Testing Chain Wax for 1-YEAR and this happened..

This is my full review after using the Optimize chain wax for the last year! I'm sharing quite a bit of tips and tricks about the de-greasing process and overall use of chainwax. The first time it may be a bit of a hassle but it turns out to be very easy, and less work than any other chain lube I've used in the past.
*discount code will last 1 month

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Other questions: comment on latest video!!
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0:00 Intro
1:54 STEP 1 - De-greasing
6:02 The BEST/EASY way to degrease
7:04 What is WAX and how does it work?
9:22 STEP 2a - Drip-Waxing
10:16 STEP 2b - HOT-Waxing
12:01 DYI HACK for hotwax!
12:35 HOTWAX result
13:15 STEP 3a - Re-Wax (dripwax)
15:23 ESSENTIAL TIPS!
17:04 STEP 3b Re-Wax (HOTwax)
17:52 How Long Does It Last?
20:07 When do I re-apply? (My experience/results)
21:46 Indoor trainer and WAX?
22:40 Conclusion

[chrisridesbicycles]

Little tip for applying the drip wax: Shift to the big ring and the biggest sprocket (like you would never do riding) and apply on top of the cassette. The cross-chaining opens up the gaps in the chain and makes the lube sink in much easier.

[guystevens]

White spirit and mineral spirits from any DIY store. Use a funnel and paper filters to re-use solvent. Cheap slow cooker for wax. Foil to catch drips when transferring to a hanging location. Wrap around plastic pipe to break up wax. Rotate/wax multiple chains to minimise down time.

[bennyvandenheuvel]

Jasper, place the glass jar containing the solvent and the chain into your ultrasonic cleaner. Fill the ultrasonic cleaner to approximately half its capacity. Allow it to undergo the cleaning process for approximately 20 minutes at a temperature of 40°C. This will result in a clean chain, and you'll notice that your ultrasonic cleaner itself will also be much cleaner, reducing the need for additional cleaning.🙂

[jaflores]

I do a three stage process for chain grease removal. I place the chain inside a jar with Muc-Off Drivetrain Degreaser and shake it around a little bit, doesn't take much time. Transfer it another jar with bike wash or some mild soap like Dawn and water, give it another little shake. Transfer it to the third jar in 90% isopropyl alcohol, last little shake. Give it a good wipe down with a microfiber cloth. If you have an air compressor that will help with the drying process. Results should be a bone dry chain.

[LoldemortII]

Degreasing and waxing is definitely a learning process. Its not as easy as just dripping some oil on a chain, but definitely worth the initial effort.

[psavy]

This will be my second MTB season using a waxed chain and although there was a modest initial investment in time and money (minimal), having a clean and well performing chain with minimal effort to maintain has been well. Worth doing.
My recipe: Cleaning/prepping new chain- Naphtha (camping fuel), Iso Alcohol, dish detergent & water.
Wax: food grade Paraffin with a bit of chainsaw bar oil and graphite powder. Soak 12 hrs.
1 Treatment lasts all season
Freshen up with wax dissolved in alcohol drip bottle application if required No mess, no fus, set and forget feel.

[julianallen]

For low cost high efficiency hot waxing get a cheap, round plastic food storage container like tupperware. Melt the wax in that by floating it in a little hot water inside a bigger saucepan. The bigger pot means it heats quicker as it's less deep, bigger pot means easier to lay the chain in. Also, you can lift the wax container out of the pan and under the hanging chain to cooldown, less mess. Also, when you manipulate the cold chain over the container to lose the hard, excess wax it goes back into the wax container and less is wasted.

[bohurley]

