I do wonder if some of those organic solvents you used to clean the chain leave a residue that affects the wax. Honestly I ride my squirted cross bike through wet and mud all the time, and it doesn’t get tacky. I’d wash that chain in hot water (with soap), and see if it gets clean. Then just let it dry a bit and apply squirt afterwards. Leave all the mineral spirits etc off. (If hot water doesn’t work to clean it, you know you got something other than wax in there for sure. But I’d think its dissolved in the wax now and will come off with it.)
Noted!
In the future, how would you go about applying Squirt to a new chain? Are there different solvents you use to degrease?
Can’t help, never degreased a new chain…I just ride it in wet muddy races until the factory grease is gone… then maybe use bike degreaser and then water and squirt. 
This very rough cleaning process is likely the reason I can’t get it to last very long, but it does work for me.
And to think I bought jars and mineral spirits and still got a crummy result. All I needed was some water and grit.
Laughing at my own inability to get a basic product to work.
For the amount of effort you are putting in, what is stopping you from going down the crock pot MSW, hot wax application? I used to use squirt but found hot wax to be so much nicer for around the same effort in application. 
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Great question. Living in a motorhome full-time.
- Energy draw. We live on solar and lithium batteries or generator.
- Physical space for crockpot storage and chain hanging, with portability.
- Crockpots are hot. My garage is my office. I have no AC in garage and my computer and W/D is also in that 8x8 space. I sweat a lot.
- Mess on garage floor. The garage door enters directly into our bedroom. I’m 99% sure my wife doesn’t want wax on our sheets. I’m 100% sure she doesn’t want grease marks on them. LOL.
Accepting solutions & suggestions!
How many chains are you rotating?
No chain rotation at the moment. Current procedure is wipe down bikes after wet or gritty rides and reapply NFS, or more realistically, right as we head out the door and I remember it’s been 100+ miles since I previously wiped and re-lubed.
We have 6 bikes. 5 that get used regularly. Her track bike is currently a wetsuit hanger.
2 Scott Sparks w/ Sram 12sp (edit: these were waxed, and I planned to just keep using gummy Squirt haha)
3 shimano bikes… all with probably different chain lengths:
Cervelo S5, Cervelo P5, Cannondale SuperSix
Whatcha thinkin?
I would switch to https://silca.cc/collections/all/products/synergetic-wet-lube
It allows you less work in your limited space.
You have your hands full
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Makes sense now! 
I look forward to doing this when I fly home.
Got it ordered and already delivered to our home based where we’ll return in early July. Looking forward to giving it a shot.
Completely agree. lol. 4 yrs ago I did not know what bike lube or a torque wrench was. I can now build and race-prep bikes and do light carbon mods. But I’m especially good at making things take 5 times longer than they should.
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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.
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He’s in a camper. Keep it simple with limited space seems vital
If I had a camper and limited space the synergetic seems like less work. It’s easier if a bike is on the rain and it’s only 2w slower?
I know super secret is nice, but I would want easy of use with the limited space.
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I was reading on Molten Speedwax website: MSPEEDWAX | Molten Speed Wax - How To Clean Your Bicycle Chain Before Hot Waxing
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.
Reading what @redlude97 says above, and what went wrong for @Dr_Alex_Harrison, this might be the difference - @redlude97 used hot wax in a crock pot, and @Dr_Alex_Harrison used a drip wax.
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Makes sense to why I haven’t been super happy with the performance… looking forward to seeing if its going to improve.
I use the new Ceramic Speed UFO and its a huge improvement over Squirt when it comes to how clean it stays, as well as more quiet!
Found 1 liter bottles at the hardware store of acetone!
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.
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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
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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.
I look forward to using Synergetic.
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