Chain waxing on a tight budget

you are being a skinflint. it lasts AAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEESSSSSSS

Joshvegas thank you.

Putoline ordered.

Stealth ad note, I have a chain wax company so take what I say in that light!!

You could make it yourself yeah, the wax needs to be highly refined paraffin wax which unfortunately isn’t that cheap and your additives are expensive. You’ll get some on the likes of Aliexpress but it won’t be the material you think it is.

Putoline is fine but I found it a bit oily for bicycle use. A harder drier wax doesn’t hold dirt and can be cleaned with hot water in the odd occasion it needs more than just a straight rewax. £18 will do 30-40 waxes

I bought a load of high end wax (about 40€) in up to about 90 waxed chains over nearly 3 years and might buy some more wax next year...

who are the good alternatives to putoline then?  Was thinking of giving it a try although I still have 2litres of finish line to get through...

A good few options on the market and some to avoid, avoid wend wax at all costs. Molten speed wax and silca are the main players. I think ours is better but I would say that 😉. Have test data and more ongoing with a rather enthusiastic professor who might possibly be mad!

Putoline is fine but I found it a bit oily for bicycle use. A harder drier wax doesn’t hold dirt and can be cleaned with hot water in the odd occasion it needs more than just a straight rewax. £18 will do 30-40 waxes

I'm finding this, latest application of Putoline on my new gravel bike has been a bit of an oily mess, not sure if it actually needs riding in the mud and the wet to remove the excess from the surface of the chain! I cleaned off and went back to Fenwick's Stealth drip-on but I think I can already tell it doesn't perform as well.

So please advertise your wares! What's a harder, drier (cleaner) equivalent to Putoline? Is that basically what Molten Speed Wax is?

I suppose MSW and my own aren’t significantly different, nor is silca for that matter. All three have similar waxes and additives. The harder wax is dry on the chain, you basically have to break the links free once the chain cools. A hard wax resists abrasion and also prevents contamination from clinging to it.

The additives give an extra layer of protection and lubrication as they burnish onto the inner surfaces of the chain in the high pressure areas

The big benefit for off road though is ease of cleaning. After a wet ride or say 8-15 hours dry, just take your chain off and stick it in the slow cooker, come back in an hour, hang it to cool a while and refit. You never need to clean cassettes, jockey wheel etc again and chain wear is massively reduced.

I’d not realised that Putoline was a bit oily and sticky. I was looking at waxing to avoid dirt sticking to the chain and forming grinding paste.
When it arrives I will return it and buy a hard dry wax instead.
Cheers for the advice Daz.

Having looked at all of the research available so far additives offer like a .5% benefit at the very most. If you buy food grade paraffin wax (not expensive, not hard to find contrary to above posts - can even just go to bulk catering supplies) and melt it in a slow cooker you're golden.

Obv I bought MSW because I'm a tart. I won't next time.

I’d not realised that Putoline was a bit oily and sticky. I was looking at waxing to avoid dirt sticking to the chain and forming grinding paste.

It's weird, in general Putoline DOES prevent a grinding paste forming, but the sticky black Putoline can accumulate around jockey wheels/sprockets etc. where it's generally harmless if you don't touch it or accidentally dislodge a lump then accidentally track it into the house on the sole of your shoe etc. etc. (ask me how I know 🙄 ).

In principle Putoline is great but I'm hoping something like Daz's will set cleaner or flake off more cleanly or something to avoid the sticky black accumulations! I've never perfected the art of getting a chain perfectly impregnated with Putoline without also leaving lots of excess on side plates etc

Food grade paraffin wax works ok without a doubt but it’s a bit soft and sticky, comparatively of course. I use a blend of 3 waxes to get a harder version than standard paraffin wax. The term food grade is a bit misleading too I found, some are rated for packaging and some for consumption. The best simple wax I found was gulf wax but it’s still pricey.

I know I’m certainly not making a fortune from it and I buy the wax by pallet load. No plans to retire any time soon.

Any wax will be far superior to oils and drip on though so worth a try, you can always make candles with any reject stuff!!!

I really don’t want to go full advert, so referring to any wax. Putoline and a couple of others have a comparatively high oil content, that’s what causes the black blobs. Harder waxes flake off mostly. It still works well but I think misses one of the main benefits in ease of cleaning.

Worth a read at all the test data on zero friction cycling as Adam can talk wax even more than I can, which I’m led to believe is quite an achievement 😬

@daz what's your product called?

I've been really happy with putoline on my MTB, my Brompton, and my winter road bike (which is the same as my gravel / CX) but inevitably because of their use it is necessary to clean them far more often than I clean my good summer road bike, and the blackness of the putoline isn't such an issue in that case.

