yaw

Edit: I don't entirely agree with aspects of the other responses, so here are my thoughts for your consideration (written before I read the others).

1. It is critical to do a good job here to get ideal wax adhesion, so I would get a water tight plastic container with lid, immerse the chain in mineral turpentine/white spirits (whatever it is called where you are), let it sit for 15 minutes to soak initially, then shake it up, drain, and do a few more shake ups with fresh solvent each time until it runs nice and clear. Follow that right away with a soak and a couple final shake ups in methylated spirits/isopropyl alcohol/the purest alcohol you can find, which will get the remaining mineral solvent out and evaporate residue free after removing the chain, this step is to avoid any residual film from the first solvent and will leave the metal nice and naked.

2. Just let it sit out for a while until you can see that the alcohol has evaporated completely and the chain appears bone dry inside and out. If you heat the chain with a hair dyer it will be done within minutes. Dry will be obvious. You could even drop the prepped chain into boiling water, drain it, and then wax it once most of the water has evaporated, if you do not have relatively pure alcohol. Then it is best to wax it right away so the naked metal does not remain exposed. Remember, 1 and 2 are one-off preps and do not have to be repeated on the same chain ever again, so do a diligent job once and it will serve you for a very long time. Poor prep means poor wax adhesion and performance. People with bad results usually have poor prep and/or a poor wax base.

3. I usually put the chain on top of the hardened wax when I turn the crockpot on and then forget about it for half an hour or so (or many hours if I forget, it's not a process I actively watch). This means that the chain easily comes up to the surrounding wax temperature and the old wax seeps out as the chain sinks in. You could also heat the wax first and then dip the chain in, but in this case just allow the chain to sit for a couple of minutes to come up to wax temperature to ensure a good flush, don't just dip a cold chain in and out briefly - let is sit for a little bit - then swish it around before removing it so fresh wax can penetrate inside the chain. So for the sake of minimising effort, sitting it on the still hardened wax as you turn on the pot is easy and effective. Then return at some stage, swish and remove. If you can rig it up so you have something to hang the swish wire on right above the pot, it's extra easy to just hook the chain onto that, capture the drips in the pot, and remove it when it has cooled.

4. Don't bother measuring wax temperature, the 'low' setting on crock pots and multi cookers will be ideal to get it to the right viscosity and be absolutely stable so you could forget about it without issues. Do not use the high setting as the wax may fume or boil, and will also be degraded from overheating. Low is where it is at.

5. I do not wax quick links at all. It is not required because the end links of the chain are wax coated, so the contact surfaces are coated from the chain side when you pop the quick links in. I have never had any issues with both Shimano and YBN links. Waxing them on the chain risks losing them in the pot resulting in a fishing operation unless you faff around with ways to fix them, and the little groove on the pins that are required to clip them together will just gunk up, even if you have some clever separate quick link dip contraption. Just remove the quick links, set them aside, wax the chain, then pop them back in. You will see why that is fine when you do it.

6. I like to let the chains cool all the way to ambient temperature until the metal is cool to the touch and not be rushed to handle a chain that is still warm. The time this takes will obviously depend on your ambient temperature, but I tend to just wax at times when I am not watching the clock to get back on the bike (I run multiple chains anyway) so I just hang them up and grab them the next day, or some time when I wish to swap chains. The main reason for waiting is that the wax gets rock hard when the chain cools all the way, and breaking the chains afterwards feels like it leaves the most intact hard coating inside. The wax on a warm chain is still a bit gooey and I don't want to articulate the links and displace wax within the chain, or smear it over the surface where the drivetrain will flake it. On this note, to begin with, just pull the chain out with the wax at its hottest and let it drip off, the coating inside will be perfect and it will minimise the wax on the outside to a thin layer. Some people let wax semi cool to draw out a thickly coated chain, however, there will be no difference in internal lubrication, it will just be a flakey mess on the bike, with the only benefit being extra silence. I have tried it all and personally prefer a minimally coated chain, but I suggest you experiment with it all at some stage.

