My Chain Waxing Experiment

 I've always been skeptical about chain waxing despite in my early cycling career reading a book about an 80-year-old bicycle tourist who would cook her chain religiously every night. That seemed excessive and not worth the effort. The inimitable Pamela Blayley, however, posted a pictures of her bicycle tour in Ireland last year on Facebook featuring an incredibly clean chain and declaring that she was now convinced it was the way to go. Unlike many chain waxing advocates, Pamela doesn't stop riding when the pavement stops, neither does she stop riding in the rain, so with her experience (along with an appropriately timed Silca sale), I ordered some chain waxing equipment for experimentation.

This included a mini slow cooker, Silca Hot Melt Wax, Silca Chain Stripper (now superseded by Silca strip chip), and Silca Super Secret Lube. The process is far more involved than I'd like, using the chain stripper, then rinsing it off, and then dropping the chain into the melted wax. (Using the strip chip makes it easier --- you no longer need to strip the chain) The irony is that winter is when you might have the most time to do this involved process, but winter is when it's going to rain and quickly wash away the wax.

My experience in winter is that you pretty much have to either rewax or use the Super Secret Lube every time you ride in wet conditions, even if it didn't rain and you're just getting road splash from a wet road. The wax might do a good job protecting the chain from dirt, but it disappears immediately upon encountering any sort of moisture. Silca's claim that each waxing is good for 100 miles is too optimistic.

Having said that, once waxed, the chain stays very clean and the drivetrain on my bikes with the waxed chain is the cleanest I've seen in years. While I do clean the drivetrain every time I replace a chain, I don't do a perfect job, and the chain wax does a good job of picking up the dirt and preventing it from working its way into the chain rollers.

Having said that, it only took 3 months of fairly rainy weather before I worked through a 4oz bottle of Silca Super Secret Lube, making this much more expensive than the oil-based Silca Synergetic Lube. The oil-based lubes only need to be reapplied at most every 400 miles, and don't need relubing even after it rains, at the penalty of being much more dirty than the wax.

Silca and other chain waxing advocates claim that by keeping the chain so clean waxing increases the life of your chain and drivetrain components significantly. My oil-based chains don't last more than 2500 miles and on the triplet I don't get more than 2000 miles. My gravel bike/roadini probably won't get more than 2000 miles either. Having said that, I get my chains for $10/pop, which means that the effort of waxing and re-waxing simply doesn't pay for itself in drivetrain longevity.

So what's the use case for waxing? First, if you don't ride enough to require rewaxing every ride (I have friends who ride enough that 100 mile intervals is essentially every ride or more often than every week), then maybe it's OK. Secondly, on tour where I have to manhandle the timing chain every time I take apart the triplet it's useful to have a very clean drivetrain, though the penalty of essentially having to wax the chain every night seems kinda off-putting.

Ultimately, I don't consider chain waxing to be worth the effort, but in the summer where the intervals between waxing might be worth it (using the wax lube to touch up between waxing efforts). In winter you should just use oil and forget about keeping the drivetrain clean.