AMoney

For people who have a Shimano drivetrain and like to fully immerse their chains in wax (like me), do you prefer Shimano or YBN Chains? I know that Adam from ZFC says that YBN chains don't need to be rewaxed as frequently as Shimano chains. Do you find Shimano chains to be quieter than YBN chains? I've been beginning to suspect that from personal experience, but I want to know what other peoples' experiences are with Shimano and YBN waxed chains are.

Polaris OBark

Who is Adam? What is YBN? Why do you expect the same wax to behave differently because of the chain?

Barry2 

It's a small group you're looking for.
Don't expect many pertinent replies.
Including mine!

Barry


Note: Not to scale

veganbikes

YBN is a chain manufacturer, Yaban I believe is the full name. They make a really neat titanium chain that isn't beyond ridiculously expensive if their claims of durability and weight hold up (not saying it is a good value or cheap). I don't know who Adam is, at least probably not that Adam. I am assuming they are probably a youtoober or something like that or some blogger? I have no idea.

I would probably have two Shimano chains to wax or KMC or SRAM if I was ever to wax. I like the concept but I have no real interest in it personally.

Barry2 

I’ve just waxed my first chain (Shimano 11sp).
it was stiff as a board and clunky until 4 miles into the first ride, then silence.

so far I’m impressed.
Next, my other road bike (12sp) gets one.

Barry

Polaris OBark

Spin the bike on the stand or wrap the chain around a plastic pipe and pull it back and forth a few times.

masi61

I know that Molten Speed Wax sells the YBN chains on their website. I have been wanting to try this brand & see how smooth and long wearing it is. I have been waxing now going on 4 years and have waxed Wippermann, Campagnolo C-9, KMC, Taya and Sram. I have some Ultegra (6600, 6700) 10 speed chains in my parts stash waiting to be deployed.

If you find out “why” the YBN chain needs to be re-waxed less frequently, do share. I commented recently on another chain waxing thread that the pin design could be modified by making the pins hollow then having that hollow pin be cross drilled with a hole to allow melted wax more consistent interior wax penetration. This wise cracking type comments on these chain waxing threads never move the conversation forward and my idea was shot down by some skeptic.

13ollocks

cross-drilling a hollow pin sounds like a (way more expensive) chain failure waiting to happen🤔. Is there any evidence that interior wax penetration is currently inadequately consistent?

AMoney

Adam runs Zero Friction Cycling, or ZFC, which does independent testing on chain wear and resistance. He's a big proponent of waxing chains. Here's a link to his website: https://zerofrictioncycling.com.au/ He also does YouTube Videos.

masi61

No real evidence I guess. I know cross drilling a hollow pin chain sounds crazy, just something I was curious. You never know, some hardened tool steel can hold up to having little holes poked in it I guess…

Just my own anecdotal observation that occasionally the chain would sound like and act like it needed to be re-waxed after only 50 or 60 miles. Probably this was when my chain prep was not the greatest. I may have thinned the wax too much when I was playing around with adding a bit of lamp oil (AKA paraffin oil) to my Gulf canning wax. But I have noticed that some chains will wear out faster than I would like. The KMC chains I have used are quiet and shift great but they wear out the fastest. Personally, I think Taya chains are under rated. Their master link design isn’t the best though.

13ollocks

I've been waxing KMC 10sp chains for years now. I started the wax crockpot with "store-bought" canning wax, but now I chuck anything (read: unwanted scented candles) into the mix. I usually run a chain for ~300 mi before I swap in a fresh one (I run three in rotation). I don't pay any attention to chain wear - I feel if I get 3 years/~20k out of a cassette and three chains, I'm happy to replace the whole set. If, at that point, one of the rings is noisy or rough, I'll replace that also. I'm happy with how KMC chains perform - they're quiet and they shift well, and if they wear faster or slower than other brands, so be it. Drivetrain components will inevitably wear - life's too short to track them as they do so, just replace when necessary.

