Hot waxing vs. coated chains vs. wet gravel

Fool me once shiny gold YBN chain, shame on you. Fool me seven or more times… 🙄

I should have wondered the first time it shed an application of Putoline after 50km, so I switched to Fenwick’s Pro for a while but recently switched again to GLF wax.

However that’s the second or third ride where the chain has been noisy and dry by the 50km mark, and painfully noisy by 90km.

I know GLF lasts 200km easily on the Ultegra chain on my road bike, and although there’s a few puddles and water splashes on the gravel routes I wouldn’t think it was enough to wash a chainful of wax away…

Worth stripping my spare 105 chain and giving the GLF another chance?

I found Plutoline didn’t hold up on the gravel bike and just went back to the relevant line for the conditions. Currently using Peatys, which seems good so far.

Yeah… I guess it’s a no-brainer really, I’ve still got some Morgan Blue which is equivalent to Finish Line green, have two big days coming up doubtless with lits of river crossings so don’t have time for experiments…

Hmm… I could purchase a pre-treated Ultegra chain but Zerofriction reckons that the Siltec coating reduces wax adherence.. Wonder if the 5-6 year old Ultegra on my road bike was pre Sil-tec.

SRAM Red? Are they coated in any way?

Hastily re-applying some Fenwicks as that’s all I’ve got left in the garage, where’s a trusty bottle of Finish Line green when you need it? 😂

Wax will get noisier than an oiled chain while still working better. Oil traps dirt and moisture in the chain which dampens the sound but is really just griding paste wearing the chain.

No this was definitely a wax-free chain 😂 Making some hellish noises by the end and shifting etc. completely deteriorated

I didn’t know hotwax didn’t stick to sil-tec. Got two XTR chains cleaned and waxed waiting for the gravel bike.

How long are you immersing in glf, I m giving it 30 mins min, also in recent wet weather weekly coating.

I found GLF lasted less well than MSW in damp/wet conditions. In fact when using GLF the chain would get noisy mid ride in the wet (30-50 mile ride). MSW is better but needs redoing after a wet ride. I’m currently running a mixture of GLF and MSW in the same pot and it’s pretty good, especially when heated up on the high setting so that the MSW gets to 90C – sticks much better and lasts longer that way. GLF say not to get it that hot but MSW say it needs to get to 200f .

I’m finding GLF comes off in the wet. Much nicer to handle than Putoline, super clean and no black gunk, I am considering Silca next!
Would have stuck with Putoline but I overcooked it.

I didn’t know hotwax didn’t stick to sil-tec. Got two XTR chains cleaned and waxed waiting for the gravel bike.

Don’t quote me on that, it was buried somewhere in a Zerofriction document and they didn’t say ‘didn’t stick’, just ‘reduces adherence’ or words to that effect.

My winter road bike has a 105 chain which barely ever needs topped up with Putoline, and summer road bike is Ultegra with GLF and seems to last fine albeit never gets wet. I don’t know when Shimano chains went Sil-tec though

Interesting that others have found GLF to suffer. Need a new chain anyway so might buy a pre-treated MSW chain, if it performs any better I’ll maybe switch to MSW, if not Silca Synergetic.

Excellent first ride with the MSW treated Ultegra chain. Pouring with rain, deep puddles, mud, river crossings, but after 85km the chain was still smooth running and silent.

Will never know if it was the YBN chain or the GLF wax that was at fault but on this basis think I’ll swap over to MSW.

What brand is GLF wax?
I have used both MSW and Silca and had decent results, even in wet rides. Haven’t noticed a difference.

I must say, I only used Silca Super Secret drip on to top it off, even with the MSW wax.

GLF is its own brand, one of the contributors on this forum makes it. Would be curious to know the difference in composition between the different brands.

I have a wee bottle of Super Secret for top ups, not sure if it’s any good mid-ride though?

I use Rex Black Diamond hot wax on Sil-Tec chains and I have not noticed any big adherence issues. They also don’t get surface rust as easily as non-surface treated cheaper chains if there is some water on the chain after riding.

All in all I have been very satisfied with Rex – chains last much longer, and no more black drivetrain gunk to clean. I will never go back to liquid lubes.

aha, thanks for the info.
I’m in the US, so probably explains why I hadn’t heard of them. MSW is in my state (Minnesota), Silca is hard to miss, and my shop just started stocking Rex, so those are the ones I knew of.

