Can you boil a waxed chain safely?
 

Hi everyone,

I use moltenspeedwax on my chain. Before rewaxing, I’d like to take off as much of the old wax and gunk if possible in order to reduce the amount of crud in my slow cooker. I’d rather not have to clean out my slow cooker and discard a ton of wax.

Can I dunk my chain into boiling water, swirl it around a bit, then pat it dry with a clean rag before dipping in wax? I’m afraid that bits of wax collecting on the pot on the stove might catch fire.

Anyone know how to quickly and effectively clean a waxed chain? I am not looking to use any sort of solvents.

Permission granted.

Like @AnkleWork, I give you my permission to try it, but don't expect miracles. What'll happen is that the boiling water will melt some of the wax out of the chain (don't use that pot for food anymore), but will also leave warm water behind to rust the inside of your chain before it can fully dry.

If you're going to do wax, the best plan is to commit to wax.

What if I dunk within a few seconds of boiling the chain? It shouldn’t really rust in that amount of time right? I’m not expecting a perfect chain, I just want to get as much crud/grit off as I can without spending too much time or effort.

Sorry, by commit to wax do you mean I should get comfortable with throwing out the wax in my slow cooker occasionally to keep it clean? Do people just drop their chains straight from the bike into the slow cooker?

Even worse! You'll get water in the chain without getting the old wax and grit out.

The grit settles to the bottom of the melted wax, so I think chain-waxers just toss the chain into the hot wax straight off the bike, swish it around to let the grit settle out, and fresh wax to migrate into the chain, then take it out again to dry.

I've never gotten around to trying it since a good oil lube lasts for hundreds of miles before squeaking. :)

You're overthinking it. When the wax is cold in the pot, you can pop the "puck" out, and shave the icky bottom part off with pretty much anything. A butter knife works. I use a little scrap of aluminum as a scraper. Wax loss is minimal.

You don't need to boil. Put the chain in a plastic jar or jug with some soapy water and shake shake shake. Rinse and repeat, remove and pat dry, then dunk in the new hot wax.

Agitation removes everything. If you have any doubt, clean an old chain with this method and then pull the links apart to see what's inside. I did a few times before settling on my method. I don't think rust is going to be an issue, IME the chain needs to be almost completely dry before the oxidizing can take place. In the span of cleaning to re-waxing rust is not able to form.

FWIW I did not find much cleaning effect from plain water. You don't need a solvent but a surfactant helps.

Using water or soapy water prior to waxing doesn't seem smart to me. It's likely to prevent proper waxing. Maybe if the chain is left in the wax pot long enough and the chain swished around enough, it would work, but with enough swishing, the water probably does no good.

I still prefer a proper cleaning with a solvent like camp stove fuel, with two rinses to do a really good job. I usually give the chain a day to dry off before applying my home brew wax lube.

Cleaning the chain between wax dips defeats a big part of why we chose hot waxing in the first place.

I've never done more than knock the bigger chunks of mud off of the chain before dropping it in the pot.

I think you might do better to use min spirits. Rinse out, wash, and dry a big juice bottle, like a V-8 bottle. Fill half-full with min spirits. Put the chain in and cap it. Shake. Let it soak an hour. Shake again. Repeat. After several hours or overnight, remove the chain, dry it off with paper towels. If you have an air compressor and you are outside (and are away from any flames and aren't smoking) you could blow out the min spirits. BTW, you could blow out water if you do decide to boil the thing. Finally, hang it up to dry overnight (best outside, or in the garage making sure you have something underneath that will catch the min spirits). Then wax away.

I think min spirits, a relatively innocuous but effective solvent, would be better than removing all waxy and oily lubricants with heat and replacing them with hot water.

Which wax product do people like?

I just use regular wax. Once every 6 months or so I pour a few cups of water into the crock pot, heat up the wax and let it cool. Most of the gunk in the wax settles down into the water and the cool wax 'puck' on top of the water is clean.

I would only use the Molten Speedwax if I was doing a TT where the extra 1/2W might be worth something. For everything else plain wax seems adequate and is a little cleaner.

I for one, will not oppose the OP in expanding a cherished religious fetish. Consider boiling the chain repeatedly with fresh ritually clean water. Then hang the chain from one end and thoroughly exorcise the grime with a high pressure steam cleaner; swap ends and repeat. Cleanse the chain with fire (or a high power heat gun). Add some holy aromatic oil to the wax to complete your ecstasy. (Chants and incantations optional.) Keep a rabbit's foot in your pocket.

Hey is carbon fiber better than steel? Tubeless or tubular on road bikes? What do you all think about discs?

The reason I asked is that I have previously tried and failed to remove the “puck” of wax. I didn’t want to get into scraping the surface of the cooker. So I’ve resigned myself to just limiting the amount of crud that gets in.

I don’t know why people feel the need to get touchy about chain waxing subjects. It’s not as crazy as you think. I think I’ve gotten enough input so we can close this thread.