Andrew R Stewart 

A real reason why wax is not as long lasting as an oil can be is its lack of flow. Wax gets scuffed/rubbed/scraped off the chain's surfaces in use and wax being a solid the now bare spots won't recoat with whatever wax is nearby (like that tiny amount inside a drilled out chain pin). If wax was so great a lube I think it would be used by far more industries and in far more amounts than it is. Andy

elcruxio

The thing to understand about lubricants is that they're use case specific. For example grease is great for ball bearings but does not work at all as a camshaft bearing lube. Assuming the bearings are the common bush type. Alternatively oil can work for ball bearings but it's a challenge making it stay inside the bearing, so generally oil is pretty bad for ball bearings.

The use case parameters for bicycle chains are low speed, low load, low friction, very high contamination.

Compared to a lot of other bearing types, bicycle chains move very slowly. The loads put on them are also not high at all when compared to what the chains can withstand.

A completely dry chain containing no lubricant whatsoever only has around 5 % lower efficiency than a lubricated chain. For reference that's about the same as a Rohloff speedhub efficiency fluctuates between its gears. Having no lubrication does increase wear significantly though so it's a good idea to have some sort of lubricant in there.

Bicycle chains are completely unsealed and unprotected against the elements. Even if you only ride in Arizona, there is always dust that's going to get caught in chain oil. And it only gets worse from there. So a liquid chain lubricant will eventually become a grinding paste.

So what bicycle chains actually need from a lubricant is something that can protect the chain from contamination, protects the chain from metal to metal contact wear and has some lubrication properties so that it isn't detrimental to efficiency. And wax really does tick all those boxes.

Wax provides really good protection against dry contamination as stuff doesn't stick to it.

Wax provides excellent protection against water because water cannot flush it out of the chain and solid wax is somewhat hydrophobic.

Wax provides protection against metal to metal wear as proven by tests done by ZFC and others. Why wax remains in place even though there's metal moving against metal isn't exactly known. However from what I've experimented with the stuff, it's actually pretty difficult to scratch wax completely off a metal surface. The big chunks fly off easily but they leave behind a micro thin layer of wax that takes some real work to buff out even with metal tools.

And to top it all off, wax tends to be pretty slippery against other wax surfaces. Think wooden sticky drawers you rub some wax on and they slide out easy afterwards. That sort of thing. It also turns out that that wax against wax slipperiness is actually more slippery than your typical oil lubrication. Makes sense, because depending on context, oil isn't that slippery. On some surfaces it is, but on metal surfaces it's kinda meh. Also the functioning principle of oil as lubricant makes it a sorta bad lubricant for low speed bush type bearings, which chains have. Oil doesn't really separate rotating metal surfaces from one another until enough speed or oil pressure or both are introduced.

So the reason why wax isn't used in more applications is because those applications have lubrication requirements different from what hard wax can provide.

Andrew R Stewart 

I'm no lubricant expert but I do observe the world and see what others have done for generations before. Wax as a chain lube has had the issue of long term corrosion protection ever since I first tried it/learned of it back in the 1970s. If this were able to be worked around I agree that a wax would make a good chain lube, although at the cost of more time and effort than most will be up for.

Until then I would suggest that the "case specific" also apply to wax lube, the conditions the bike is ridden in as well as the user's willingness/ability to do the ongoing maintenance that wax takes. When used in dry and salt free conditions it is pretty good. In situations when the rider is heedful of the wax's limitations and does the work to mitigate this it is fine. Having worked the trenches of a city located bike shop in the rust belt of the US I have to say my experiences drives a poor opinion of how well wax works as a chain lube.

What is a real good use of a wax coating (note the lack of "lube" here) is for static coatings intended for corrosion protection when machined parts are stored. Boeshield T9 spray is this very type of product. Andy

elcruxio

It was the corrosion and chain wear caused by road salt that drove me to try chain wax. Our winters are warm enough that roads are kept open with salt. Sometimes quite a bit of salt. Which then turns snow into slush that clings to everything.