No, don’t do mid ride top ups with drip on wax like Super Secret. That’s what Silca says, and it makes sense to me. It’s water based, so doesn’t dry very fast. Silva says dry overnight or longer. I assume the same for other water based drip ons.

Hmm… Rewaxed after the wet ride and have done 125km since over two virtually dry rides, and the chain is getting very noisy again!

I still can’t get my head around the chain noise issue, I can grasp that it might not be indicative of an unlubricated chain as the wax is still within the rollers, but it sounds dreadful and puts me off using certain gears.

Am not currently convinced that a waxed chain would last a long/mixed conditions ride the way, e.g. Fenwick’s Professional would.

Did you do a full hot wax immersion? (or just drip?)
If the chain gets really wet then you ideally need to rinse with hot water and fully immerse in melted wax to flush out any crap that may have got in. Dunk for 15mins and swish around vigorously several times.

I get around 300km off road (gravel/MTB) on a chain (dura ace/XTR) noise free with Silca hot wax. I’ll never go back.

Yeah, followed MSW instructions to the letter with an Ultegra chain that had been cleaned and had an initial application applied by the MSW UK distributor.

BUT when I was refitting the chain it occurred to me I might have fitted chain the wrong way round last time ? (Shimano are uni-directional).

Riding again tomorrow eve with a fresh application and chain fitted correctly, will see how it goes ?

I’ve found the same as others here. I was using GLF but it just seems to wash off in the wet weather. I’m back to using the little bit of Smoove wax that I’ve got. After that I’ll probably be going back to Squirt.

The GLF seemed like a lot of hassle for very little benefit.

I was out at the weekend on a Silca waxed KMC 11 speed chain. Sounded a bit “empty” towards the end of the ride so afterwards, I took it off, gave it a rinse and dried with the wife Dyson refuser! Anyway, the amount of wax that then came out of the chain made me think that the wax is in there, doing its thing, a lot longer than I think.

I didn’t know hotwax didn’t stick to sil-tec. Got two XTR chains cleaned and waxed waiting for the gravel bike.
…Don’t quote me on that, it was buried somewhere in a Zerofriction document

I found a ZFC page once that said they think SRAM chains don’t work well – might you have meant that ??

(I’m a putoline lad, so can’t comment on yer proper waxes)

Ah well, today was the death knell for waxing my gravel chains I think. Did a 40km gravel ride in the wet last week, and today did another 70km largely in the rain or splashing through puddles and streams. The chain was dying by the 70km point and it was only an application of 3-in-1 that rescued the remaining 40km.

I want to believe but I think I’ll be keeping it for Sunday best road bike use only! I have a bottle of Fenwick’s Stealth to use up on the gravel bike then will try the Silca Synergetic. I think for really long mixed gravel rides it has to be something that can be re-applied mid-ride.

Synergetic works well on my gravel bikes on similar rides, never had to top up on a ride.

For hair removal, hot wax. I tried wet gravel once and it removed more than hair…

I always struggle with peoples acceptance of low standards. Some is pleased with 300 k out of a waxed chain. With the fiddle doing it I want 3000. 300 is a weeks riding or less.

yeah, I do wax but it doesn’t half annoy me. Degrease chain, ultrasonic it, melt wax, let it soak. Anyone ever factor in the cost of the leccy?

The commuter has gone back to a big squirt of liquid grease once a week for the 100+ miles it does on the commute.

Early convert to silca hot wax here. So far it’s lasting very well and a bit of damp hasn’t affected it.

@mattsccm why are you doing all that? If proper hot wax aka silca, clean in boiling water and re wax. Couldn’t be easier, it’s much less effort than Smoove etc. IMO

I read a lot of these posts with interest, it is intriguing that different opinions arise on different waxes. So let’s explain how our current blend came about. A long way back we had a much softer wax blend, it worked ok but the search for maximum efficiency led us to a much harder blend with a higher melt point, this was predominantly designed for road racing etc but I use it with good results on gravel and mountain bike, I probably tend to wax more often than I need to though because I love the feeling of a freshly waxed chain.

We initially considered two different blends, a softer one for wet/mtb and the stiffer blend for road etc but considered it unnecessary. With hindsight perhaps it was worth sacrificing a little efficiency for wet weather durability, this will mean a slight drop in chain life but perhaps a worthwhile sacrifice.

