cyccommute 

Depends on what you mean by “lasts”. If you want a silent chain, oil does the job but it also pumps grit into the chain where the grit does damage. If you can stand a louder chain, White Lightning does just fine for far longer than 50 miles…more like 300 up to 700 miles (personally tested to 700+ miles). It’s not silent but once you get used to the what has been described as “pearl rattling” noise, the chain lasts just as long as an oil lubricated chain without out the “set your teeth on edge grit grinding”. Mileage between the two different lubricants is just about the same.

How’s that for helpful?

We’re just having a bit of fun. Lighten up and learn how to search for stuff. This has been covered 10 million times…probably 8.5 millions just by me.

elcyc

Did the twist test on my Fuji Absolute 2.0 ( puch'd new 2010)

Still the on the orig 2010 Shimano chain with maybe 3000 total gently-used odometer miles. Maybe only 40 total of which is from the beach bike trail. Rest is street.

Same cleaning and care as on my Gary Fisher 21-speed with crunchy 8-spd KMC X8.99 (rear derail is 7-spd).

No crunch hear-feel on this old Shimano chain. So ...It might be beach sand. Or maybe the Shimano chain was built much better (tighter tolerances). The chain on the Fuji is also narrower (meant for 9-spd rear derail.)

I do recall older chains like SRAM 890 being very smooth and long-lasting.

Have a Connex 8sX 8-speed chain in spare drawer. Won't need that for a few years tho'. Schadenfreude.

Lombard

This whole "grit" and "grinding paste" thing is really getting old. If the grit does so much damage, why do I get 8-10K miles out of my chains when all I do is lube every 500 miles with a 50/50 homebrew of motor oil and mineral spirits? The only "cleaning" my chain ever gets is a good wipe after lubing, then another wipe after the first post-lube ride. The chain doesn't come off my bike until it's time to replace it. Pearl rattling - no thank you.

cyccommute 

Are you trying to say that grit isn’t a problem? Most every one would at least acknowledge that it is. It was when I was using oil and is still a problem for most people…including elcyc. It’s what happens to chains that use oil. Wax undergoes a different mode of wear that is about the same what grit does in oil. Neither one is superior to the other in terms of lubrication. One, however, is superior in cleanliness. I’ve worked on lots and lots and lots of homebrew drivetrains. I’ll take “pearl rattling” over constant wipe downs and clean ups, thank you very much.

jaxgtr

I got a ultrasonic from Harbor Freight for just this thing, cleaning my chain. It was fairly cheap, but for its intended purpose, it did a great job getting that last little bit of grit out of it. Since moving to a wax based process, I've not had a need to use it for my chains, so I cleaned it really good, and my wife uses it for her jewelry now. Since I did not spend a bunch of money on it, I was not too stress giving it to her.

Polaris OBark

It is the American spelling. The rest of the English-speaking world uses the ph instead of the f.




I got a little lesson on that from my postdoctoral advisor when I was in Cambridge (UK). He said something about it being derived from the ancient Phoenician alphabet, and was insistent that sulphur, sulphuric, etc was the correct way. He knew quite a bit about classical philology and had a Nobel Prize in Chemistry; I wasn't in much of a position to argue (although I tried).

cyccommute 

“Sulfuric” is the preferred of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. And it is derived from Latin “sulfurium”. The English just had to go and be all fancy and add that “ph”. Plus English is just weird. What does ghoti spell? Hint: it breaths water.

Maelochs

Breathes water? Weird .... unlike water-dwellers, which breathe oxygen .....

livedarklions

The original Latin word appears to be "sulpur", so that's just bad etymology (albeit oft-repeated). The " f" spelling appears to have originated in medieval France.

The confusion stems from the Romans using a spelling they usually used for words of Greek origin on a word they borrowed from Sanskrit.

Trakhak

A George Bernard Shaw scholar, I take it. British/English spelling practices drove Shaw crazy. (Shaw must have fished around for examples of illogical standard spellings before he came up with "ghoti.") The cantankerous professor of phonetics Henry Higgins in Shaw's play Pygmalion (better known in the movie musical form of My Fair Lady) was inspired largely by the real-life, equally cantankerous prof of phonetics Henry Sweet, who advocated for a sweeping overhaul of English spelling using a rationalized approach similar to Esperanto.

Edit: not Shaw, as I just learned from the Wikipedia page for "ghoti":

The first confirmed use of ghoti is in a letter dated 11 December 1855 from Charles Ollier to Leigh Hunt. On the third page of the letter, Ollier explains, "My son William has hit upon a new method of spelling Fish." Ollier then demonstrates the rationale, "So that ghoti is fish." The letter credits ghoti to William Ollier Jr., born 1824.

The rationale:

gh, pronounced /f/ as in enough or tough; o, pronounced /i/ as in women; ti, pronounced /sh/ as in nation or motion.

Maelochs

History and etymology ... this site offers such a rich and broad palette of information.

livedarklions

The trace amounts of grit for the relatively undemanding type of riding OP is describing?

"Rattling" of any kind on a road bike would drive me nuts, btw, so I'd have to second the "no thanks" of Lombard .
That's no kind of statement that's universally true, but blanket statements of the hazards of grit are not, either.

