How do you guys clean a previously waxed chain?
I tried Smoove lube (liquid wax) on a chain I didn’t clean well enough the first time around. Now I have a dirty wax mess. I’ve tried hot soap and water, boiling water (helped a bit), and scrubbing with citrus degreasing (does hardly anything).
Does mineral spirits strip that wax?
Just heating it in a pan or water bath should melt old wax right? Or, a hair drier?
Not particularly well. If you are in the USA, Naphtha cuts right through wax and is available at Home Depot or the like.
Boiling water got some of the black gunk off but the chain still has a waxy/tacky feel to it. It might be clean enough to re-wax but it’s not spotless.
Thanks for the tip!
I’m trying Smoove round 2. This time I really cleaned the crap out of the chain and got it spotless. I put some Smoove on each link and then let it sit in a plastic bag over night. I installed it yesterday and it’s a pretty nice result. Super quiet and shifts nicely.
I’m still wondering about the cleaning procedure for Smoove. They talk about cleaning with soap and water and citrus degreaser (using a chain cleaning tool) and then reapplying Smoove. That just sounds like a big mess. But maybe since I cleaned it really well that it won’t get so dirty this time around.
I did buy some citrus degreaser at Walmart but it may be weak stuff as it does almost nothing to the dirty Smooved chain.
I’m trying a similar experiment on a new chain. I did the whole series of mineral spirits and denatured alcohol baths as if I were to wax my chain. But instead of waxing I used wax based lube on both sides of the chain before I installed it. I was meticulous about getting inside every roller.
We’ll see if they performs any better. The waxed based lube I’ve always used and prefer:
http://www.whitelightningco.com/products/lubricants/clean-ride
I did make progress cleaning that old chain - soak in citrus degreaser, scrub with a brush, put in boiling water, repeat, repeat. It’s almost squeeky clean now.
This all feels like too much. I was previously using rock and roll gold. Squirt on, wipe off, squirt on wipe off, no removing factory lube, wash bike once in a while with soap/water, squirt rock and roll on/off again, toss chain after 3K miles.
I bought a ultrasonic personally to make it worth it.
Just a tip…i bought a candy thermoter and turned off crock pot right at 200 degrees…and man it was so much smoother this time compared to previous times of just letting it heat for 2 ours or so…i did not think it would really matter
I think I’m a convert. Got the cheap crock pot, candy thermometer, and moltens off amazon. First ride today was about 100 miles of silky smooth pedaling. In process of switching over 2 other road bikes and my xc mtb. I’m doing 4 road chains for rotation and just one extra MTB chain to rotate.
Getting the new chains prepped wasn’t too bad. Waxing was really easy. It was a bit of a pain/mess cleaning cassettes, derailleurs, and chain rings. I just pulled everything apart to get things totally clean. By the way, colorado cyclist has ultegra 11sp chains on sale right now for $28.99, pretty decent price.
Nice! I think it’s totally worth the little bit of extra start-up effort. In fact, a major reason I just chose Ultegra Di2 over AXS Force eTap was because I was certain I could continue waxing the 11-speed chains, where some have had issues waxing the SRAM 12-speed chains AND you shouldn’t re-use 12-speed quick links, so it’s an extra few bucks every time even if you do successfully wax the 12-speed. I could’ve just used Squirt on the new bike, and kept on waxing on my 10-speed Shimano TT bike, but I’m such a waxing fanboy now, I wanted to keep everything simple between bikes. Wax on!
Good info that could help someone else down the road - thanks for sharing! The longer I go in this sport, the more value I place on keeping my maintenance processes simple and clean. Every little thing you add is more time dedicated to the bike without being on the bike. I think a bigger influence was the fact that I’ve worked with Shimano 105/Ultegra/Dura-Ace for 15 years, current setups are all Ultegra or Dura-Ace, so introducing a new drivetrain seemed an unnecessary move. It didn’t help that there are a lot of complaints online about the AXS Force being very loud and requiring fixes right out of the box (been there with my Vector 3 and Kickr Core…), and it didn’t help that replacing SRAM parts seems a fair bit more expensive when that time comes. I then started thinking about having to swap cassettes on the trainer to switch between TT and road bikes, and that’s another hassle… it just all kind of added up to sway me to Di2.
How would you get it out of the seat stay?
Now that I think of it that was my solution to remove the AXS derailleur from the chain when flying using my bike bag, lol.
Ah, that makes sense! Was a bit puzzled for a minute lol.
A couple of weeks ago I managed to drop my chain out on the road (user error) which somehow managed to get past the chain catcher (still no idea how it got past the catcher) and down on the frame. Not a big deal since I was stopped when it happened but ended up having to loosen the catcher and work the chain around it to get it back on the chainring.
After finishing I looked and my hands and they looked just like they did before before starting the repair which included grabbing the chain a lot to get it worked past the catcher. Being able to do this type of fix out on the road and not end up with filthy, black, oily hands was priceless. Reminded me why I switched to waxing in the first place.
Smoove is a little tough to remove. Hot water helps, but the Smoove Prep cleaner works very well. If you don’t have that, I believe Smoove mentions you should use some citrus solvent to break it down. That works better better than mineral spirits.
Ha! I didn’t catch that. 
So, wife and I have 6 11 speed bikes between us, and chain lengths are a bit different on each. Our titaniums use 110 links, our alloy gravel uses 113 and our carbon uses 110.
How do you guys solve this problem? I would just like a single bunch of chains that I can inter change between bikes.
Rotate two chains on each bike, or say 6 chains for four bikes so you always have ready spares. Hang the ready spares on nails or hooks labeled with the proper number of links. I have two nails in my garage wall. One for 10sp chain, one for 11sp.