jadocs

Received my PTFE last week from China and did two chains. Amazing!

I am very anal about keeping my drivetrain clean and I maintain it after every ride. When I was using lube (Dumond Tech Lite), I developed a process where I would be done in about 30 min. After riding with Paraffin and PTFE, I didn't have to do anything other than use a brush to flick off the wax dust/bits. You can literally run the chain through your fingers and have ZERO dirt/gunk/grease...perfectly clean. I kind felt like I must be missing something because I was looking for things that needed cleaning. Shifting was smooth and silent. I'm never going back to wet lube.

t1k

Welcome to the chain waxers club
I'm curious to know what will be you mileage on one waxing,

jadocs

I'll let you know for sure. I'm betting that I go longer than I did using regular lube...and the process for re-waxing is also easy, clean and painless "plus + plus" in my book.

t1k

I've been quiet for a few days. Mainly because my current waxing mix works quite well.

If anyone is interested, the composition of the mix is 450 gram of food grade paraffin, 200 gram of paraffin oil and 170 gram of bee wax.
The mix is much thinner than pure paraffin, which helps with the chain stiffness and chain skipping issues in cold weather. I've been riding on a waxed chain for a week. About 110 km (~70 miles).
Mostly dry conditions and temperature ranging from +5C to -15C (41-5F). One thing that I'd like to improve with the mix is it's adhesion properties. It doesn't stick to the chain as well as pure paraffin.
I will try to add a bit more bee wax to the mix to improve that aspect. The mix also feels a bit oily to the touch but does not attract any dirt to the chain.

I also found a very informative waxing thread on an Ukrainian bike forum.
Chain. Paraffin and other solid lubes

People were experimenting with paraffin, bee wax and all sorts of additives since 2014. The thread is over 200 pages long and I read through about 70 so far.
Here's the summary of what I've learned so far:
- Paraffin wax: sticks to a chain very well, dry weather mileage before rewaxing 300-700 km. Very susceptible to rain, however, rain when riding on mud or clear paved roads, affect the waxing less than when riding on the wet dusty/sandy surfaces (the theory is that the water doesn't wash the wax out of the links but rather caries send into the rollers, and the sand scabs off the wax). Pure paraffin doesn't work in cold weather.
- Bee wax: when added to paraffin, improves the adhesion to the chain and rain resistance. Adds elasticity to the paraffin but in the cold weather results in a chain event stiffer than the chain waxed with pure paraffin. Very few people use pure bee wax, some add motor oil to the wax. The beauty of a pure bee wax is its sustainability and non-petroleum origin.

rydabent

Again wax is not a lube. People that use it only want the chain clean to the touch. A chain is a machine, and they need to be oiled!!!! Putting wax on a chain is like putting lipstick on a pig. Yes blunt but true.

t1k

Thank you for your comment. I respect your opinion but it does not match my experience with chain waxing. I use wax and the chain cleanness is only one of my goals.
Here is what I expect from the chain waxing:
- simple chain maintenance
- fairly high mileage between re-waxing (100+ miles)
- efficient chain operation and smooth shifting
- reduced waste generation during the chain lubrication. I hate throwing away greasy paper towels and waxing generates no or very little waste.
- clean chain and cogs/cassette
- extended lifespan of the drive train components

Notice that the chain cleanness is not the top priority for me. Waxing meets all my expectations (except, maybe, the last one yet, but time will show how long the chain will last) and I'm going to keep using it and experimenting with waxing solutions.

I've started this thread hoping to get some advice from people who have experience with waxing. Instead I get a lot of comments from people who feel strongly against waxing without ever trying it.
Well, I'm going to do my experimental research myself and post results here. If that helps someone - great. If others laugh at me - I'm glad to be amusing

t1k

Here's an interesting video of waxed chain the performance test:

This is very simplistic test and is not a good proof that the wax is any better lubricant than oil.
But I was childishly happy seeing that the pedal moved on the waxed chain.

alias5000

As a fellow Canadian winter rider, I am curiously following this thread and enjoying to see what has come out of it, so far.

DaveSSS 

Up to 1/3 of a paraffin mixture can be a high quality lubricating oil. It will still run clean and there will be a substantial amount of real lubricant. I would never mix in paraffin oil/lamp oil/kerosene (all the same stuff), when auto gear lube or motor oil could be used instead.

t1k

1/3 part by volume or weight? I have added 200 grams of paraffin oil to 450 grams of paraffin wax. This resulted in a mix that had roughly 1/3 of the oil.
Visually, the volume of the paraffin oil was about the same as the volume of the wax. The mix felt very oily. I waxed the chain in it but didn't actually ride the bike with it.
The wax felt too thin, could be wiped easily from the chain with a finger. In retrospect, I should have tested the mix regardless of how it felt ... oh well, maybe next time.

Can you please expand on what's wrong with the paraffin oil (other than its being really hard to find)? Why do you prefer motor oil?

02Giant 

I don't do any home brews, I've used Molten for several years. I don't recall a waxed chain of mine ever skipping in the cold. I've never ridden below 10-12 degrees though.

DaveSSS 

Parrafin oil/ lamp oil /kerosene are fuel oils, not lubricating oils, like auto gear lube that has extreme pressure additives to reduce wear in the most demanding applications. In the USA, lamp oil or kerosene are both easy to find. The idea that there is some other product that's "pure paraffin oil" is just not true. In the UK, a kerosene heater is called a paraffin heater. Both use the same fuel.