If you use molten speed wax or your own mix with moly/ptfe, the additives settle at the bottom too so you'll be scraping those away making the wax less effective

I just assumed that the people who actually get their chains dirty aren't chasing the 0.5W savings afforded by moly and PTFE.

I tend to disagree. Chain clearances are large enough that dirt can easily get inside the chain, since most of the wax falls off more quickly than most users will admit. A little swishing in the hot wax is unlikely to remove all the dirt, so your freshly waxed chain is likely to be at least a little dirty.

When I really clean a chain the first solvent bath leaves the chain swimming in dirty solvent. A second bath in clean solvent removes more dirt.

So by this thinking, dirt can magic it's way inside a chain, and the hot wax somehow did not make it into those same voids during the hot waxing process?

The point of wax is that it is a dry lubricant, so it gives no capillary avenue for contaminants to make it into the inside of the chain.

Which is precisely what happens, because +90% of what I clean out of the pots is magnetic-- it's bits of chain.

I rotate two chains on each bike, and they are refreshed once a month. I need only clean out the crockpots (by scraping the wax puck) about 3 times a year.

If there were some small amount of extra mileage to be squeezed out by fully stripping the chains between waxing, it wouldn't be worth the time to me.

My last pair of uber-cheap SRAM PC-1110 chains lasted 7,677 miles.

I think the point is that without agitatation and movement of each link hot wax will make its way into the rollers to refresh the lubricant, but not flush out any particulates be it dirt or metal from the chain
It also provides essentially no hydrophobic barrier to dirty water/road spray from wicking into the chain when its wet out.
I clean my chains in OMS before they get dropped into the hot wax, and I can keep reusing both the OMS and hot wax essentially indefinitely and just top up and pour off the clear OMS leaving the dirt and fairly large particles in the bottom of the container, which would make their way into my wax. YMMV

Thank you for the leading zero.

Welcome to the Internet, where the most heated debates are generally about the most inconsequential things. ;)

If you're wanting to degrease a new chain in the original lube, and not use a petroleum solvent or gasoline (bad idea but some folks do it), there are caustic degreasers for use in hot water.

I use LA's Totally Awesome Grill & Oven cleaner from Dollartree. Costs a whole dollar for a big pump spray bottle. No petroleum, flammable or combustible liquids. Smells like ammonia to me, but the ingredients show none. It's just strong surfactants, same stuff used in other more costly water based degreasers. It's not quite as effective as other solvents but good enough and easier to use.

Dunk the water-cleaned and thoroughly dry chain ASAP into the hot wax before rust develops. Depending on climate it'll show a thin layer of rust almost immediately after degreasing in water.

I soak chains in hot wax in a crock pot for several hours or overnight, to be sure all water has evaporated and the wax has time to wick into the bearing spaces.

I'm also trying paraffin based liquid lubes like Boeshield T9 and White Lightning Easy Lube to displace water from the freshly cleaned chain, let the carriers evaporate (Easy Lube smells like naptha, not sure about Boeshield) then dunking in the crock pot of hot wax. Not sure it's necessary, just an experiment.

I'd like to recommend paraffin based liquid lubes as substitutes but I haven't found one that's much cleaner than regular liquid chain lubes. They all attract grime the same. And the Easy Lube clogged up the freewheel and cassette pretty badly when applied as directed -- I had to floss them clean because it was making the drivetrain and shifting draggy. Only hot wax seems resistant to attracting a grimy mess or clogging up the drivetrain. The excess just flakes off on the first ride.

My understanding of switching to wax is that the initial cleaning is the important one. It is important to take all the lube off your new chain (molten speed wax recommends 2 odorless mineral spirits sloshes followed by 2 cycles in denatured alcohol) then really sloshing the clean chain in the crock pot using a carefully bent coat hanger "sloshy" tool to aggressively work some wax into the internals of the chain. Once this first waxing is done, you prepare a second new chain and have it ready to go at all times. I change out the chain sooner than the 300 or 400 miles that they say is about the right interval. I actually end up changing the chain in more like 150 to 200 miles. This way the chain stays quieter and the wax hasn't really had as much chance to flake off.

I am curious about a few of the YouTube videos on chain waxing where they try to make sure that the wax stays sticky and not so hard. I'm curious about the use of "paraffin oil" or lamp oil with the wax in order to make a different consistency that stays put. I did purchase some lamp oil and was going to try a few cycles of chain waxing with this combination to test the results for longevity, quietness and precision.

Molten speed wax does have the PTFE and molybdenum powder in it which gives the wax a grey color. This makes it difficult to identify "dirt" that settles into the bottom of the crock pot. I retired some of my molten speedwax after it had done about 12 or 15 chains. I poured the well used remaining wax into a rectangular silicon soap mold and made a rectangular "brick" which I saved. My intention was to scrape the bottom lightly with a woodworking scraper just to get rid of any potential metallic flakes that might be there.