The idea of waxing my chains sounds really appealing, especially since I absolutely hate how dirty my chains get no matter how thorough, or often I clean them.
But I’ve heard that chains should be waxed often… like every 100 miles, which seems like a lot of work for not a lot of riding.
Is this true, assuming dry, clean riding conditions?
For clean, dry conditions it seems you can go quite far before wear begins to accelerate. Often more than 100 miles. I say this based on reading things over at Zero Friction Cycling, such as the chart below.
My experience has been that the noise begins to bother me before I reach the distances reflected in the Zero Friction data. It seems that once you’ve lost all the hot wax on the outside of the chain things get much louder. Not squeaky, as the inside is still lubricated adequately, just louder as the metal on metal sound of chain on cogs is no longer muted slightly by the chain’s exterior coating.
You can quiet things down again by applying a wax drip lube, like Squirt or Silica Super Secret. Just be sure to apply after a ride, so they have time to dry.
I do find these drip on water/wax emulsions don’t last long at all in the slightest bit of moisture. It’s usually very, very dry where I live, but we had an extremely wet winter leading to a lot of water crossings on my MTB rides. It seems to only takes one or two stream crossings to totally remove the drip wax. Shifting was still okay usually, just loud running.
In the end I tend to re-dip my chains after 5 or 6 drip lube applications. It’s hard to say how much mileage that ends up being.
I just waxed a chain on my road bike for the first time, on the weekend. The instructions were to top up using drip on wax after 150-200mi. Full immersion, if needed, doesn’t seem like it would be too difficult as you don’t need to fully degrease, just heat the wax and drop the chain in. Went for a quick 30 min ride and the drivetrain was super quiet, smooth shifting. So liking it so far.
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I use mucoff dry lube and wipe the chain and relube basically after every ride. It takes 30 seconds. If i ride through wet stuff or after 150km I will spin the chain in chain cleaner with warm water and soap dish, wait for it to dry and relube. I tried using heavier lubes, but I don’t like how hard is it to get them off to clean the chain thoroughly even if they usually last longer. Haven’t tried hot waxing, but on enduro it does not make sense and on gravel I like to get lost and ride through crap all the time, so I think it would piss me off to redo it every 400 km. ;]
I wax in a slow cooker (Molten Speedwax) every ~1000 miles, and every ~200 miles with Squirt lube. I actually started with just squirt and it was fine, and lower maintenance than wet/dry lube – I would spend so much time cleaning/degreasing my chain, now it’s so easy.
Also, now with Silcas chain prepper stuff it’s a no-brainer because new chains are so easy now too. Although with the high adoption of wax recently I wouldn’t be surprised if more major manufacturers offered pre waxed chains
I wax in a slow cooker (Molten Speedwax) every ~1000 miles
Holy smokes, does it last that long?? Are you riding in only dry conditions or is this pretty typical?
I do it every thousand in combination with every 200 using Squirt. Doing it in the slow cooker essentially cleans the chain and makes it feel great. I would do it with Molten Speedwax every time, but its just too much effort for me.