I have some stock of the previous wax blend, I’d be happy to mix some of our additive into it and let some of you test it. If you have some experience of waxing and would be interested in this, give me a call, I don’t like stealth adds so those that know our product will know where to find my wattsapp and email. Give me a shout and I’ll blend a batch for you to test

Just one useful point, with all waxes, I’d recommend you have your chain submerged for at least 20 mins, with some cooler wax pots this might not even be enough. Your chain will be cold internally and you need to make sure it is fully heated to allow full penetration into the links, and try to leave your chain to fully cool before fitting. When we are prepping chains we pre heat them prior to waxing (drys the alcohol off them and speeds up our process)

oh we are also working on a drip on wax, but it’s challenging. Previous version worked well but I think we made napalm!!!!

Thanks for all the wax chat folks, never stop learning

Thanks for the response Daz!

It does seem like quite an inexact science still, which is why I initially wondered about chain coatings, as I’ve had very different experiences even with the same wax, i.e. Putoline has let me down more than once (i.e. completely gone within 50-75km) but can also last heroic periods like my winter road bike where I genuinely forget when I waxed it last.

Wonder if the rogue factor could be something as simple as wheel spray, the winter road bike has full length mudguards but the gravel bike has a wee seatpost clip on. Perhaps the washing effect of constant gritty spray off a wheel just defeats any wax. Maybe even gravel tyres generate more spray off the tyre than slick road tyres?

Plus yesterday we were probably literally jockey-wheels deep in one section, my buddy left an oil slick behind!

@daz interesting that you were considering an endurance blend. I’m using Silca and really like the idea of their new endurance chip. However, £29 per chip is a lot when it only offers 15% increase in longevity in wet weather.

A UK wet mountain biking focused wax would be interesting.

So as I’m not doing a total thread hijack here let me give my thoughts on waxing/coating/ oil for gravel

Waxing fully fills your chain and if not a very soft wax will resist contaminants and work well, some wet weather will make a chain sound dry but a wax with quality additives will last way beyond this point. Chain coatings or drip on wax work ok, but bear in mind that they are most likely 60% solvent so limited in the protection they can provide. Oils will generally stay on the chain longer in wet weather (not always) but they instantly gather contamination and form a grinding paste inside your chain, this actually has quite a good noise damping effect but is wearing your components while doing so.

So back to the wax discussion in wet weather, wax blends can range from very soft, and with a high oil content, to very firm and oil free. A soft wax will squeeze out from your chain rollers under pressure similar to putty between your fingers, a firmer wax will resist this but most likely has a lower oil content and won’t adhere to the areas of the chain where no pressure is applied, it’s all about striking the balance. What I’m hearing is we would be better sacrificing a little performance to give a softer wax in wet and off road use, we could look at an extra ‘chip’ to add to our wax but I think providing a softer version will work out better, might not make me as much money but sure.

The additives are the big thing we don’t talk much about, that’s where we spent all the research time and money, quality additives in the correct quantities make a massive difference to a wax, we worked with professors at Queens University and some specialists in performance coatings to come up with our additives.

So back to the wax discussion in wet weather, wax blends can range from very soft, and with a high oil content, to very firm and oil free. A soft wax will squeeze out from your chain rollers under pressure similar to putty between your fingers, a firmer wax will resist this but most likely has a lower oil content and won’t adhere to the areas of the chain where no pressure is applied, it’s all about striking the balance. What I’m hearing is we would be better sacrificing a little performance to give a softer wax in wet and off road use, we could look at an extra ‘chip’ to add to our wax but I think providing a softer version will work out better, might not make me as much money but sure.

I agree, although my “blending” plan in my homebrew is just adding EP90 to the wax a little at a time.

The additives are the big thing we don’t talk much about, that’s where we spent all the research time and money, quality additives in the correct quantities make a massive difference to a wax, we worked with professors at Queens University and some specialists in performance coatings to come up with our additives.

Reminds me of my university research, I was developing a ski lube although the only conclusion that could be drawn was MOAR=BETTERER, all the graphs just drew a straight line where the more dilute (or lower molecular weight) the additives the worse they performed.

Out of interest have you have you tried using calcium stearate in your soft/winter blends? I’m wondering if it would make it act more like a waterproof grease that clings to the chain better and less like a wax that flakes off , i.e. maybe a bit more like putoline.

