Adventures in OCD: Today's Chain Waxing

[rockyroller]

fwiw I use a wax based liquid lube from a dropper bottle. recently gave it a wipe down with some old used mineral spirits & an old black towel

yeah I see I missed some crud but I'm not OCD about it. I'll get it next time

 

[Sea of vapours]

How often did you remove the chain for waxing?

As an overall average it would be about every 300km. That did, and still does, vary somewhat though. I don't think I went beyond 400km between waxing on that chain, and if it had been on a very wet ride for several hours then I have tended to just re-wax immediately, so possibly as little as 100km. The actual 'work' involved in removing / waxing / replacing is only 5-6 minutes (over an elapsed two hours). That compares quite favourably with 1-2 minutes to thoroughly clean and dry it with isopropyl alcohol and a microfibre towel after a wet ride and guarantees that it's 'properly reset'.

I'm now using Silca's 'Endurance chip' in the wax, so now I go up to about 600km between waxing, with an average of getting on for 500km.

 

[GarthW]

My paraffin-and-graphite chain-lube method which gives me 20,000+ miles on a chain and cassette, and keeps itself clean, is on my site at https://wilsonminesco.com/bikes/chainwax/

 

[wafter]

My paraffin-and-graphite chain-lube method which gives me 20,000+ miles on a chain and cassette, and keeps itself clean, is on my site at https://wilsonminesco.com/bikes/chainwax/

Crikey - that's impressive! How many miles do you get before it needs re-treating? What sort of drivetrain are you running it on?



In other news, after far too long it finally dawned on me the other day that the increasingly brown hue of my wax mixture is (in addition to any coloration from existing lube on new chains) probably due to fine powdered rust migrating out of the chain after the various wet rides; especially as the colour change became far more significant once I started racking up utility miles in all weathers.

As such this is probably nowt to worry about and I'm intrigued to see how brown the mixture gets with ongoing use

 

[Sea of vapours]

As such this is probably nowt to worry about

Hmmm...... you think?

Surely, rust, even fine rust, is not a lubricant as such? It's probably much more akin to 'grinding powder' than 'lubricant'. So if you keep putting rust into your wax, then it'll be drawn into the chain each time you re-wax, with unwelcome consequences :-\

You can stop the rust happening in the first place by running the chain through a microfibre cloth dampened with isopropyl alcohol after wet rides; takes about thirty seconds and the IPA lasts ages (so not expensive).

 

[wafter]

Hmmm...... you think?

Surely, rust, even fine rust, is not a lubricant as such? It's probably much more akin to 'grinding powder' than 'lubricant'. So if you keep putting rust into your wax, then it'll be drawn into the chain each time you re-wax, with unwelcome consequences :-\

You can stop the rust happening in the first place by running the chain through a microfibre cloth dampened with isopropyl alcohol after wet rides; takes about thirty seconds and the IPA lasts ages (so not expensive).

No, certainly not a lubricant! While the situation would obviously be better were it not present in the wax, I suspect rust is softer than the steel from which the chain is made so I doubt would cause any abrasion either.

I imagine that most of the rust present in the wax is actually flushed out of the gaps between the plates / pins / rollers of the chain, having formed on the fresh steel exposed on worn surfaces rather than on the outside of the chain - which IME tends to be more limited (probably because the original surface finish is largely intact with no ongoing abrasion) and appears to stay put.

As such I very much doubt wiping the exterior of the chain will do anything to prevent the fine rust present inside the chain from entering the wax.

The only way I can see to mitigate this would be to flush the chain thoroughly with paraffin before waxing, which personally I can't be arsed with

 

[Sea of vapours]

Whilst all that sounds plausible, the fact does remain that, whether or not the rust transferred from the rust-containing wax back to the chain does any harm or not, you're getting rust in your wax in the first place. In contrast, I don't, despite riding in the rain regularly and frequently and returning with a wet chain. So, in turn, if, as you suggest, rust is forming on the inside, then entering the wax, it follows that something I do to a wet chain is avoiding this problem; and the only thing I do is wipe it with alcohol, so I contend that this does work!