I wanted to share my experience with waxing my bike chains.
I was resistant to waxing my chains because it seems that a lot of people felt it was “too much work”.
But having to constantly clean black shit off my chains after every ride, then spend time degreasing and re-lubing, I figured I’d try waxing when I got my gravel bike.
Now, thousands of KM later and having converted all three bikes to waxed, there’s no way I’d go back. The time saved could be measured in hours per month.
First, the biggest complaint is chain prep. Yeah, regardless if you’re waxing or not, you’ll need to prep a new chain by removing the factory grease. With waxed, you do this once, and no more worrying about degreasing ever again. Make like easy and get Silca’s chain stripper, and it’s a 10 minute, one-step process.
Ongoing chain maintenance couldn’t be easier. After every ride, give the chain a quick wipe (or not). My chain stays clean, even after a 200 km ride.
And if you ride in wet or dirty conditions? Guess what, you’re in for a LOT of work if you lube your chain. With waxed, keep a second (or third) chain ready to go, and you just swap it out (10 seconds of effort). Take the dirty chain, give it a wipe if it’s only been wet, or pour boiled water onto it if you want to “reset” the chain to bare metal. Then drop it into the waxing pot for a re-wax. You don’t have to stand at the pot, so there’s no real time commitment here. I’ve spent more time completely dirtying large microfiber cloths trying to get my chain “clean” when lubed (hint: it’s never clean if you use a wet lube, not without solvents and an ultrasonic cleaner).
For actual immersion wax, I do it every 1000 km (sooner than you need to), and use a drip wax every 200 - 250 km to keep things fresh.
Honestly, wax is easier, cleaner, and takes less time to maintain vs wet lube.
The only downsides? The initial cost to get started. But this is offset by not having to replace chains or other components prematurely. You actually save money in the long-term when using waxed chains.
Some might argue that “you can’t run waxed chains in muddy or constantly rainy conditions”. Well, at the same time, your wet lube isn’t really helping matters in those situations, either. Waxed is still better, and you can swap chains much faster than you can clean the grinding paste from a wet lubed chain.
Who would I not recommend waxed chains to? Someone who rarely uses their bike. Drip lube will be “good enough” in those cases. But anyone else would benefit from waxing their chain.
Here’s the problem:
The parts of the chain that wear out are on the inside; you can’t wipe it clean.
When you use a standard lube, it attracts dirt inside the chain, and creates a grinding paste (i.e. that black crap), which will degrade the chain quickly.
As the chain wears, it wears on other components, so it cascades to the point where you’ll get issues with shifting, chain skipping, etc., and components will need to be replaced.
Waxing fills the gaps where those inner components of the chain wears, effectively providing a buffer that dirt does not stick to.
You may not notice wear unless you are checking with a good quality chain checker tool, or when you start to experience issues.
How often you ride will also be a factor. Someone who rides 2000 km a year may not notice chain wear issues for 2 years. Someone riding 20,000 km might notice these problems every month.
And the more gears your bike has, the less chain wear you can get away with before it starts chewing through other components.
To me, it’s an easy way to ensure longer-lasting, cleaner, quieter components, so I’ll stick to it (no pun intended)!
Define quickly? Is there data showing that waxed chains last X% longer? And what is the net present value of the time needed to maintain a waxed chain? I suspect it is cheaper to replace the chain slightly more often using “good enough” procedures than to obsess about it and spend more time doing a “better” procedure.
The only way to get it all is to go full Sheldon Brown: https://www.sheldonbrown.com/chainclean.html
Yes.
From personal experience, much less time needed to maintain a waxed chain than a web lubed chain (assuming the same goal: clean chain, minimal wear).
In the data linked above, the cost difference between waxed and standard lube, after 10,000km, is a few hundred dollars vs several thousand. With the amount of riding I do per year, this is like saving enough to buy a new bike each summer.
Yes, for 99.9% of bike maintenance info, I also rely on Sheldon Brown. But the (extremely brief) info on wax is super outdated, and they cite articles from 2013. A tremendous amount of innovation has gone into chain wax over even the last few years!
Like I wrote in my OP, I avoided wax because I heard so many stories of it being too much trouble, but my experience has been the opposite.
Did you click the SB article I linked? It was a joke that I used to point out diminishing returns of effort. I don’t want to spend the extra time and use the extra space for equipment and extra chains needed to wax my chain.
The 5 block test method on the site you linked does not seem valid as it would change based on the sequence of blocks. It could have been designed to favor a particular lubricant.
That was extreme, but with wet lube, I used an ultrasonic cleaner + solvents to actually clean it. Less effort than the article, but similar results.
Any other way would not be cleaning much.
The effort, even with ultrasonic + solvents, is more than waxing.
For me, the little effort saves time, money, and headache. It’s worth it.
I have a very small box, with a very small slow cooker and a hook to grab the waxed chain. It takes up less space than the solvents needed to clean a web lubed chain.
The time, at least for me, is next to nothing. Far less than constantly wiping a forever dirty web lubed chain + the ultrasonic baths and disposal of solvents.
Page 1 shows cumulative wear (one test after another), but the second page shows individual blocks, and might be more applicable for some riders.
Even in block 1, without any contamination whatsoever, all chains without wax will wear.
In block 2, which would be someone riding only in dry weather, wet lubes show significantly more wear than drip wax, and even more vs. waxed.
In the wet condition block, many of the wet lubes ironically fail past the point of excessive wear, which means you’re replacing your cassette by that point.
For me, waxing is a no-brainer, especially considering the other benefits (i.e. no solvents, no dirty hands, quiet drivetrain, etc.).
Let it be dirty. I wet lube, wipe, and let good enough be enough.