The trouble with ZFC is that there’s so much stuff on their site that it’s hard to get a grip of their latest take. My memory of their SRAM opinion was that the SRAM factory lube is particularly unpleasant and tenacious, so needs more white spirit baths than other chains before use. There was/is a chain they didn’t like for reasons of wax adherence, it may have been KMC, but I honestly can’t remember and the chances of finding the article/post again are limited…

Anyway, just out of general interest, their latest advice on initial chain cleaning seems to be to use Ceramic Speed’s drivetrain cleaner in bath form. It’s very expensive, however they suggest using just 100ml of the stuff and say this will clean no fewer than five chains, which makes the mad purchase price a bit more sane.

I took the plunge and have satisfactorarily cleaned three chains in 100ml so far and all seems good. It’s basically a five minute soak followed by a minute or so of agitation/shaking and that’s it. No multiple chain baths of white spirit and IPA, just the one two-stage process. I do wonder if an initial white spirit soak with IPA rinse followed by the Ceramic Speed process would extend the solvent’s useable life, but honestly can’t be arsed with it all.

But the Ceramic Speed or Strip Chip initial clean routines are a lot less hassle than spending an hour shaking jars full of white spirit in your cellar like some sort of drivetrain necromancer…

I always struggle with peoples acceptance of low standards. Some is pleased with 300 k out of a waxed chain. With the fiddle doing it I want 3000. 300 is a weeks riding or less.

Get a couple or three chains on rotation, your cassette and chainrings will thank you too.

yeah, I do wax but it doesn’t half annoy me. Degrease chain, ultrasonic it, melt wax, let it soak. Anyone ever factor in the cost of the leccy?

Multiple chains at once, i usually wax 5 or 6 at the same time. And mostly, once they’ve been waxed once, do they really need serious degreasing or ultrasonic cleaning again?

The commuter has gone back to a big squirt of liquid grease once a week for the 100+ miles it does on the commute.

Some bikes aren’t suited for wax i guess.

Blending the ideal wax isn’t easy, when you think you’ve hit the jackpot you find that your new blend has compromised in some other way you didn’t expect. Additives like calcium stearate do add a bit of water resistance to wax but that isn’t really the issue anyway when you delve into it, adding additives like that can cause the wax to resist sticking to a chain surface. It is used to aid mould release and that isn’t a good thing when we are talking wet weather performance on a chain.

With additives like ours, more equals better was my initial thinking, but we found that not to be true. There is a sweet spot and unfortunately that sweet spot changes with each different additive and particle size, it’s a minefield and damn expensive and time consuming to test.

Some is pleased with 300 k out of a waxed chain. With the fiddle doing it I want 3000. 300 is a weeks riding or less.

I dunno. 300k of technical off-road is a lot. My local loops are about 15k and take about an hour – that means 20hrs of riding that’s well lubricated and not grinding your chain. With wet lube, I don’t even get 20 minutes – the chain is grinding the instant I hit the slop. 20hrs of off-roading is likely to be 3-6 weeks, or more if I do more road.

Degrease chain, ultrasonic it, melt wax, let it soak

You don’t need to degrease or clean – at least, not with Putoline.

So just to feedback, did the Struggle Borderlands 100k gravel yesterday, Silca hot waxed chain on a SRAM force flat top chain.

Conditions ranged from dry to wet to damp (one of those days!) and it was 85% off road, quite a lot of very very fine almost sand like stuff in quite a few places. Four stream crossings. In short I would describe it as quite challenging for a chain lube.

I’d given it a fresh silca hot wax about 50 miles before the ride, and the chain and wax held up brilliantly. It held up far better than my friends wet lubed chains, and I could have ridden further on it.

This morning it’s had the boiling water bath and then a hot wax.  Very little dirt on the chain, it was still pretty clean, and a decent amount of wax still on it.

Hugely impressed. Its easy to do, easy to clean and seems to perform brilliantly

Ps highly recommend the event, I’m a local but it still gave me a kicking.

That’s really good!

Just for scientific purposes, what’s your bike setup? 1x? Mudguards?

Were there any prolonged sections where you were pedalling through puddles for any distance (you mentioned stream crossings but would the chain have been subjected to much spray from wheel?).

I’m back on Fenwick’s Stealth. It feels smooth and is generally quiet although I was getting some chain noise after a relatively dry 60km yesterday, but that may well have been due to all the crap wrapped around sprockets and jockey wheels!

Used fenicks stealth for 120 wet km round the Cairngorms on the weekend and 90km the week before*. It’s still well lubes it seems even after a hose off.

Not seeing any point reverting to the hot wax faff

*Wasn’t my plan but I left the lube on the top of the bin and not in the car as planned