil groups, wax isn’t typically classed that way. Wax doesn’t come from group 2 or 3 as Silca says. Here’s a description of the oil classes and you’ll see that wax isn’t listed among them. Group V oil is just highly purified mineral oil and is more commonly known as food or cosmetic grade oil.

Now let’s get to what is happening with the addition of oil to the wax. It is not breaking down the wax…it can’t. Silca is right that the oil is in the wax but all it does is soften the wax and make it a little slower to squish out of the pressure points of the chain. A hard wax will squish out easier than something is somewhat stick. I’ve suggested adding either oil or a soft wax to the harder waxes in the past (and be pilloried for the suggestion) to do exactly what Silca is suggesting. Dropping the chain into the hot wax melt without cleaning would add the soft wax that is used from the factory (see more on that in my response to unterhausen below) and make the hard wax a bit softer. The problem with that approach would be that it would take several chains to get the wax soft enough. Petroleum jelly (Vaseline here in the US) is a soft wax that would do much the same and could be added in bulk immediately.

Another point about waxes is that paraffin for candles and other applications is commonly made from slack wax which is a mixture of paraffin wax and oil in crude oil. Hard wax is made by removing the oil from the wax during purification of the paraffin. Adding oil back in just makes it slack wax again. It’s amusing that Silca is selling you premium products just to remake a cheap product. Oil in the wax isn’t necessary bad but you don’t need to pay extra for the privilege.

There is a whole lot of very bad information out there on waxes and waxing chains. Much of it, like Josh from Silca, isn’t based on sound chemistry.


Few. See above.

As well as baby oil and other food grade and cosmetic grade oils.

The oil interaction as well as the degradation of the wax by the factory lubricant is absolutely bull. As to solvent, naphtha is close to same as mineral spirits. There is only a slight difference. The problem with dissolving wax is more of kinetic problem than a dissolution problem. Both naphtha and xylene should dissolve substantially quantities of wax but dissolving a lump of wax may take a long time. Powdered wax would probably dissolve faster but powdering wax is difficult. But Clean Ride has already done the work for you. It is a wax in mineral spirits.

I would suggest being very careful in using xylene. While naphtha and mineral spirits are fairly unreactive and relatively nontoxic, the same can’t be said about xylene. Being an aromatic, it is more reactive than mineral spirits and this more toxic. Not as toxic as toluene nor benzene (which is very toxic) but more toxic than naphtha.

Although I can’t find it anymore, factory lubricants are likely something like Gleitmo-582 from Fuchs. “Grease” isn’t typically liquified.

Waxes really don’t belong in that oil grading system. They may come out of the Group I oils as they may be removed in the solvent stage but they are then processed differently. They aren’t hydrotreated nor hydrocracked nor are they synthetic. Waxes may be feedstocks for hydrotreating and hydrocracking but they aren’t products of either since both of those treatments are used to break down larger molecules to smaller ones with hydrocracking doing more of that then hydrotreating. The link I provided above in this post says that Group V oils include food and cosmetic grade oils.

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