BEST WAY TO HEAT WAX is with a slow cooker (crock pot). I use the very small Crock Pot (TM) Little Dipper. A rice cooker is OK, but a little hotter than optimal. Heating wax on your stove is, as Jasper says, a mess. It is also a potential safety and health hazard. Moreover, no cook wants bicycle chain wax heated in their kitchen. AS TO REMOVING OIL from new and used chains, my preferred technique is very fast and very inexpensive. Use disposable blue nitrile gloves, and conduct the process outside, to minimize skin contact with solvents and to avoid inhaling solvent vapors. I use multiple chain immersions in fresh gasoline, followed by gasoline removal using aqueous degreaser. I obtain the metallic sound Jasper describes. I also recycle the gasoline. The entire degreasing process requires about 30 min to one hour. Use four glass jars with screw on tops: three 1-quart jars (or larger), one pint-sized jar (or larger). FIRST, fill one large jar with fresh gasoline. SECOND, take a rag and use it to physically remove all the oil/grease you can easily wipe off the chain (this reduces the amount of oil you have to remove with the gasoline). You can enhance the physical removal process with brushes to get inside the links, with further rag wiping. THIRD, put the wiped chain into the small jar and cover with enough fresh gasoline to fully immerse the chain. Put the top on the small jar and shake it. Note that the gasoline instantly turns jet black when cleaning a used chain. Proceed to intermittently shake the jar over a 5 minute period, and then remove the top and pour the dirty gasoline into the empty second jar. FOURTH, repeat this process in the small jar. It may require 5-10 cycles until the gasoline barely gets dirty. Once you get to the point that the gasoline barely gets dirty after 5 minutes of chain immersion with internittent shaking, you are done with the gasoline. Allow the dirty gasoline in the second large jar to sit undisturbed for a week or so, and a dark layer of solids will reside on the bottom of the second jar, but the gasoline above will be clear again! Carefully decant the supernate, i.e., pour the clear gasoline (I am a chemist) into the empty first jar for reuse. After decanting the supernate from the second jar, discard the dirty gas on the bottom (in chemical jargon, the "infra-natant") as waste. Use a funnel, carefully pouring the supernate into the empty first jar, pouring through at least two layers of paper towel placed inside the funnel, to capture any unwanted solids in the when decanting. Waste not, want not. FIFTH, place the gasoline-covered chain outside and the gasoline will evaporate in 5 minutes or so, particularly if it is sunny out. SIXTH: After the gasoline evaporates, immerse the cleaned chain in a fourth jar containing an aqueous degreaser (I use Harbor Freight concentrated degreaser mixed about 1:5 with water). This degreaser readily removes the trace amount of the oily component remaining from the gasoline (gasoline is a mixture with mostly small molecule hyrdrocarbons, but also contains a very small amount of high molecular weight hydrocarbons). SEVENTH: Dry the chain with a clean rag. The chain is now ready for immersion into the molten wax in the crock pot. Actually the molten wax in my Little Dipper also contains at least 2 or 3 heaping teaspoons of 1.6 micron PTFE powder, which I purchase on Ebay. Stir the chain immersed in the molten wax+PTFE, making sure to stir enough to "stir up" the PTFE particles so that they are distributed throughout the molten wax, as they tend to settle to the bottom between uses. EIGHT, remove the chain and hang to dry just as in Jasper's video. Then install on bike. [PS#1: If you use molten wax without any PTFE or other friction additive such as graphene, or if you do not properly remove the oil or grease from your chain, you will only get 30 miles or so on tarmac before chain noise begins. With PTFE powder, I get probably 200-300 miles on tarmac before chain noise starts. PS#2: If you wonder whether you got absolutely all the oil off the chain (because the last immersion in gasoline produced gasoline very slightly dirty looking), then consider the following. Materials dissolve in materials of similar polarity. Oil and grease are hydrocarbons, as is gasoline. Hydrocarbon molecules are non-polar. On the other hand, water molecules are polar. That is why oil and water don't mix. Wax is a hydrocarbon, so it too is non-polar. Therefore wax is soluble in gasoline, i.e., dissolves at least to some extent in gasoline. So if you had a trace of gasoline on your chain when you immersed it in the molten wax containing PTFE powder, that trace of oil or gas just dissolves uniformly into the wax, and in my experience does not affect the performance of the wax-coated chain to any measurable degree. This is the same reason that the recycling of the gasoline supernate has no significant negative impact on future use for chain cleaning, even though it inherently contains additional oil from previous chain cleanings. PS#3: I have been using this process for several years, and have helped other cyclists convert from oil to wax, with good results, including the fringe benefits of: (a) freedom to put your bike in your car without worrying about getting grease on the upholstery, and (b) no more "chain tattoos" on your legs while on a ride, and (c) no more greasy fingers from re-installing a dropped chain while on a ride.]

