Hondo6

You're being facetious, right?

Chain lube threads: the BikeForums version of the Thirty Years War.

Crankycrank

Ha ha, well maybe, kinda.

Kontact

See, I have boiled a pot of wax and water. For several minutes, in fact. Just as I have monitored how long wax lasts in wet or dry conditions. Liquid wax is too thin to trap steam, and wax wears out faster in the wet. Period.

So you telling me how things should happen is ridiculous.

cyccommute 

Somehow I knew you weren’t.

Bully for you. It’s not a good idea to heat water to the boiling point when it is trapped under a less dense substance. Hot oil is far less dense than wax and it can steam explode if there is water present. Water boils when reaches the point where it can push back the overlying atmosphere. When the “overlying atmosphere” is thicker, it can get to a higher temperature before it vaporizes. Then it can explode through the media carrying the hot media with it.

For those of you who are still following this train wreck, it’s not a good idea to tempt fate. Keep water out of your wax.

I don’t disagree with you that wax “wears out” in the wet. It just “wears out” differently from what you and thousands of other people think it does. Go and drop a block of wax in water. Weigh it before adding it to water, then take it out and weigh it again. Let it sit for weeks if you like. You’ll find that the weight of the wax is unchanged no matter how long you let it sit.

That’s rich coming from you.

cyccommute 

He doesn’t seem to understand that melting and solidification are the same process with the same heat, just with different signs. If the wax is heated to the point where it will melt, it takes heat to do so and it will give off exactly that amount of heat when it cools back down to the same temperature. The rate of those two processes can be vastly different. The wax (or any substance) can absorb heat quickly to melt but, when it “freezes”, it has to give up that heat and that doesn’t happen as rapidly. He doesn’t understand that with that slow release of heat, the entire system would gradually heat up. We don’t observe that in bicycle chains.

rydabent

A chain is a form of a machine and should be lubed with oil. Oil get into the inside of the rollers and will migrate back in if squeezed out. Wax is NOT a lube. Name any other machines that are lubed with wax. Do you put wax in the engine of your car????

Kontact

Would you put transmission fluid on your bike drivetrain?

Wax is clearly a decent bicycle chain lube. Chains last just as long as with oil and have the same or less drag. People have been doing it for generations, and it solves more problems than it creates.


Saying that all machines are lubed with oil is not just a silly slogan, it is false.

Hondo6

FWIW: ATF is composed of a base oil and additive package(s). So is motor oil.

ATF also is a pretty good lubricant - it has to be, since it lubricates the gears and bearings in an automatic transmission. It's also specified for use as lubricant in some 4WD transfer cases and some manual transmissions.

Historically, motor oil was also specified for use in some automatic transmissions. I seem to remember that being the case for a couple of small car automatic transmissions (Ford Pinto? Chevy Vega?) in the 1970s that specified the use of 10w40 motor oil vice ATF.

While it might not be the best choice, I rather doubt that ATF would be much if any worse as a chain lubricant than motor oil.

Kontact

Does that change the point I made at all? Brake fluid is a lubricant based on silicone or glycol used in cars. Water is used as a machine lubricant. Grease may or may not have oil in it and is a machine lubricant. 10W40 would be a poor choice for bike chains, and it IS a machine oil.

The stuff we use on our low powered, low rpm, open and room temperature operating bicycle machines don't bear any close comparisons to many other machines.

Hondo6

You were responding originally to someone who indicated that machines should be lubricated with oil. A bicycle is a machine.

You clearly implied in your response that ATF was not a suitable lubricant for bicycle chains, thus implying it was not an "oil".

From a composition standpoint, ATF is as much a petroleum based oil as is motor oil. That is all I was saying. Both are composed of base oil plus additives.

GM chose to call it a "fluid" to differentiate it from motor oil when they came out with ATF type B. The name "fluid" stuck. But it's still a lubricant.

Personally, I don't care what people use to lube the chains on their bicycles - unless perchance they opt to use rancid butter and are riding upwind of me; then I might care. Their bike, their time/effort, their choice.

Kontact

Thank you for this timely correction.

Hondo6

No correction involved, only clarification.

Composition-wise, ATF is as much a lubricant as motor oil. Either lubricates moving parts quite adequately under appropriate conditions. Whether they're a good choice for lubing bicycle chains is a matter of personal preference.

rbrides

Yes; at post #5.

sergsinger

The drivetrain with wax-lube isn't so dirty in comparison to oil. If you like more "clean" look I would better recommend wax.

SpedFast

GhostRider62

As far as cleaning before the hot dip, what I have found to work is to have two containers of mineral spirits. The first one gets dirty (all the gray metal crap). After the first pass, it goes into the clear, clean second container of spirits. Eventually, the second container starts to take some color and it goes to position 1. A minute or two of swirling is all it takes. (Thanks to cyccommute I got rid of the ultrasonic step and frankly, the chain is still immaculate coming out of bath 2. I could probably cut bath 2 out, but the extra 2 minutes is worth it to me)

rydabent

ATF is a very high pressure oil. It would be worlds better than wax!!!! Save your wax for candles on a birthday cake.

davidad

No. It doesn't hold up in the rain and does not do a good job of lubrication. I used chainsaw bar oil diluted with 4 parts unscented mineral spirits. I remove my chain, clean and lube every 800 miles.

Kontact

You can save your categorization logical fallacies for someone whose brain doesn't work. Wax clearly provides adequate lubrication to make chains last as long as any oil, so it is a lubricant.

zedda

Call me 'old fashioned' (?), but waxing is not something I associate with chains.

smd4

Frank Berto was using wax on his chain in the mid 1980s. I’m sure the practice goes back even further. Definitely not something new.

Camilo

Let's see if I have this right:

Chains should be lubricated
Wax dipping works
Wax dripping works
Cheap oil works
Expensive oil works

But most importantly: One may be either/and/or better, cheaper, more convenient than the others.
People who don't lubricate the same as I/you do are ignorant and lazy.

Kontact

I don't think the last line is correct. It is more like, "Some people don't believe that some of these options are real."

cyccommute 

This company would probably disagree with you. Their product is meant for chains but not of the bicycle variety. From their site

I suspect that the “low load” they are referring to is quite a bit higher than the load that a bicyclist puts on a chain. I doubt that a conveyor, drive and control chain is being powered by 1/4 horsepower motor.

SkinGriz

I think it’s all irrelevant.

I’d think if chain lube was that critical the chain would be fully encased and ride through an oil bath.

I also think the people that hot wax their chains could probably just put the chain in the crock pot without any prior dunking to remove old lube and they’d probably get the same result.

I saw a video (I think the British bike mag) where a company passed a chain through a special high pressure wash and rinse and then had their proprietary lube.

I bet they could just put something like Tellus 32 (or ATF) and use that as the high pressure wash and omit the next step of proprietary lube and then get the same exact friction reading.