I started but now don't use putoline on the good road bike where it is a bit black and messy, i'm content with frequent redosing of a dry drip lube for that.

Are the hard wax lubes as good in the crap as putoline?

I contend that the harder waxes are better and the test data on zero friction cycling does prove that. One of the tests worth reading Is the one for absolute black, I think their product has a similar approach to putoline.

I’ll get an add for my wax stuck up somewhere when I raise a few dollars. It’s all going on testing to get good hard data at the minute.

latest application of Putoline on my new gravel bike has been a bit of an oily mess,

After the first ride give the chaim a good wipe with a rag with WD40. This wipes off the excess that gets squished out of the rollers. After that you're fine for months, no mess.

Hi have some unused speed wax you can have for postage

If anyone manages to develop a wax chain lube without the faff-on, There'd lots of interest I reckon.

I suppose it’s all down to how you see faff. I developed mine because I couldn’t be bothered with the faff of cleaning cassettes etc and prefer just to whack a chain in a slow cooker while I dunk myself in a bath.

I’m working on improving the wax drip on I have but despite some clever marketing it can never be as good as an immersive wax. I had thought of doing a wax emulsion tin to dunk chains in but even that isn’t as effective because a large amount of the wax is actually just solvent.

Smoove is the best drip on but drip ons never get properly inside the rollers, and the carriage solvent always ends up picking shit up.

Is there a way to do it without resorting to fryers, slow cookers or such? Like one of those catering gel burners under an old pot or baking tin?

Thanks for the info @daz. That's super helpful

How are people handling breaking the links so often? I thought most of the 11/12 speed chains were single use links

Is there a way to do it without resorting to fryers, slow cookers or such? Like one of those catering gel burners under an old pot or baking tin?

Just chuck the tin on that coleman double burner you have. no need to decant it into anythign else.

@squirrelking

Honestly, for the £9 I paid on eBay for an unused old 1.5l slow cooker I think you're pushing into false economy there.

My usual advice it putoline for winter & candle wax for Summer. Puto more durable to winter filth. Was using home brew wax - pulled the cake from the pan & quite some dirt at the base. So now trying Engima Black wax.

@continuity yeah, probably. I dunno, it just bothers me, probably completely irrationally since the slow cooker will be safer.

Putoline just works for me. The tour i am on now i have not touched the chain for well over a thousand mainly road miles incuding a couple of hundred wet miles. It is getting close to needing redoing now but a hundred miles to molgrips where he will dunk it again. Chan is clean no mess .

No experience with other waxes but wax is so much better than anything else i have used

The slow cooker thing is something I thought about a lot, I had tested waxes with a higher melt point and they were probably marginally better but I’d never sell them because someone would set their house on fire heating it on a stove and I’d end up in court. The slow cooker is so cheap and safe to use that I wouldn’t bother with anything else, no point reinventing the wheel. Throw your chain on the wax with the cooker on low and lid off and it would be safe for weeks if you forgot about it. I think that’s worth £13

I recently started waxing my chains, after reading about it here and listening to a couple of the ZeroFriction guy's interviews.
For me, the faff is not the waxing part, but the initial cleaning of chains: it's messy, takes time and there are a lot of residual chemicals that need to be disposed of sensibly.
The waxing itself is easy; a 1.5l slow cooker is less than half the price of a new XT chain. As for the wax, I'd go with one of the newer, specialised products, either Daz' GLF wax or the Enigma Ultimate.

Also my first 30 quid tin lasted a decade of almost daily riding

Chain life i guestimate is 4 times longer

You dont need to clean the chsin. Any grit comes out in the wax. Just dunk it in.

I’m selling prepped chains too, agree it is a bit of work to get them clean and I’m buying chains retail so not making a big deal on them. I’m like a durg dealer though, trying to get you all hooked 😂

You dont need to clean the chain.

You do before first waxing.

I’m selling prepped chains too

You are not the only OCD person here 🙂 I like to do my own prepping. I started with two used chains and two new ones. The used ones were easier, I use ProGold ProLink as lube and it cleaned up pretty well. The factory grease on the other hand... I'm seriously thinking of buying pre-waxed chains from now on.

Is there a way to do it without resorting to fryers, slow cookers or such? Like one of those catering gel burners under an old pot or baking tin?

I wouldn't. You've got no temperature control, you risk overheating the liquid part and smoking it whilst other parts are still solid. And it's far more risky since you have a pot of hot oil on the floor ready to kick over or spill. And a naked flame in your garage which, if it's anything like mine is a very very bad place to have a naked flame. And you'll have to find a way of fishing your chain out of the tin.

Fat fryers on the other hand are specifically designed for the job of safely heating oil, controlling the temperature and providing a means to dunk stuff in it and retrieve it. It really is the way to go.