Enjoy the process, it will become very efficient once you got the hang of it, and I am absolutely certain that you will realise the benefits on your first ride (and then long term).

GhostRider62

I would not normally check the chain length until around 4,000 miles but two long rides in the rain had me do it. I don't care so much about chain wear per se as I do the SRAM Red AXS chainrings with integrated power meter and Red 1290 cassette.....kind of expensive.

SpedFast

Couldn't agree more. Chains are relatively cheap, chainrings and cassettes not so much. I still want to get the most life out of a chain without wearing the cogs and rings anymore than necessary.

yaw

Let's not forget the issue of availability. At least here in Australia I would still struggle to replace drivetrain parts without sourcing overseas.

This is part of why running several chains makes a lot of sense when waxing:
- Similar amount of work to wax two or three chains vs a single chain
- Drivetrain longevity is further extended by spreading the already minimal chain wear
- Adds flexibility by having ready to go chains on hand for a swap when needed
- Extends crockpot intervals two or threefold

I think it is best to spend the money on additional chains now and run them in parallel, rather than running them in sequence. Several good ROI aspects.

Lombard

Just to clarify, chains and cables do not stretch. On a chain, the roller wear makes the chain effectively longer. On a cable like a shifter or brake cable, the lengthening will either be a result of housing ferrules bedding in or strands breaking. If your cable is lengthening because of strands breaking, it won't be long before it breaks.

Kai Winters

They are generic terms to describe what occurs
A chain lengthens...it is measurable, same with a cable...including the housings, ferrules, seating, etc.
clarification noted

ussprinceton

how much does a brand new chain cost?

Troul 

depends on what brand, model, series, purpose, & where from.

ussprinceton

I looked on eBay, and I could buy a new Dura-Ace chain for 20 bucks

Troul 

fantastic!

ussprinceton

Broctoon

That's sort of true. But as long as we're clarifying, the roller wear is not what causes a measurable elongation of the chain. It will show up on a Park or Pedro's chain checker, with the little tabs that slide down into the chain. If you're measuring the chain length with a ruler or caliper at the ends of two pins, roller wear alone will not show up. Roller wear might be problematic in terms of sprocket wear and shifting performance, but elongation of the entire chain is a result of wear to the pins and to the plates or bushings.



Picture source: sheldonbrown.com

Broctoon

I recently waxed a chain, just for the fun of it. I've always found drip lube to be quite sufficient, but I tinker with all kinds of things out of curiosity. So I cleaned a brand new chain in OMS, bought some paraffin and melted it in a soda pop can with the top cut off (in my wife's crock pot), and submersed the chain.

After leaving the chain in for a few minutes and agitating it a little, I removed the can from the crock pot and placed it on the garage floor, and I hung up the chain to cool, positioned over the can to catch the excess wax dripping off.

What I found interesting is the shape formed in the wax (inside the can) after it was completely cool. Can anyone guess what shape it was? Maybe you've noticed the same thing from doing this process yourself. I'll make a new post below to reveal the answer.

Broctoon

After everything cooled off, the solidified wax in the can was sort of funnel-shaped, with a deep pit in the center and thick accumulation of wax up the sides. Pretty much an inverted parabola. Its cross section looks something like this:



Here's why I think this happened...

The can did not start out empty. It had a few inches of liquid wax in it--somewhere between the bottom of the eventual pit and the top edges along the can's sides. The end of the chain was hanging a few feet above the can, so drops of falling wax picked up some speed. Apparently when they hit the puddle they caused a splash that landed on the sides and quickly cooled, causing the accumulation.

If I had hung the chain over a can of cool, solid wax, I bet the shape would have been more flat (maybe some splatter would still result). Likewise if I'd hung it much closer over a molten puddle.

