abdon 

Some of the crankiest people in BF hang out on this corner of the forum. I'm still amused at the dude that called the park tool 2.2 truing stand I just got obsolete and that I should dump it, not bothering to consider that it fits every single tire I would ever care to work on.

But I was doing it my way, not his way, so obviously I was wrong :/

One Wheel

As a farmer, with diesel equipment and a farm diesel tank, maddog34 is correct and you are wrong. I also have a farm gas tank; that, isopropyl alcohol and HOT water, plus an old toothbrush, are what I use for cleaning chains before hot waxing them.

Wattsup

One word. "Hot wax."

cyccommute 

As a chemist, I can tell you that diesel fuel should not have water in it. It can’t dissolve water to any appreciable amount. As I said, 3 tablespoons of water can dissolve in 100 gallons. If you have water in your diesel, the diesel didn’t carry it there. You have a leaky tank or you left the tank open and rain water got into it. In other words, someone screwed up.

Oh, joy! Another “I use gasoline” post. And, as a bonus, an overly elaborate cleaning system that is at cross purposes to actually cleaning the chain.

Using gasoline is just plain dumb! There is no temperature where you safely use gasoline without an extreme risk of fire. Gasoline has a flash point of -40°F. It’s no more effective than mineral spirits but it’s a lot more hazardous as well as much more toxic. Mineral spirits has a flashpoint around 150°F which means it is harder to ignite and much less likely to cause a vapor plume. That’s the main hazard with gasoline. It forms a vapor plume which can ignite many feet from the source of the liquid.

Honestly, you have diesel so why not use it. Much less chance you’ll burn something down.

As to your cleaning system, why and how? Do you use the water after the gasoline and isopropyl alcohol? Why do you use hot water at all? Water, of any temperature, is ineffective at dissolving grease, oil (including diesel), or wax. Most all bicycle lubricants are water insoluble to an extreme extent…see the diesel water solubility above. If you were to use a water based degreaser followed water then followed by the isopropanol and then followed hydrocarbon solvent (other than gasoline), the water step makes at least a little sense. Or you could do a “one and done” by just skipping to the hydrocarbon solvent (again, not gasoline). Shake it in a jar, remove the chain, let the solvent evaporate, and go wax it.

Regardless of what you’ll read on-line or see in some YouTube video, chains don’t need to clean room clean to wax them. The wax is compatible with any lubricant commonly used on a chain. The wax will stick to the chain and will actually act as a solvent on its own. Wax and oil are part of the same group of compounds with difference in molecule chain length only.

One Wheel

The lab is one thing, the real world is another. IRL diesel has water in it, higher quality diesel has less water in it.

I use gas because it's cheap and readily available, and it evaporates quicker than diesel. For a new or not previously waxed chain I put about a pint of gas in a quart jar, and gently slosh it around, then dump the gas somewhere there's not danger of catching anything on fire and drop a match on it. Repeat until the gas is fairly clean. For previously waxed chains I use water: 180f will not dissolve the wax but it will melt it out of the chain along with any debris. For all chains I spray them down with alcohol and let them dry before waxing. So far I'm happy with the system, but I've only waxed a couple of chains and it's likely the system will evolve.

cyccommute 

It can’t have water in it. “Real world” or lab, diesel has no ability to carry water. Water can get into the tank…either on the vehicle or in storage…through various physical means but once in the tank, the water separates from to the fuel just like salad dressing (for the same reasons). If you are pulling from the bottom of the tank…again, either on the vehicle or in storage…you pull the water out first. But that happens with all fuels. Water accumulated in the bottom of the tank by whatever means, ends up in the fuel tank of the vehicle. It’s not good to have that water in the tank but it didn’t get there because it dissolved in the fuel.

One very small caveat: Additives to fuels can increase how much water is dissolved in the fuel but the change is minor. It’s not going to go from 0.01% to 20% water. More like from 0.01% to 0.05%.


Thousands of other people have said the same “there’s no danger of [it] catching anything on fire” to a whole lot of firemen after the fire.

Why do people think that chains have to be completely free of anything to have wax work? Why do they think that water even needs to be involved in the process of chain cleaning at all? Water…plain or soapy, hot or cold…doesn’t do anything to remove anything from the chain. You don’t need to “clean” a waxed chain to remove debris before rewaxing. The hot wax will do exactly the same thing as hot water without all the added fussiness. The hot wax will melt the old wax out of the chain and the dirt and debris…of which there is very little because that’s how wax works…will settle into the bottom of the pot. Fewer steps, same result.

Mr. 66

I would use isopropyl in the fountain solution if the lithographic press. It would extend the range of balance or stabilization with the ink. It would hold the emulsion at bay, the water solution would foam and moisture would start pooling in the ink.

