MooneyBloke

Today, as I was cleaning up one of my bikes, I wondered how many C&V folk are using paraffin as opposed to wet lube on the drive trains. About the middle of this summer, I decided to try a thorough degrease and redo the chain with plain old Gulf wax in a surplus crock pot, and I'm very happy with the results so far. As I type this, I'm waiting for my crock pot to heat up, and tonight seems a good night to repack my hubs as well as I've not looked inside those for a while..

Velo Mule

Yep. I wax my chains with a mixture of paraffin and Lamp oil according to Oz Cycling's instructions.

Bad Lag

I've used the wax lubes but wasn't so happy.

I'm using a combination of 30W engine oil and/or Phil Oil, depending upon the phase of the moon.

Engine oil seems not so good.

Phil Oil sprays off the chain and onto the rear rim, no matter how well I wipe the chain after application - not so good for braking and it causes a SQUEAL.

I get a lot of beach sand from my use of wet lubes. After my last cleaning job, there was about a tablespoon of sand in the bottom of the cleaning pan.

What's a useful composition for the wax?

juvela

-----

surprised we have not as yet seen a t-shirt designed for investment cast enthusiasts reading


"loose the paraffin"


or "bid adieu to the wax"


-----

ehcoplex 

Hooo boy, here we go....

I use about a 70/30 paraffin/beeswax mix in the crock pot. Have a bottle of the Silca liquid 'wax' chain lube that I'll use if I get stuck riding a lot in the rain until I get a chance to swap in a freshly waxed chain.

SwimmerMike 

On all of my vintage bikes except one I use wax. I switched over to wax when I polished the Cranks and Chainrings on a couple of bikes and I wanted to keep them clean. I'm very happy with the results. I have a crockpot on my workbench filled with wax and just plug it in and will wax 4 or 5 chains while working on a bike. The one bike that still has wet lube is the one that will occasionally be used in wet weather, I found wax and rain to not be a good combination.

zandoval 

Bravo... Frequency of repacking/servicing your hubs is the most important part of the equation. Not so much the actual lubricant.

But my hubs get nothing less then Marine Grease... Just Sayien...

icemilkcoffee 

Wax rules. It keeps the bike clean and keeps my calf clean

panzerwagon 

Channeling my inner @seypat :

panzerwagon 

And just in case this thread fails to satisfy your bloodthirst for more pages-long threads on chain waxing, here's more:

2023.09.06 -- https://www.bikeforums.net/general-c...d-usefull.html
2023.08.22 -- https://www.bikeforums.net/road-cycl...e-popular.html
2023.05.12 -- https://www.bikeforums.net/bicycle-m...lk-waxing.html
2023.02.07 -- https://www.bikeforums.net/bicycle-m...e-expense.html
2021.09.17 -- https://www.bikeforums.net/general-c...er-thread.html
2021.07.20 -- https://www.bikeforums.net/road-cycl...ing-gurus.html
2020.08.16 -- https://www.bikeforums.net/road-cycl...laky-mess.html
2020.06.12 -- https://www.bikeforums.net/road-cycl...in-waxing.html
2019.11.29 -- https://www.bikeforums.net/bicycle-m...ng-issues.html
2017.05.31 -- https://www.bikeforums.net/bicycle-m...rafin-oil.html

gugie 

After hearing a few people that I know switch to paraffin, I think I'm willing to try it this winter. Now that I'm retired I may have the time to actually work on my bikes before they break down.

MooneyBloke

I may have even read some of those, but I'm curious about the C&V take on this subject. I suspect many of the folks here are maybe a little less suggestible than the run-of-the-mill bicycle enthusiast.

nlerner

I started waxing a couple of years ago and have no plans to go back!

JSL

Same here. 100% paraffin for me for 3 years or so. Drop them in the pot every 300k and they keep running noise-free. A old friend showed me this trick about 30 years ago and I wish I'd listened at the time. Age and experience as they say...

machinist42

Then maybe read a recent C&V Thread in which there's a link to an Endless FAQ?

<sigh emoji>

masi61

As a C&Ver I feel like running vintage parts that I want to keep in pristine condition lends itself well to chain waxing. The older Dura Ace and Ultegra and 105 series drivetrain parts that I have on my various road bikes to me look better when I do chainwaxing. Running a 7 speed Uniglide cassette on my Dura Ace 7400 freehub wheel, I can clean the individual cassette cogs really well then bling it out with a gold or silver chain. I have had a good learning experience from running KMC, Wippermann, and Campy chains that I prep according to the Molten Speed Wax instructions. As some chain waters have commented, when you use a quick link and run a 2 chain system - it only takes a minute to remove a chain in need of re-waxing. When the chain is off, this is a great opportunity to spruce up the rear triangle area, the brake caliper, the brake pads, the rim sidewall all can get some love before I put the alternate pre-waxed chain back on. For some reason this workflow has led me down the path of having exceptionally well prepped road bikes before I head out on my solo or group rides.




