I use Silca Hot Melt wax using the “Sous Vide” bag
heat up a pot of water to 180F. If you have a gas stove, this eliminates any electric draw. Do you have a portable/outside burner you can use outside your RV to avoid heating up the inside?
chain hanging takes very little space - see pic below
there’s no mess. Pull the chains out slowly when the wax is close to its freezing point and there is no dripping.
augment with Silca SS drip wax between hot waxing.
It’s more work than using a traditional wet lube, but I love having the clean chain. And wax works great for dry dusty rides.
And one thing that I noted was that they first used mineral spirits, but then finished off with denatured alcohol (or acetone)… This is something I haven’t done before, and I know that my mineral spirits have left a oily feeling on the chain that I have tried my best to get away before applying wax.
I just threw my chain that I have been running for 4 weeks now in mineral spirit bath, and now finished it off with some acetone for the last bath, will see if it makes a difference.
What are you guys experience with mineral spirits and do you also finish it off with a bath in acetone or denatured alcohol?
Yes, you need to get the mineral spirits off the chain before waxing. This might not be critical if you use hot wax (it will mix and the proportion of left-over mineral spirits to wax is small), but deffo for drip wax, or the smaller the amount of wax is that you use. Acetone would probably do the best job, but might be hard to get hold of in sufficient amounts, depending where you are. If you use IPA, use a higher purity, as 70% does not seem to be enough.
There is a LOT more mineral spirits left on & in your chain if not rinsing with anything, compared to rinsing with something like alcohol or acetone. 70% IPA worked poorly but did remove most of the OMS. A final rinse in denatured alcohol made it bone dry.
I used silica hot melt for unbound and mile 125 the chain wasnt happy. I put some wet wax on it and it solve the issue. Next year i will go with synergetic
Clarifying, I didn’t use NFS on top of Squirt. I used NFS in place of it, on a different chain that had never seen a wax-based lube. The chains that I applied NFS to had only ever seen NFS.
For SS drip, for me, it doesn’t cause any inconvenience. I ride 4-5 days a week so if I’m taking off Friday before the weekend, I’ll do my application Thursday evening after my ride and then it has all the way until Saturday morning to cure. I’ve been very pleased with it, though synergetic might be my go-to for MTB
Man, this means that I have been riding around with subpar chain for the past year… I was following the steps in the guide and there was nothing that was mentioning acetone or such, until I found Molten Speedwax guide…
Oh well, excited to try it on a properly clean chain going forward
I rode 100 miles yesterday on gravel, on a freshly waxed chain (Silca hot melt).
Forecast said 15% chance of rain. We got caught in the 15% in a short heavy thunderstorm. I can confidently say that fresh wax and wet grit do not mix. After the rain stopped and things dried up, my drivetrain sounded horrific. These are challenging conditions for any lube, but this was really bad - worse than I’ve experienced before.
I stopped, cleaned it, and applied some Squirt. The good news is this process is quick, only a minute or so (I had a small brush I used to brush the chain, cassette and rings to remove dried grit), and helped significantly.
If it had kept raining however, I don’t think this approach would have worked.
Until the rain (about 80 miles), my chain was doing great. So I think wax is good for dry and dusty. But not so good in the wet.
Summary takeaway for me - wax is great for dry gravel. Not good for wet gravel.
I’m also starting to believe that wax does not work great when you do a lot of riding with the chain at a more extreme angle e.g. in the big cassette cog.
I think under these conditions, the pin/plate interface experiences a shearing force that scrapes the wax away - and unlike wet lubes, the wax can’t flow back to where it’s needed.
I really like the cleanliness of wax … but there have been several instances where I’ve not been very impressed.
Squirt had good test results on a wet, muddy chain. But I would distinguish between squirt and other wax. I use squirt on my cross bike and it works well in the mud, but it only needs to last an hour and them it gets washed and re-applied. I use other drip wax on my road bike, and they don’t recommend that for wet conditions. I have got it wet on occasion, and it was fine, but I wouldn’t use it in winter when the roads are wet for 6 months.
Also even though its fine on my cross bike - we don’t have much sand or grit here, only mud/soil.
Ok, so i’ve got a completely clean new KMC chain (as per Mspeedwax’s instructions). At this moment I have access to both Squirt and UFO Drip (v2) and was wondering whether to immerse the chain in a plastic bag with either of the drip lubes, then hang-drying it? Or would it simply be better to install it on the bike and then apply the drip lube?
Another alternative I thought of was ordering the Silca Secret Chain Blend in order to do a hot bath with the wax pouch, but not sure whether it’ll be that much better?
I’ve had similar results in similar conditions. What’s odd though is this: when the chain got noisy during a gritty ride, I blasted it off with clean water (not drink mix!) from a water bottle, and it got quiet and stayed quiet for the rest of the ride. Another time I had similar experience with dust - for the final 20 miles of a long ride, the chain was really noisy. I didn’t have any extra water so I just lived with it. When I got home, I blew off the chain with an air compressor and it got silent again. So I think sometimes dust and grit sticks to the wax. The wax is still there, but there’s stuff on top of it. All that said … I’m trying the Silca Synergetic stuff now. so far so good.
