Originally Posted by
DaveSSS
My lube turns to a mush much below 75F. I place the applicator bottle in hot tap water to return it to a water like viscosity. I always apply the lube a day before riding, or right after a ride, so it's dried by the time I use the bike. If I make a new batch, I melt the paraffin, add the gear lube, then pour into the camp stove fuel, so it all mixes quickly. I never heat the solvent, except in hot tap water.
yea, you might be using light naphtha. whatever.
i prefer the hot bath having no solvent in the homebrew jar where i drop the chain. just using nonpolar solvent wash and then alcohols - shaken for 10 seconds in plastic jars with wide lids. methanol washes salts, isopropyl helps take away whatever nonpolar solvent i'd use. i don't bother too much looking for light naphtha, could not find it that easily. and i don't use water when washing chains. alcohols are better, price is not a concern.
if i would not want to wash the chain in alcohols i could just wash the chain in hot wax as a cheap solvent and then either drop it in a second hot homebrew mixture having gear lube and all that or possibly applying droplets of the other ingredients on the chain once taken out of that wax. but i prefer to shake the chain in a room temperature plastic container having a lighter solvent than wax and also i want to wash the salts off the chain so that the chain (and lube applied) lasts longer.
contrary to what most folks want to believe.. dust will stick to straight paraffin wax if dust does have electrical charge. it's just that wax is a good electrical insulator and will have a neutral charge on it's own so it will attract
less dirt. but the bike is not grounded and electrical charge can build up. anyway, i too prefer to mix gear oil and also some other things along. having more of a greasy muck lube will make the dust not reach the inside of the chain that easily. wax that's not mixed with something else will flake off too easily and also can become oxidised (turn black) by reacting to pollutants in the air - one example being NO2. and where i live i get some rain once in a while.
~0.001% chain wear since last august. not really sure about mileage but certainly more than 500. got this chain washed and lubed after i bought the bike and one more time a few months ago. the way i know i have that low wear... i have magic gear on singlespeed - chain slack difference being 2-3mm. and it was not slack to begin with.
https://eehouse.org/fixin/formfmu