Wattsup

IRL, some of the dirt suspended in the wax does end up in the chain. I try to rub off as much wax on the chain before rewaxing, but some dirt remains in the chain and adds to the overall dirt content in the crockpot. ,

Keefusb

I am an enthusiastic proponent of immersive chain waxing. I take a brand new or dirty used chain, and clean it off with mineral spirits and let it dry. I then place the chain(s) in a small crock pot with melted paraffin wax and stir it around. I take the chain(s) out of the wax, and hang them to cool and dry. The put the chain(s) back on the bike(s). One waxing treatment is good for around 1000 miles. The next time, I only put the chain(s) back in the melted wax and stir them around. Any crud gets dissolved or washed out of the chain(s) by the liquid wax. Once the chains are removed from the wax, and the wax in the crock pot cools, you can scrape the thin layer of crud off of the bottom of the wax "puck" and reuse the wax.

Wattsup

So you pop the wax out and scrape off the bottom? That's a great idea....never though of that. My wax gets dirtier and dirtier, until at some point I just chuck it and pop in another brick. Did you mistype the 1,000 miles? Did you mean 100? I ride gravel/packed dirt/mud, and when it's dry, I feel I need to wax every 90 miles or so. If it's muddy/wet, I'll wax after the ride, even if it's only 20mi.

One Wheel

I've added PTFE and Molybdenum Disulfide to my wax. They settle out a bit, so I don't want to scrape them out. I'm at 150 miles and looking good on my current wax, got about 350 out of an application of straight paraffin before I added the stuff this time around.

Keefusb

I only ride on the road in dry conditions. Once I have applied wax 2x to my chain, I get about 1,000 miles before it gets noticeably noisy and dirty. I do use Squirt wax lube in between immersive waxing as needed.

cyccommute 

If the chain is resting on the bottom of the pot, you could get some dirt on the chain. However, dirt really isn’t going to “suspend” in the wax for a couple of reasons. First the dirt has a far greater density than the wax. Second, more importantly, there shouldn’t be all that much dirt sticking to a waxed chain to begin with. Oil serves as a fluid that will trap dirt and grit. Wax doesn’t hang onto the dirt all that well.

Easy solution to avoid any grit in the bottom of the pot would be to put something in the wax pot to keep the chain off the bottom.

Keefusb

I don't really see the need to keep my chains off of the bottom of the pot. When the wax is hot and liquefied, the crud is suspended and/or pretty uniformly distributed in the wax, stirring helps also. Take the chain out when it's still very hot, then let it cool. Gravity will pull the more dense crud to the bottom where you can scrape it off when cool. Or don't bother scraping and just use a new block(s) of wax. I also have a chemistry degree which helps a little with knowledge of chemical and physical properties of materials. Although being a chemist doesn't seem to give anyone any additional cred here on BF, or at least it seems that way, which is sad.

Wattsup

I ride through a lot of packed dirt, (wet, dry, moist). Dirt does stick to the wax. I use ordinary Gulf Paraffin, and after a few rides, when it's time to re-wax, I remove the chain, and before dropping it into the pot, I pull it through a rag several times. It leaves a decent dirt mark on the rag for at least 5 pulls through the rag. That's the dirt i can get at. I can't wipe off the dirt that's on the inside surfaces, and that's the dirt that contaminates the wax. I love the idea of scraping the dirt that settles to the bottom off. I'm just not sure my "puck" will come out of the pot that easily. Maybe if I place a cloth it it next time when it's molten, I can use the cloth to pull it out.

Wattsup

How do you remove the "puck" to scrape off the dirt?

cyccommute 

The point of wax is that you don’t have the dirt on the inside of the chain. There’s no way for the dirt to get there. Oil flows and carries the dirt to the inside. Wax doesn’t flow so what little dirt that is on the chain stays on the outside. The wax inside the chain is semi-solid or solid and keeps the dirt out.

The dirt marks on the rag are likely black but aren’t due to dirt and grit. Dirt, for the most part isn’t that color of black. The black marks are the metal particles that wear off the chain.

To get the “puck” out of the pot, just warm it slightly.

Finally, don’t obsess over the chain too much. There is something about chains that drives cyclists to go through crazy gyrations and into levels of obsession that make CDO (the proper way to list it) sufferers seem normal. It’s a chain. It wears out no matter what you do. As I’ve said elsewhere, if you are wasting 10 minutes per month even just thinking about a chain, you are wasting too much time.

Wattsup

Your guess about the "dirt" is just a guess. I have my doubts that the marks on the rag are just metal particles, as that would be an awful lot of metal coming off in such a short amount of time. When I said "inside" the chain, I meant on the exterior surfaces that I can't get the rag to. As for "obsessing", thank you for your concern about my time! I sometimes wonder who are the most fanatical, the waxers, or the anti-waxers!

p.s. if it's metal, a magnet should attract it in the molten wax, right? I'll let you know.

cyccommute 

Nope. Not a “guess”. Or, at the very least, an “educated” guess in the fullest meaning of that phrase. I’ve spend a lot of time studying the mechanisms of chain wear as well as having a lot of experience with materials and viscosities. My riding conditions are not any different than yours. I do lots and lots of riding in dusty conditions. I’m aware of what dirt does with both wax and oil as well as the strengths and, more importantly, the weaknesses of each.

