Homebrew chain clean and homebrew hot wax
 

I tried cleaning and waxing my chain this weekend. After reading much of the controversy surrounding wax vs oil I chose to use hot wax. The tipping point for me? I don't like getting oil on may right pant leg.

I wanted to clean the chain with chemicals I had lying around because a) I am a cheap bastard and b) I don't want some kid living next to an oil refinery in Houston to get sick because I bought more chemicals that I didn't need.

I did a lot of research and tried to combine as many good ideas as I could. Here are the steps I took:

1. Clean: Soak/agitate in a cocktail of: automatic transmission fluid (borrowed from my mother in law's garage), kerosene, and some chemical intake cleaner I also borrowed from my mother in law. NOTE - to do over, I would avoid transmission fluid. It's high in detergent but it leaves a heavy, oily residue which is hard to remove. I think I will stick to mineral spirits or MEK next time.

2. Rinse: in 70% isopropyl alchohol

3. Water bath: boiled 3-5 times using my BBQ side burner. I used a rag and wire brush to continue to clean. I also "boiled dry"

4. Hot wax: using a crock pot, I melted 1 wax ring, leftover from a toiled install which I never used and some paraffin wax. I soaked the chain, agitating once in a while until bubbles no longer appeared.

5. Air dry

All in all it looks great, it feels like the factory lube that John Allen wrote about in his article. There's still a lot of excess wax between the plates and the inner links making the chain feel "tight". I am hoping this condition rectifies itself after the 1st several miles of riding, otherwise, I will just boil it down and start over with just straight paraffin.

Nice. I was looking into getting an ultrasonic cleaner for the cleaning part (and using degreaser + water).

Yes!! That’s awesome- just wait for a jewelery store to go bankrupt

I finally switched over to wax this weekend too, but with a simpler recipe. I just used two rounds of odorless mineral spirits for cleaning, and then hot Gulf Wax paraffin for lube. Good results for the first 27 miles, but that's not much of a test.

I use a new chain and strip the oil it is packed in with white gas, dry it, and then put it in molten paraffin for a few minutes. I try to stir it around a bit too, but nothing extreme.

I leave the chain on the bike for the life of the chain, and just wipe it off and appy Squirt every 100 miles or so.

We’ll have to let each other know how it goes!

What do you “squirt”? Liquid oil? Hot wax? Thanks!

As I understand the conventional wisdom it's wet lube (oil) for wet conditions (rain and mud) and dry lube (wax) for dry conditions (dust). Am I off base?

Just Google "Squirt!" What could possibly go wrong?

For me a chain (and a drivetrain) is just a consumable ... is your time free? Just run them and replace them ... you should be getting many thousands of kms of a drivetrain.

I'm still running the original chain on by FGSS and will run it until it snaps in half. I'll wash the bike once this summer.

I've been using a waxed chain for about the last 2500 miles or so.

I like it, though I wouldn't quite recommend it in a place that truly gets winter, if you are going to ride through salt/snow/slush, etc.

Benefits: Chain is never dirty. You could generally grab it with a white cloth and not have it stained. Certainly not enough dirt would transfer to stain a normal pair of pants. Less maintenance (caveat: once you've got a chain stripped of grease and a dedicated crockpot ready). Tested to be faster than an oiled chain by a few watts.

Drawbacks: Initial setup. Not bad...basically process that the OP showed, though he went slightly overboard with the grease strip IMO. I let mine soak in mineral spirits in an old water bottle overnight, with an occasional shake. Rinsed it with simple green, then water, then let it dry in a hot garage. Chain is slightly louder than a freshly oiled chain. Not the greatest in wet climates. TBH, it really doesn't perform any worse as far as I can tell in the wet, but the issue is that just like an oiled chain..you've got to re-lube much more frequently if the chain is getting wet repeatedly. So basically riding through snow makes an oiled chain and waxed chain have to be relubed about just as often.

Re-waxing a chain is not bad at all. But it is more time consuming than slapping some oil on a chain. It would be a pain if you had to do it every few days rather than once a month. The process for re-waxing is basically: use a quicklink to remove chain from bike. toss it in a crockpot full of wax. Leave it there for a few minutes, then take it out, cool for 5 minutes, and put it on the bike.

I will make sure to do that from my computer at my firm!