[kevinlewis]

One additional tip/note is that if your smallest cog is less less than 12t (in my experience) you will want to, occasionally, clean the gap between the two smallest cogs. My road bike has a 12t smallest cog and I have never had any issues, but the 11 on my gravel bike will start skipping due to the wax build up between the 11 and (?)13. A simple scraping between the cogs solves the issue, but it caught me off-guard the first time it happened. Also, I would go by hours rather than miles as Jasper will cover many more miles than I would for any given time. I use about 9 hours ride time between reapplications (hot melt), which is a little conservative, but it's so easy to wipe the chain down with a rag and then place it in the slow cooker that has about 250g of wax which I replace every year.

[emil]

To make the hot waxing a bit easier i actually use a slow cooker, set to LOW setting. It works just great! Also i think that you might have even missed out one of the greatest benefits of waxing - besides having a clean chain! To me a very great benefit is, that since the chain is not dirty, you barely experience any wear on the chain and cassette! I have a chain and cassette with 5k kms on them, still meassuring the same as a completely new chain! I use homemade wax with teflon tho... 🙂

[levente]

I've been experimenting for a while. A good tip would be to leave the chain in the hot wax while it cools down a bit and you see top is getting a bit of a wax layer, then when you take out chain quickly put it in a bucket of very cold water, you can use ice as well. The whole idea behind this is not to let the wax drip out whilst liquid from inside the chain link, yes you will have lots of residue but before fitting it back on the bike you need to get rid of the excess wax, easy way is just drag the chain by grabbing both sides on a wooden brush handle just like you would use a hand saw to cut it. Cheers. Happy experimenting.

[jonathanwise]

Mineral spirits>degreaser>denatured alcohol>hot wax>wax should cool before removing to allow wax to cake on forming stalactites.
I just started waxing and from a cleaning perspective, it's great!

[mickp]

Homemade paraffin wax mixed with shellite is now my favourite chain lubricant, after trying it when watched an Aussie cyclist YouTube who tested various waxing methods . No more dirty chsins, ot work pants when i ride to work. To clean the chain now, i squirt the mixture on thr chain and run the chain through the cloth or paper towel . The chain is the smoothest and quietest i have ever run. I don't add graphitr or any other additives.

[Gabepedaler]

Thanks for this 1 year review. I purchased the lube wax from optimize when you first mentioned it in one of your videos. It was my first attempt at using wax. Very happy with it. Main reason for wanting to switch was for the cleanliness. Just got tired if getting the dirty lube my hands, and the never fails chain tattoo on legs and clothes.

[timothydewilde]

By the way: zerofrictioncycling is the goat when it comes to waxing chains and scientific research!

[davidrowe]

Excellent, thorough video that covers all the angles, and includes mistakes and lessons learned. I enjoyed your presentation style, too - down to earth.

As far as indoor trainers are concerned, it's surprising how much dust there is in many houses! I switched from oil lube on my indoor training bike because it still would become a black gunky mess after a while, to the point that I couldn't just keep adding more oil lube - so I had to take it off and clean it up. Sure, the wax lube leaves wax particles on the floor (rocker plate in my case) - but it's dry and easy to sweep up.

[damFr]

Pro tip: heat you chain with a hair dryer before lubing the chain. The wax penetrate better between the links.

[janwillemfransens]

For years I used a camping stove to heat the wax, a couple of years ago I bought professional wax heater used for heating wax for hair removal. It works absolutely great because you can pre install the temperature.

[vihuelamig]

I use white spirit (stoddard solvent) to clean/degrease the chain. 3 separate 'baths' with the first bath doing the majority of the work. It's a little like cleaning an oil varnish brush after use. You can store the solvent for the next chain (or chains) that you want to clean. Eventually bath No. 1 is going to be too dirty to use in which case you will need to replace the solvent, this then becomes bath No.3 and the other two move up a place.

[moof]

I've been pretty happy using a 3L InstantPot. I put the chain on a spare spoke bent into a fish hook shape and set it on top of the wax. 30 minutes on the slow cooker setting melts the wax gently and a little swishing around at that point gets everything mixed up well. I usually wash the bike and/or get a shower in the meantime. After letting the excess drop off I just lay it on a piece of parchment paper to cool till the evening, or next ride.
I also keep a clean microfiber cloth in the garage specifically to dry the chain after any wet rides, and to clean off any dust/dirt before rewaxing. I've never bothered boiling the chain, and have only worried about washing the chain after muddy gravel rides. Is my wax getting slightly contaminated? Maybe. Don't care.