If I'd hung it very high in the air over a cool, soft surface, I think spherical wax beads would have accumulated. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, lead shot for firearms was made by dropping molten lead from great heights inside a brick tower, so that it cooled and hardened while falling through the air. Contrary to what common sense beliefs might suggest, the lead did not form into teardrop shapes. Rather, it hardened in perfect spheres. This is perhaps partly because the aerodynamics involved don't work exactly as one might expect, but mostly because of the molten lead's surface tension. Wikipedia shot tower. For the same reason, dripping water only takes a teardrop shape very briefly after breaking away from its source, and then becomes spherical. Isn't physics a fun topic?

Kai Winters

If the chain wear indicator or comparing the length of an old/worn chain appears to indicate it is time to replace then replace it. The exact description, details, definition, etc. anyone wants to supply becomes a tempest in a teapot.
If worn then replace...succinct and to the point.
While you can't measure wear in a cable you can start by a visual inspection of the exposed cable...if it looks kinda whitish it is a surface condition telling you it is time to replace it. If it is rusty then it is time to replace it...should replace the housing as well while you're at it. If you are using Shimano shifters, brifters...whatever you want to call them...the cables should be replaced every couple of years, perhaps more often depending on how much you ride and especially shift...If you live in a flat land and only shift a few times per ride and shift gently/smoothly they will last longer...if hilly and you love to shift under a full load then more often. The cable wears and the individual strands start to break inside the shifter and are a lot of fun to remove...Yes I just had to remove one today on a a Trek Domane and it was so much fun. I strongly suggest you use a "slick whip"...coated cable...instead of the usual cable. They are more expensive but shift more smoothly and last a lot longer.
When replacing the housings you should always replace the ferrule caps as well.

Broctoon

You’re not wrong.

venturi95

You may very well be correct, but to me it seems as though the cooling differential is responsible for the surface deformity.

TMonk

you can strip the factory wax with regular de-greaser as well. I just put my chains in a mason jar with fairly concentrated de-greaser overnight and agitate it a few times when I walk by. Rinse thoroughly with water and then straight into the pot. Does it work as well as multiple solvent baths? IDK, maybe not? Does it work well enough? Yes

SoSmellyAir

After my Crock Pot cools down and the paraffin therein solidifies, the center of the paraffin puck is lower than the edge touching the interior surface of the Crock Pot.

Psimet2001 

I've gone back and forth on offering waxing services even for "us" being the people that work with me personally. Every time I pop in to check out what the trends are I see stuff like this thread and I can't help but remember what I saw Tom Ritchey say in an interview once, "life is too short to clean a chain."

We've always made our own homebrew lube. I have revised it over the years. Quite honestly when I use it and wipe off the excess I get phenomenal performance from it. I understand the testing but I can't help but feel the bias and the complete disregard for real world conditions and riding and maintenance habits. So many people just read threads like this and then do it. They end up with tons of accumulated build-up of wax that ends up interfering with performance of the drivetrain. The kicker is that when they bring it in the chain is usually squeaking as well.

So yeah, there's a tiny performance gain from doing a good job at waxing. Yay.

For reference on my home brew I get 3-4k miles out of a stock Shimano chain and usually then they still measure ~.3 in "elongation" or roller wear but I change them because they have too much side-play in them for my liking. On road I got years out of the last one (I have a lot of bikes and don't ride as much as I should) and the gravel/cross bike got 2 seasons of gravel and 1 season of cross racing on it and I still swapped that "just because".

BillyD

Are you guys yanking my chain? 32 pages?

masi61

The last few pages of this thread has benefitted from some actual useful information sharing about methods. Many, many snarky, juvenile or just unhelpful sidetracked remarks (mostly from those who feel chain waxing is a waste of time) are wasted making this seem like a troll thread when it does not have to be.

Troul 

nah, just stretching it. Clean though, amirite?

Lombard

Amazing that there is so much depth to the Cult of Hot Waxing.

TMonk

and to it's opponents!