I’ve only just recently tried SSS. I had a couple shorter rides with it than a 100 mile gravel event with in the rain and mud.
I rinsed off my chain and wiped it up to get as much mud off. I ran it in ultrasonic cleaner a few times with citrus degreaser. Rinsed it. Soaked it in mineral spirits for a bit which ended up being unnecessary as nothing else came out. Then put it in bottle with denatured alcohol. Let it dry then reapplied. SSS
In future I might just to the first part in ultrasonic cleaner with degreaser every 150-200 miles.
Yeah. I don’t know if I will do it that much. But I also don’t ride outside 150-200 miles weekly. I mainly cleaned it that way because of the 100 miles of mud and rain. My entire drivetrain was gunked up. For my normal riding conditions that’s not necessary.
I have 4 chains in rotation. After the initial degreasing and hot waxing I wipe clean and SSS the current one every 100 miles. After a month I rotate a new one in. When I have 3 dirty ones I place them in boiling hot water to get the waxy dirt off. Then it’s into the hot wax again.
400+ miles per chain without cleaning & degreasing was the initial promise of immersion wax, now I keep seeing references to removing the chain, deep cleaning & re-applying wax after a single wet ride, which seems like madness.
For my bike, in dry summer conditions, or for races in those conditions, maybe it’s worth it. For most of my bikes & riding it just won’t work, my chains and cassettes are not expensive enough to outweigh the cost of drip wax lubes.
I reuse the links as long as they pop in tight. “Shimano”. Once they loose their stiffness I replace it. I get about 4 or more uses out of them.
If you look around you can find the 12 speed links in a multi pack.
If using the chain for training I will reuse links but carry a spare when riding. I did have one chain fail at the link on a long gravel ride last year.
What would folks recommend to someonw whos bikes very rarely touch pavement, IE always dirt roads, dusty and muddy, with some old class IV/Jeep trails that cross through water and mud is inevitable? I tend to quick dailing rides, with some 8 hour rides on both the MTB and gravel bikes, where I tend to find a bit of mud and rain.
I’ve been using squirt, but likely never proper prep, just simple green degreasing, followed by some dry time and then applying the squirt. Its “fine” to me, but I probably push it too long, and maybe am losing some performance without proper prep?
Should I just switch to synergetic? I like how clean the squirt is, but have definitely finished rides with a dry chain more than a few times.
IMO stick to Squirt (or a better drip wax option) with better prep or putting more on. As per ZFC, wet lubes will always be worse than waxes off road. There is the ‘washing it off’ problem which in my experience Tru Tension resists better than most others. I’ve posted all these before (maybe in this thread) which is why I had them to hand, but this is ZFC generic advice for chain cleaning and note about riding in the dirt, and a couple of extracts from the Synergetic review. Final pic is the ZFC data, you want to be looking at the rating of lubes on ‘Block 2’ and ‘Block 4’ for your use case.
For my training chains on gravel and XC, I still really like RockNRoll Gold. After each ride I just wipe the chain with a microfiber and then reapply RockNRoll Gold and it’s go to go for the next ride. The chain stays remarkably clean. On really mega days that are 7+ hours, I may carry a small bottle and reapply after 5 hours or so.
Use it for gravel. If it’s particularly wet you might experience an issue on a long day but what chain lubricant isn’t going to have that problem.
For example, I was out in a muddy wet forest during some light rain. After 7 hours my chain was fine, it started with .5 wear on the wear tool and it showed just above .5 after. I was expecting the chain to be trashed but today I cleaned it and rewaxed.
See the images/table I posted above. If you believe ZFC any time dirt or dust is involved, waxing becomes the better option unless it’s a mega long day.
From personal experience, either I have the wrong application technique (there was talk in the ZFC review of SSS about heating the chain up before application IIRC) or SSS doesn’t last very long in bad conditions. I’d go with TTT or UFO drip ahead of SSS myself for anything other than ideal condition sunny riding. UFO is the closest I’ve seen on the chain to an immersive treatment, and TTT has some modifiers that make it slightly ‘softer’ at the cost of attracting slightly more dirt/black to the chain
It’s awful and not worthy of discussion alongside the good lubrication methods tested by ZFC; lasts under 60km without squeaking in the dry, lasts barely 20km in the wet.
The other types of rock n roll (holy cow?) meant for more extreme conditions seems to last even less for me.
It is clean I’ll give it that, but no cleaner than synergetic.
