if the chain gets wet, as it has recently (Northern California wet winter), I wash the bike and degrease the chain (UFO Clean) on the bike… pro tip: remove wheels to protect rotors from overspray. If windy I have a piece of cardboard to protect the rear disc brake from overspray.
Dry the bike, and point my Lasko fan at the chain while periodically rotating the chain. Then before going to bed, about 3-4 hours later, I spend 5 minutes applying drip wax.
Finally I open Garmin Connect, bump the max mileage by ~150-170 (to some round number):
And then when I hit the mileage, even if chain isn’t that noisy, I either reapply drip wax or wash the bike if the chain has gotten wet. Always wiping down the chain after every ride. This chain has 2000 miles and no sign of wear.
In Garmin Connect, under Gear > Other, you can track tire mileage, or chain mileage, or how many miles since you last applied drip wax. Then I get an email like this:
as a reminder because after a ride the last thing I’m thinking of is putting drip wax on the chain. While I could just do it when it starts sounding really noisy, its nice to stay on top of maintenance plus keep track of how long the chain lasts before it gets stretched out.
Since I have 2 bikes I’d rather the components be assigned to individual bikes. Looking at intervals.icu can add multiple reminders to a specific bike by time, mileage, etc such as “lube chain” or “check chain wear”.
It’s nearly good enough to complete our final ‘boss level’ situation - but not quite!
We have ~10 chains of 2 different lengths, shared between 5 bikes. When one needs it, it gets taken off and replaced by a freshly (immersive) waxed one. It’s then cleaned to whatever level, rewaxed and hung on the peg for the next use. Tracking mileage, use or even which particular shimano chain is which is an impossible task - so we just drop the chain checker on the chain before doing step 1, if it goes in the chain is binned. Harder to fully quantify mileage on any chain, but efficient otherwise.
I’m actually doing an experiment with UFO Drip/Clean so am keeping one chain on one bike and cleaning it in situ until it’s worn/I’m bored of testing so intervals will help for that task
That’s definitely far more extensive than what I’m doing. As much as I’d love to track in that much detail I’m far too lazy. I’m just happy enough to be reminded to lube my chain or check my chain wear every x number of miles. Not they I don’t do those now but it’s definitely something I forget.
Understand your point, and on my side I’ve been tracking tires and stuff in Garmin for 6 years now and it’s easy to change defaults assigned to new workouts. Or post ride toggle off tires when I do a trainer workout.
So looking more at features of intervals.icu for adding components and reminders per bike. Reminders is really what I’m interested. For each bike, I’ve added a reminder to relube based on mileage and check chain wear based on number of activities.
All of those things are because it’s closer to oil than the others
No bad thing in certain conditions, and I use tru tension myself in those situations - it’s a next generation product and beats Squirt in all tests, but especially the wet and dirty type. Worth a look at that (or even Flower Power) for a similar use but better performance
But but but, how often do you need to apply it? I apply SSS every 150-175 mile on my road bike, squirt, probably at 100 mile intervals. So you need to weigh longevity with the cost
I found it to be pretty good, nice and quiet and long lasting. ZFC reckons it’s relatively dirty for a drip wax, but I didn’t notice it being worse than the others. I do wipe the chain down a lot though.
Because it’s not compatible with immersive waxing I’ve put it to one side for now, and testing ufo drip has taken over - I’m using that on the trainer at the moment.
Same here, hence why I got tired of wasting half the application on the floor… and went back to Squirt.
Got the new Effetto Mariposa FlowerPower on order, hopefully consistency is better there
For me at least, a big part of it is easy application. Don’t know why it just runs off, have had the exact same issue. First application is super though!
I made the decision to simply slow down the reapplication process and make a deliberate drop on each link vs. running the applicator across the chain. Significantly less waste and not that much more time, really.
Just started doing this last week, but seems worth the effort so far.
I think I will try the suggestions of slowing down the reapplication process and working the drop into each link before moving to the next link.
I temporarily switched back to Squirt but will switch back to SSS once I need to reapply. I’m satisfied with the cleanliness and performance of SSS but really didn’t like wasting a lot of it.