As it turns out, with the specific gravity of paraffin, it doesn't matter much whether the measurement is done by weight or volume. If you melt wax before mixing it with the oil, volume measurement may be easier. If block paraffin is used, each block weighs 4 ounces, so I may cut one into 4 pieces to make some small trial mixtures. I once mixed an ounce by weight of paraffin to 0.5 liquid ounce of gear lube, then let it cool off completely to insure that the oil remained in a mixture with the paraffin. If there's liquid oil sitting on top of the wax, it can be wiped off or more wax added. The mixture of oil and paraffin wax will not be particularly soft.

FWIW, I don't hot dip chains, I dissolve the paraffin and oil with at least 3 parts naptha to make a liquid lube. It may not last as long as a hot dip, but it's so much easier to reapply. With hot dipping, very little of the wax goes inside the chain, where it's needed. Most of it covers inner and outer plates and just falls off.

redlude97

Huh?

DaveSSS 

I guess you don't understand that the wear that causes elongation occurs between the inner plates and the pin, inside the roller. Another major wear area is the hole in the roller. It wears at a rate that's many times greater than the OD of the roller. When a drop of liquid lube is applied, you want it to go inside the roller where it will do some good. Lubricant on the visible portions of the inner and outer plates is not needed. Hot dipping coats all surfaces of the chain. Wiping all you can off the outside helps, but there's always a lot of wax on the chain that serves no purpose.

With a wax based liquid lube, the amount of wax needed is 5-10 times less.

redlude97

How does very little wax go inside the chain? The gaps between the plates and rollers is not that small that it would not wick in wax. If you've ever hot waxed achain and then sized it after you'd see the pin and roller is full of wax after you push out the pin

t1k

Thank you for your kind words ... my skin is not as thick as I would like it to be and the posts like this keep my motivation high

t1k

Do you know the composition of Molten wax? I'm curious to try it but in Canada it's quite expensive ~ 50 CAD.

t1k

I think what Dave means here - is that there's a lot of wax wasted because it sticks to the outside surfaces of the chain plates (where it's not needed). He doesn't actually say that the hot wax is not filling the rollers.

t1k

Thank you for the explanation. Have you ever try to heat the machine oil with wax? I wonder how bad it smells and whether it's save to do in a crock pot indoors.

redlude97

oh ok. I never even consider cost/waste since even a $20 bag of molten speed wax lasts for 10,000+ miles and like a hundred+ dips

alias5000

https://www.bikeradar.com/news/frict...-lube-formula/

t1k

My wax experimenting is on pause at the moment because the wax mix (paraffin wax, paraffin oil and bee wax), I tried last, works pretty well. I rode over 150 km since the last waxing and experienced no skipping (with the temperatures down to -20C (-4F), mostly dry and compacted snow surfaces). The chain is quiet and shifting is smooth. I'm curious to find out how long one waxing will last.

The next things I'd like to try:
- add more bee wax to my current mix to improve the wax adhesion properties
- try a mix of the paraffin wax and transmission oil (3:1 or 2:1 proportion by weight) to test the theory that the motor oil is better than paraffin oil. I hope that the heated transmission oil is not too smelly. That will be a deal breaker.
- try a mix of the bee wax and transmission oil (2:1 proportion by weight). There's a Russian gentlemen that claims that this solution better handles rain and lasts longer. He claims, however, that the mix needs to be heated to the temperature higher than 100C to be thin enough to penetrate into the links. That would mean that I can't use crock pot and have to heat the mix directly on a stove and keep a close eye on it.
Here's of his method (it's in Russian but the subtitle translation is pretty good).
- try Molten speedwax. It's quite expensive comparing to the home brew waxes. But who knows maybe the MSPEEDWAX guys found the perfect wax

02Giant 

To add to the Bike Radar article, something from Moltens about-us page. To me it sounds like they may have modified the original recipe, maybe?

"It took a clever engineer named Jason Smith to put us on the right path. Jason owns friction-facts.com and figured out that a waxed chain rivals the efficiency of a perpetual motion machine. He added a little PTFE (the non-stick coating on your frying pan) and molybdenum disulfide / MoS₂ (dry lube that’s hard to pronounce) to paraffin and published the info for everyone to see. Before we knew it we were “cooking chains” in our basement and experimenting with our own additives and techniques. Now our wax is made in large batches with high tech industrial machines the size of small cars."

DaveSSS 

Very little goes in because there is very little space to fill. I didn't say that it doesn't go in, just that the majority of the wax on the chain serves no purpose. With a wet lube application, as little as one drop per roller fills the inside of the roller, but as the solvent evaporates, there is less wax left inside. It may require more frequent application, but putting one drop on each roller is a lot easier than taking the chain off for a new dip.

DaveSSS 

Mixing paraffin with oil at a 3/1 ratio should not require a higher temperature to work. I use heavy 75-90 weight gear lube and only heat it enough to completely melt the wax. Any oil will be plenty thin at that temperature. Transmission fluid is relatively low in viscosity, even at room temperature. A hot dipped chain might be more dirty than my liquid lube, since there is so much paraffin applied to the exterior of the chain that's just wasted.

Just one ounce of wax makes about 5 ounces of liquid lube, once dissolved in naptha. As little as 1/6 ounce will lube a chain, so that's 30 applications from an ounce of wax, 0.3 ounce of oil and 4 ounces of naptha. I put some of my liquid lube in 0.5 ounce eye drops bottle, just to see how long it would last and easily got 3 applications from it.