In both photos above I can see faint flakes of wax on the hub body. I usually take a cut up napkin or paper towel with some Meguiar’s Cleaner wax on it to clean and polish that bit of wax flakes off. When the wax dries and you wipe it off it looks good and is a bit water repellant now. The cleanliness I am referring to I guess would still happen if I was still using wet chain lube but I probably would have to be removing my cassette for cleaning and chainrings for cleaning more often. When running a waxed drivetrain these parts stay very clean for much longer which has allowed me to not stress about that part of ongoing bike maintenance as much.

Colorado Kid

Is this the same wax they use on Cross country Ski?

ehcoplex 

I've found that KMC 7/8 speed chains work well on all my bikes (currently all friction-shifting 6 or 7 speed freewheels). Now and then a sale will come around on bulk- something like 5 or 6 chains in a plastic bag. For wax to adhere it's important to really clean all the oil/lube chains ship with off before waxing. I've got a big plastic jug I can put 3 or 4 chains in at I time- cover them with mineral spirits, put the lid on and give it a really good shake. I'll let it sit for a while, shake it again, let it sit again. Fish out and wipe down the chains, pour off the mineral spirits, wipe out the jug and repeat. Keep the mineral spirits from the second soak to use for the first next time around. I'm not convinced this next step is really necessary, but then I do a shake/soak with denatured alcohol. Wipe and hang to dry. I'll do this deep cleaning to chains that get really dirty, though that's pretty rare for waxed chains- usually if/when a chain starts to get a little noisy I just throw it in the crock pot for a re-wax. Swirl it around and let it soak in the hot wax for an hour or so. Most of the grit, etc, sinks to the bottom, but I keep an eye on how dirty the wax is getting and replace it when it looks like it's getting bad. I wipe the chains down as I pull them from the crock pot and hang 'em to cool. They're really stiff after cooling, so I run them back and forth around a bit of 3/4" pipe to loosen things up. Shifting is usually a little stiff on the first ride with a freshly waxed chain, but after that its clean and quiet.
Sounds like an arduous procedure, but it really isn't- especially if you do a bunch of chains at a time. I've always got some freshly waxed chains on deck, so if/when a chain starts to squeak a little I just swap in a fresh one and put the old one aside until I have a few to fire the crock pot up for. I maybe do this once a year.
Paraffin is relatively hard and flakey- beeswax is somewhat softer, so adding about 30% helps with adhesion, and I haven't noticed that it makes the chain any more susceptible to attracting dirt/grit.
I don't know the chemistry of it, but I have read that if you over-heat paraffin something changes at the molecular level and it becomes less effective at lubricating, so you want to try to keep it at the lowest possible temperature it will still completely melt at. My cheap little crock-pot has 'warm', 'low' and 'high'- the wax never melts on warm, takes almost all day to melt on low and takes an hour or so to melt on high...

ehcoplex 

Useful for all kinds of things! (actually no, I wouldn't use this for bike chains- too soft/sticky/gunky, and I expect the same would be true with XC ski wax..... Regular old paraffin with some beeswax works for me)

MooneyBloke

Pardon me for breathing.

When you assume that folk are acting out of stupidity or bad faith, all you're going to do is generate hostility. While the subject may have been discussed before, I'm more interested in finding out who is an enthusiast for the method.

It seems a very old school technique that's had a recent resurgence. I vaguely remember reading about it long ago (it may have been something by Frank Berto as mentioned in the thread you cited), and not having the pieces ready to hand, I didn't try it back then. When I started recently, I had found that I had a tiny single setting Rival slow cooker that I never used, and I had seen recent videos discussing how clean it was, and I thought to myself just how nice it would be not to get everything covered with grime whenever I worked on my drivetrain. So far I'm very pleased with the result, and I don't think it's a great sin to inquire who else has had a similar epiphany.

repechage

in Portlandia, my guess wax is higher service.

tiger1964 

I'm using a "prepared" wax with additives but would consider switching the paraffin when it's used up.

So far the downside is, after reinstalling the chain, after a few revolutions (riding or on the stand) a bunch of tiny wax flakes on the DS chain stay.

MooneyBloke

Oddly enough, I just opened the front hub, and I was truly surprised at how clean the interior was. I did have a panic thinking the bearing cages had rusted, but then I remembered that Campy used brown plastic for those. I would prefer to use something light like Rock-N-Roll Super Web on these parts. Sadly, I need to visit the LBS as I seemed to be nearly out.

MooneyBloke

And if you drop a chain, you don't get your hands all covered in black schmutz putting it back on.

I will confess the drive side chainstay gets a little "dandruff" during the first ride after a fresh waxing.

MooneyBloke

That's what I've read too. If I'm on my Mooneys and it's raining, it's because I got caught out in it. I'll be drying and repacking bearing, and now redoing the drivetrain as soon as I'm home if that happens. Oddly, Chorus 10 seems pretty well sealed against the elements. I'm overhauling hubs on a bike that got a brief shower ('twas a twenty-five mile that got shortened to four because of a torrential downpour), and I'm seeing nothing amiss. I should look for a beater road bike for times that rain is likely.