What I learned was that while oil does initially protect against the salt slush, the period of protection is relatively short (week to two weeks or 100-200km) and after that the chain needs to be flushed. Not wiped, not run through a chain washer with detergent, flushed and stripped with solvents so no salt (or oil) remains. If you don't do that you'll get a squeaky chain in as little as 50km after the chain has been saturated by salt no matter how much oil you pour on. On top of that the whole drivetrain gets all black and gunky from the wet lube that is a necessity with salt slush. Rusty oily spots on DS chainstay. All that good stuff.

With wax I need to swap chains every 200km in the harshest time of the year but the workload is less than stripping chains and cleaning drivetrain components with solvent. One boiling water bath and one wax dip and the chain is ready to go on a bike. No problems disposing of harsh chemical solvents. With wax I don't need to wipe the chains after rides or clean the drivetrain. I spend so much less time cleaning bikes these days.

Peterhski has a good anecdote about adopting new (or rather "new") technologies. The people who do, have usually tried the old method and found it lacking. Same thing with wax.

Duragrouch

In previous published tests of bike chain lubes, what greatly reduced wear were lubricants that contained "anti-wear additives", or as my dad called them, "high-pressure additives". Dad lubed our cheap bike chains with motor oil. With my first race bike, I got snobby and waxed chains for a decade, only because it was cleaner, I wasn't sure about durability. Fast forward to my current situation, riding a townie year round, occasionally getting caught in the wet, rented room, no safe place to melt wax, and I went back to oils (way easier now that I have an on-bike chain cleaner, that turned an hour+ cleaning process into 5 minutes). Guess what has plenty of anti-wear additives? Motor (engine) oil. Then I thought (with a career in automotive behind me), 75W-90 gear lube is even better at high-specific-pressure lubricating, plus it stays put better, like Phil "Tenacious Oil".

Those "bushingless" shoulders (where the inner plates are swaged inward inside the rollers) are pretty small in area. I've never calculated the specific pressure there under hard climbing, but should. But again, a good study I read a few years ago quantified why some bike chain lubes work better in durability. Gear lube is just 10-20% of the cost of those.

Duragrouch

When I used wax, it flaked completely off the outside of the chain in one long ride. I expected the wax inside the roller to be more durable, and it was for about 500 miles give or take; Started to squeak, I rewaxed it.

I'm doubtful about a waxed chain staying rust free except inside the rollers with captured wax, but I may try it again. My current climate is wet, but no salt unless a blizzard, which is rare here, and then followed by rain rinse.

What I'd like is a chain with actual bushings inside the rollers like (I think) pre-derailleur bikes, especially bushings made of teflon-impregnated sintered bronze, and with rollers, pins, and plates from hard stainless steel, that should be a chain that is durable, doesn't rust, and can be frequently hosed off.

Ah, someone mentioned a titanium chain... come to think of it, yes, that would not rust, so perhaps that with wax is the way to go. Trouble is I'm cheap. I typically buy KMC 8.1 chains when on sale on amazon for $10. Hard stainless steel is still way less cost than titanium, and more durable, if heavier.

choddo

I wonder what would happen to a Ti chain if you threw it in the metals recycling at the local centre. Bet they’d struggle to identify what it is and it would end up in some Al smelter 😆

Duragrouch

Perhaps, but Ti melts at over 1000 degrees C higher than aluminum, 1668C (3034F) vs 660C (1220F), so the Ti would just get strained out as solid chunks after the aluminum has melted and been poured off. It is this property that allows Mach 3 and 4 aircraft to be made from titanium, whereas aluminum aircraft are limited to a little over Mach 2.

elcruxio

I'm not really bothered about outside surface rust. There's nothing that prevents it during the winter so I don't even try. But it doesn't have an effect on the functioning of the chain and is merely cosmetic. I tested how well the insides of a chain were protected with wax by submerging a used waxed chain in brine for a few days. The outside looked pretty nasty but the inside was pristine when I took the chain apart. At least it was with a hard paraffin. Waxes which had oils or other "softening" compounds added in fared much worse.