I think the bigger point is that if OP really wants to keep sand out of his chain, he will not be able to do so without switching to wax. Any method he uses to clean an oil-covered chain will be defeated the second he returns to the sandy path. So yeah, White Lightning's noisiness might be a good trade off for him, but I don't find wax-based lubes generally good for road use because I just end up spending way too much time changing the wax on my bike ever couple of weeks or so.

Maelochs

Whatever. I wax some chains and wet-lube others. I don't have an issue with the noise ... and any kind of weird noise from my bike while riding drives me up a wall because bikes shouldn't make weird noises.

We are all different.

livedarklions

I think the more interesting question is why "ghoti" is almost universally attributed to Shaw when he never mentioned it. Classic false attribution/Mandela effect.

livedarklions

What's interesting about this post is that you're saying you're different from yourself--you do different things for different bikes. Serious question with no "wrong" answer--how do you decide which lube for which chain?

cyccommute 

Water-dwellers “breathe” water. They extract the oxygen from the water but they have to flow water over the gills to do so. Take them out of the water and they don’t breathe.

indyfabz

How do you pronounce SRAM?

Maelochs

My rain bike and my older bikes get some sort of liquid .... not sure if rain washing off wax is a myth or not .... and the old bikes, I am not going to buy three chains for a rotation to always have one waxed,. I have enough 11-speeds that having half-a-dozen chains is okay, but only one 10-speed, one nine-speed, one 7-speed .... and one 8-speed but it is MTB. Not sure MTB riders are allowed to wax their chains.

Iride01 

Just clean your chain as best you can. And it's probably what you did the first time. Then lube it and ride it. When the chain measures as being worn, then replace it.

Chains are still relatively inexpensive and for me, don't warrant having a lot of effort thrown at them to extend their life a questionable amount of time more.

cyccommute 

To get back on track, grit even on a low power vehicle like a bicycle is the cause of chain wear. That “gritty feel” is from the very small particles of sand trapped at the pin/plate junction and is due to the physical grinding of the same grit to smaller particles. What we don’t feel is the grit eroding the steel since the grit is harder.

The “pearl rattling” noise isn’t as bad as it sound. It’s a very subtle noise but is slightly louder than what an oiled chain makes. I’m not sure what you mean by “blanket statements of the hazards of grit”. Grit is a problem for bicycles. It’s one of two reason why our chains wear out so quickly. Motorcycles, which put much more stress on the chain then we can ever produce, don’t wear chains out in a few thousand miles. They have sealing systems and oiling systems that let their chains last many times what our bicycle chains do. They are putting out 50 to 80 (or more) horsepower and their chains last from 12,000 to 30,000 miles. We put out 1/5 to 1/4 horsepower and our chains last around 3000 miles. Yea, grit is a problem.

Additionally, most people are going to be bothered by the grit grinding then by pearl rattling.

I would agree that any oil system is going to be a continual problem. I would also agree that hot wax is just trading one maintenance problem for another…although hot wax is somewhat less of a maintenance problem. Solvent based wax lubricants offer the same protection and cleanliness as hot wax with the ease of application of oil.

Jughed

MEH - I'm not OCD, but I keep it clean.

I rode on Assateague Island (beach area) in windy wet conditions - with wet chain lube - ONCE. ONCE was enough.

The next morning my chain was like a concrete block - encrusted in sand, salt and gummed up lube. Couldn't get it the chain clean, had to throw it away. My cassette needed to come off and be deep cleaned to get all the sand/lube glue mixture... after one ride.

Dry/wax lube only from now on.

elcruxio

Personally I feel that pearl rattle noise is the same as when using a very dry lube on a still clean chain. I get antsy when a chain starts squeaking but that eventually happens with every lube.

livedarklions

I'm with you on this one, I definitely breathe air.

Now, are you going to e marketing a lube called "Ghoti Oil"?

livedarklions

Too long to respond to fully, but I think we're really differing on how we rank the importance of the problems.

I will say, though, that comparing motorcycle chains on this basis is a bit silly. Yes, mc chains are subjected to far more horsepower, but they're a hell of a lot bigger, heavier and stronger than bike chains could ever be, plus they're not being "derailed" on a regular basis. It's like comparing the mileage you can expect from a car tire to a bike tire. If you could over-build the bike chain to the extent that you can a motorcycle chain, I'd bet the mileage would be a lot more comparable. You really claiming you're getting 25,000 miles out of a waxed chain, where you can exclude grit? I could get nitpicky and say that according to you, a waxed chain should last forever, because you identify grit as being "the cause" of chain wear, but I'm sure that was just a misstatement on your part.

I tried the wax/solvent bit, and it didn't work for me because the stuff kept coming off the minute my chain got wet, and I got sick of reapplying at the side of the road. Also, the noise actually did bug me. I doubt I could meaningfully extend the life of my chain much anyway because for me the high gear riding that I do is pretty tough on chains.

Maelochs

Take the free oxygen out of the water and they suffocate.

To "breathe" water they would need to do some kind of natural electrolysis ans break down water into oxygen and hydrogen.

Anyway, this is a joke responding to several other jokes. Not going to argue chemistry with a man who makes his own chain-lube ... or at least, could if he wanted.