I got one for free from my local FB page.

How are people handling breaking the links so often? I thought most of the 11/12 speed chains were single use links

Meh, I don't see how they can not be multi-use. I re-used them for ages back when they first came out, I had no idea they were meant to be single use. Have never had a quick link failure* before or since Putoline.

If anyone manages to develop a wax chain lube without the faff-on, There’d lots of interest I reckon.

I use it specifically because it's less faff. When I want to go for a ride, I just grab the bike, ride, come back in and if it's been muddy it's just 3 mins with a hose - that's it. No lubing of anything. Then once every couple of months when I have a spare moment for bike fettling I dunk the chain.

The other benefits are on top of that - like in winter, I was re-applying wet lube every ride, but it wasn't lasting one ride, it was lasting about 30 minutes and I just had to keep going with a chain full of mud anyway. I haven't done the maths but I'm sure I've already paid for a fryer and the tin of lube by buying fewer chains.

* except for that one time I had a KMC chain back when they had this weird design where you had to flex one side of the link to pop it open, rather than the usual sliding thing they have now. My chain got tangled up in some bizarre way that flexed the link and popped off half of it and I lost it.

Just bought some daz-wax to see how it goes. Putoline working pretty well for me but is a bit dirty so I’m curious to see if the harder wax keeps things clean.

Can you do half a chain in Putoline and half in Daz and compare? 🙂

Daz wax, you crack me up!! It is white sock compatible for the roadies amongst us. You could run two chains alternatively, one with mine and one putoline. I’ve done that comparison but I’m selling it so you won’t take my word for it!!

I hate salesmen and please god do not let me become one

Should be a doorstep challenge.

Had no idea slow cookers and such were so cheap. Must admit a fryer makes more sense but will look at it when I get 5 minutes.

Fryer seems sensible but the problem is it heats the wax too quickly and can damage the wax. If you can get one that has a temperature limit of about 100 at the surface then that’s perfect. But it will be more expensive than a slow cooker. 1.5l to 1.8 size is ideal by the way

I just got a Tower one litre fryer from Amazon, I think it was £23. It's better than the old no-namer I had from the Range, which ended up breaking, cos it has a clip to rest the basket when it's out of the oil. That said, it's not quite all the way out of the oil, so you might be better off only putting 80% of the wax in.

You definitely want a one litre fryer though or maybe 1.5. If you have a bigger one then the thing's too wide and the wax might not be deep enough.

Fryer seems sensible but the problem is it heats the wax too quickly and can damage the wax.

Really? The thermostat is next to the pan, I think it heats up the first bit of oil to 100 or whatever you choose, then waits. That's why it takes 10 mins to melt all the wax isn't it?

If it’s limited then yeah it will be fine, I suppose it depends if the stat is at the top of the oil and the element at the base? Don’t really know but I always thought a fryer was quite a bit more than 100 degrees?

Must do a bit of experimentation and see, I’ve tried all sorts with the slow cookers to see how safe they were if someone left it on high with the lid on or something. Didn’t set the thing on fire after a full day but the wax wouldn’t stick to chains very well afterwards.

My fryer was £15 and I spooned about 1/3 of a tin of Putoline into it which is mid way between the minimum and maximum markers. It’s classed as a personal fryer so is really small and a chain fits perfectly in the basket. If I switch it on to 120 on the thermostat it takes about 10 mins to melt the wax and there is no smoking, which according to Putoline is bad because if it’s too hot  it evaporates some of the additives. A slow cooker takes way too long to get hot for me. The basket is clear of the wax when hooked on the side so I can easily fish the chain out using thick rubber gloves when it’s done. I then hang it up and wipe down with a rag, being careful not to pull as I wipe and squeeze all the wax out of the rollers, a gentle surface wipe just to get the excess off the outside of the plates. I run two chains so I’ve always got one ready to go. There is always some build up on the jockey wheels initially which is a bit of a pain but I generally just remove it with a pick after a few rides. Chains definitely last loads longer and an XTR chain has easily outlasted three lower spec chains so well worth the initial outlay.

I developed mine because I couldn’t be bothered with the faff of cleaning cassettes etc and prefer just to whack a chain in a slow cooker while I dunk myself in a bath.

sure, but my cassette doesn’t need cleaning (using Juice Lubes Viking). It’s application is 20 secs at the end of cleaning your bike, I’m done and dusted by the time you’ve taken off your chain, fired up your pan, let it swoosh about and reversed the process when you’re done.

I don’t doubt wax is the best for bike chains but you need to get the process of application under a minute without taking off the chain before I’m interested, and I’ll sacrifice performance for convenience every time

edit: and given my last chain lasted 6.5k miles I don’t think I’m sacrificing all that much either