I have absolutely no idea! That sounds like it could be right.... I live in the mtn west in a semi arid climate so I guess I picked correctly!

I couldn’t agree more- I run the $8 KMC specials from my LBS.

This chain; however, came on my Langster- I looked it up and it appears to be a $40 Japanese-made chain.

Also I was bored and curious because it’s January... I love to tinker

To do over I would change my cleaning regimen to close to yours. I think I read too many opinions.

So you don’t recommend re-cleaning prior to re waxing? That makes it easy. I plan on just letting the extra wax harden in the crockpot until I need it again

I had a quick link lying around so I made sure to add that before reinstalling.

Thanks for sharing your experiences!!

Why, oh why, oh why do people come up with these complicated cleaning methods for chains? They make absolutely no chemical sense...that answers that question:rolleyes:...and are often counter productive.

Your cleaning "method" is overly complicated and has too many unnecessary steps. Let's start with your "mixture". Kerosene by itself would do the job. No need for the transmission fluid nor the intake cleaner. I'm not a huge fan of kerosene since it is a bit oily and doesn't evaporate cleanly. If you had used mineral spirits, you could have stopped right there and skipped to step 4 with a little bit of air drying in between.

Everything else you did...the alcohol soak, the excessive water treatment (5 times really!?) and the bake out of the water...were totally unnecessary and possibly damaging. The alcohol soak wouldn't have damaged the chain but boiling it in water up to 5 times just encourages oxidation of the steel.

Finally, there is the "hot wax". I've tried it in the past but never found it to be a superior method. All hot wax is is liquid wax. There are other ways to liquify the wax without heating it up. Solvents work just as well as heat and make the wax a whole lot easier to apply.

Yes, I'm talking about wax based lubricants. Drip it on, let the solvent evaporate and ride. Easy peasy. Don't make it hard when you can keep it simple and get the same result.

In my experience, yes. I've used oil based lubricants in the past from Triflow to Phil's Tenacious oil. For the last 20 years I've been using White Lightning exclusively on all my bikes in all kinds of conditions. That includes while touring in the eastern US and during winter here in Colorado. I get about 3500 miles out of a chain and I only lubricate them about every 600 miles which is just about what everyone who uses oil reports for mileage and lubrication duration.

The one thing I don't have to deal with anymore is disgustingly dirty chains and the constant need to clean them. Tenacious oil is about the worst but Triflow is nearly as bad. I clean chains once when I install them and then never have to deal with it again. I don't have to clean crud out of the cassettes nor do I have to worry about touching the chain nor what the chain touches. Personally, even if I got half the mileage of oil lubricate chains, the cleanliness would be worth the price.

One final point that someone is bound to bring up: the need to apply dry lubricant after it rains. You really do need to apply oil lubricant after rain as well. The oil and water form an emulsion and the water will eventually come to rest on the steel of the chain where it can merrily oxidize away at the steel. You just don't notice it because the process is masked by the oil.

With a wax based lubricant, the oxidation is more noticeable because it will start to squeak since the wax doesn't move back in to cover up the noise. It's provides more of a early warning of something that is occurring whether you use wax or oil in wet conditions.

Close but no cigar. You don't need to soak it overnight in mineral spirits. Shake it for about 30 seconds and fish it out, let it dry. Full stop. Not need for Simple Green or water or bourbon or unicorn urine or anything else. The mineral spirits will strip any wax or oil from the chain and all the other steps are superfluous.

Close but no cigar.

The bourbon is ALWAYS necessary.

Wax ring, I would not use. Increased viscosity and tackiness, no benefit, some cost to future cleanliness. Just stick w/ canning paraffin. (I used to work in a wax factory). Also, yes, either mineral spirits or kerosene is all you need to clean. No reason to mix them if you have both onhand, just choose one. And make sure it's all gone before you apply wax.

Not so sure about using a toilet ring. That's beeswax. Paraffin is likely better, although I don't really have a reason why.

It's not just beeswax, it's mixed with other stuff for room temp pliability and stickiness.

Dumb lube-noob question; why mineral spirits? Wouldn't Simple Green, or Dawn, or maybe a citrus based de-greaser work?

Yes.

The other stuff just works a little better/faster. It stinks more though. And burns. And kills stuff...