Metal wear can be deceiving. A very small amount of metal particles can look like a whole lot of metal on a rag. A chain, for example, wears only a few grams, at most, to get from 0% wear to 0.75% wear and it does that over 3000 miles of use. The particle size of the metal is very close to nano particle size which is defined as particles which has one dimension at least less than 100 nm or 0.0001mm. Get a whole bunch of individual particles together and they look black because of the way they reflect light. Not all of the particles, by the way are steel. Some are aluminum and, yes, some are the grit from the ground.


Anything on the outside of the chain…whether using oil or wax…is of little concern. Oil can cause very large particle to cling to the chain but those can’t get into the chain to cause problems. Small amounts of dust can cling to the chain when using wax but, again, that’s not anything that can cause problems. The particles you need to worry about are the ones that are microscopic and can get down into the guts of the chain where they serve as a grinding paste at the pin/side plate interface. Wax keeps the particles out of the chain so grit wear is not much of a concern. Oil pumps the grit particles of the right size right down into the gap where it can do its damage.

The caveat is that wax doesn’t flow back into the gap so you have much more metal-on-metal wear which means the chain doesn’t last any longer than when using oil. The wear interval on chains is about the same independent of the lubrication used. It doesn’t really matter how what your use or how often you clean. You are going to get about the same wear.

Not an anti-waxer. I use, and have used, solvent wax systems for probably close to 30 years. White Lightning hit the market in the mid 90s and I was a very early adopter. I detest oil lubes…not because they are ineffective but because they require constant cleaning of the chain, the rider, and just about anything within a 2 mile radius. I get the same wear results with wax without the mess which is why I use it.

My comments about time were aimed at the general population. “We”, as in cyclists, spend way too much time worrying about chains.

Not necessarily. Some of the metal…probably the bulk of it…is aluminum from the chain wheels so it isn’t going to be attracted to a magnet. However, magnetism gets weird when the particle size gets small.

Wattsup

Do you have a cite for that, "about the same wear," aside from your personal experience? I'm thinking of something along the lines of zerofriction's tests. Previously you've written that "we'd all be using wax" if wax made chains last longer. I didn't find that postulate convincing.

hokiefyd 

Perhaps nothing with more truth has ever been posted on BF!

cyccommute 

A lot of it is from reporting here on the Forums. There are always some outliers who claim 20,000 or 30,000 miles but, as with most outliers, those shouldn’t be given much weight. Let’s look, however, at some data. This is from Silica’s website and, to give them credit, they don’t appear to be massaging the data. In the chart below, the column marked with the red arrow shows the wear interval in close to real world conditions…i.e. with all the crap that the world throws on our exposed chains. There are some highs and some lows but, for the most part the average of the 10 different wet lubricants is 3100 miles. There is a fairly high standard deviation of 1380 miles but, honestly, that is probably the standard deviation on all chains’ wear. Take out the bottom 3 and the average rises up to about 3700 miles with a standard deviation of 1000 miles. Saying that chain wear is from 3000 to 4000 miles is still on pretty solid ground.

The data for estimate for the hot wax is questionable in my opinion. There’s not much data and extrapolating to 25,000 miles is a dubious claim, especially since the clean chain test gives the same extrapolation.

The data on the drip wax is interesting but, again, questionable considering what has been reported in the past on places like the Forums and elsewhere.


That’s not what I have written at all. I said “if there were one lubricant that performed far better than any others, we’d all be using that lubricant”. I don’t believe that wax prevents chain wear any better than wet lubricants. I don’t believe that wet lubricants prevents chain wear more than wax based lubricants (hot or drip). They all perform about the same. The only reason to use wax is because it is far cleaner and, when used in the solvent form, as easy to apply as wet lubricant.

I’ve used all the different types of lubricants. I used oil and found it to just be too nasty and dirty to keep using it. I tried wax way back when it started being a thing…like almost 40 years ago. I found the process to be too tedious and the longevity of the hot wax to be lacking. I have used…and still use…solvent wax which is clean and easy to apply. Maybe I could get another 22,000 miles out of a chain if I hot waxed but, somehow, I doubt that claim. But chains are so inexpensive that I need to get that kind of wear out of one.

sweeks

This, I assume, is meant to be tongue-in-cheek.

smd4

Why? A new chain for my bike costs about $100 bucks or more.

Wattsup

Silca is just reposting that data from the Zerofriction site. The actual spreadsheets can be found there. They make it clear...immersive hot wax is vastly superior: https://zerofrictioncycling.com.au/lubetesting/

Regarding hot waxing: "you will typically attain circa 3 to 5 times the chain

and drivetrain parts lifespan vs medium to decent drip lubricants.