Andrew R Stewart 

"What I'd like is a chain with actual bushings inside the rollers like (I think) pre-derailleur bikes," Duragrouch

Almost. Roller/bushinged chains were the common der chains for decades, until the later 1970s and bushingless chains entered the market (parallel to more closely spaced cogs becoming the norm too). Regina, Reynolds, Sedis, DID and others all had 1/2"x3/32" chains with that bushing as their standard fair.

I might be wrong (never the case) but it seems to me that those bushed chains lasted a bit longer but generally lacked the shift aiding shapes that more current bushingless chains use these days. Andy

cyccommute 

You are not wrong but oil’s ability to flow is also a problem. There’s no solution to bicycle chain wear that doesn’t have problems. Wax starves the metal-to-metal contact points and leads to wear. Oil carries contaminants that are harder than the steel of the chain to the metal-to-metal contact points and leads to wear. Wax gets shoved away from those same contact points and result in water exposure that leads to rust. Oil mixes with water (and anything the water is carrying) and allows the water to get deposited at those same contact points which leads to rust.

The result with both lubricants…and notice I said “lubricants”…chain wear at about the same rate. I don’t believe the wild claims of extended chain wear life with wax. People don’t really track chain wear and overestimate the distance that they ride with a chain. Claims by people who measure wear are extrapolations that I doubt. The best that can be expected is to get about the same life out of a chain no matter what you use on the chain. The choice comes down to how much of a mess that needs to be dealt with. A oiled chain is much more messy than a waxed chain. Since they both last about the same amount of time, I choose wax…not hot wax, however.

Duragrouch

Interesting, thanks. My guess is bushings could be designed into current exterior chain shapes. Bushingless may have been touted as an "improvement" but may actually have been a cost-savings; I don't know what earlier bushings were made of, but teflon impregnated or coated bronze (commonly known as a DU bushing) is not dirt cheap.

Duragrouch

Thanks. Interesting. I had wondered about that, if a softer wax would fare better (I used simple candle wax) in terms of flow and not flaking, but sounds like inside the bushings, where it matters, hard is better. Somewhere online I saw an ancient tin (early-mid 20th century) of bike chain melt-on wax, that I perceived as softer, it had beeswax, lanolin, and other things I can't recall, perhaps tallow.

Bike Gremlin

I've been using Scottoiler for my motorcycle chain for over a decade now.
It keeps dripping thin (low viscosity) oil onto the chain as you ride (the flow is controlled by the carburators on my old motorbike).
The chain life is prolonged by about 5 times compared to even rigorous cleaning and re-lubing done "manually" - and on a road (paved) motorcycle.

The lubricant is thin enough to get flung off the chain along with any dirt stuck to it, so the chain is always clean, lubed, and rust-free.

Bicycle chains don't spin nearly fast enough to achieve that, and adding the extra weight and complexity of a tube, lube cannister etc. would be a hassle (chain shifting over different chainrings doesn't help eiither).

So, for bicycles, wax could be the least bad solution.

However, in my experience, at least in my climate and road conditions, I would only use wax if chain cleanliness was really my top priority - because thin oil is not too dirty either, and it saves a lot of time and hassle.
I am running my commuter and my gravel bike on wax, have been for the past two years, just to test and see how it compares (I can confirm your state that chain life is not extended with wax - even in mostly dry conditions with a lot of sand - I was surprised with that).
White Lightning is crazily expensive to get in Serbia, but I've tried other brands.

Based on that experience, to me (your opinion and experience may differ), wax is a fad, and good for people who enjoy spending a lot of time with their chain.
I prefer to just spray some lube and go riding.

Relja