Chinertown
Other Resources => Maintenance, Mechanics, & Tools => Topic started by: jonathanf2 on February 12, 2025, 02:08:01 PM
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I'm curious what everyone is using for immersive wax? I'm thinking of doing my own blend. I've read paraffin wax and PFTE powder should do the trick. I've read some people were fine with paraffin wax by itself, but re-waxing a bit earlier. Any other tips or suggestions? Thanks!
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I'm using paraffin wax and PTFE powder, a local eBay seller had a listing for the combo. I'm happy with it and will keep on using it, as I got 1 kg of wax! ZFC suggests that paraffin wax works quite well, though it's not quite as good as the best commercial waxes.
I've been re-waxing every 300 km, though I've been wondering if I could push that further, especially since I don't ride in the rain. There's no noise or squeak by the time I reach 300 km.
But stripping the factory grease off new chains is a faff, so if I was starting again today, I'd be very tempted by the Silca strip chip.
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Waxing a chain isn't a big deal since I have a small crockpot to melt the wax and I just hang the chains to dry outside. I have a small ultrasonic cleaner that fits a bike chain perfectly, so degreasing isn't much of an issue either.
Same I don't ride in the rain either and if I do get my chain wet, I can always swap it out for another pre-waxed chain.
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I just use plain paraffin now, might add a little mso2 occasionally. I've stopped using ptfe because its a forever chemical and toxic.
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I just use plain paraffin now, might add a little mso2 occasionally. I've stopped using ptfe because its a forever chemical and toxic.
I'm thinking of just going plain paraffin as well. I read it's a good idea to wear a mask when melting. The ptfe becomes airborne when heated and you can breath it in.
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I'm thinking of just going plain paraffin as well. I read it's a good idea to wear a mask when melting. The ptfe becomes airborne when heated and you can breath it in.
Yeah, and if you're rolling your own its a very fine powder.
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I was initially put off by the price of commercial blends but after a lot of reading on Zero Friction Cycling and the likes settled on Silca. And now I have I can see the cost is insignificant - yes the bag cost £35ish but only needed half to fill my Crockpot and what's in there has waxed a lot of chains (at least 20 waxings across all my bikes). Whilst there is now only just enough to cover a chain I still have the other half of the bag to top up from.
Major appeal for Silca for me is the matching drip wax - which is great for top ups when you are away from home or just don't have time.
IMO the savings from making your own blend aren't worth it given the fact that once you have the bag and filled a Crockpot with it you likely won't need to spend anything further for years.
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I am using paraffin wax and 1.6µm PTFE as additive
Moving forward I am planing to move to 4µm graphite powder as additive
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As of now I am using a plain paraffin wax + I bought tungsten disulfide (WS2) powder from AliExpress. Using a small wax heater I bought also from Ali for like 10 bucks. Only downside is that WS2 powder is leaving black marks anywhere it touches. Definitely would only recommend using it outside, have used it indoors and it's not that clean as you can imagine. Prior to that I was using straight paraffin without any additives, that was with my old bike. Haven't yet tried any branded wax stuff, but want to give Silca a try this year. Seems like the one package could last you at least half a year, maybe more. Let's see if it is any better than my DIY stuff.
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I've been waxing chains for years, only ever w wax alone. PTFE is on its way out, i think it might be forbidden to import it in powder form in the EU already.
Not all paraffin waxes are created equal. Because it's a by product of oil refining, afaik, you get different purities, a big difference being how much oil there is in the wax. Oilier is cheaper. The dude from Zero Friction Cycling said he's tested chains that were gunking up fast with store bought waxes, it was probably high oil contents from cheap paraffin.
Last year i bought 5kg of the most expensive paraffin wax i could find, i think it might be lab grade. It's brittle, very low oil.
Do i feel a difference in every day use? No.
The biggest draw for me is that it's now clean to handle bikes. I do more maintenance and use my bike more now that it's not a nasty source of grime.
Now, my chains do stretch, and i have nowhere near the claims of eternal life that immersion waxing somehow promises. But i use YBN or KMC 20 eur chains, typically, on cheap drive trains, and based in Europe, last time i checked, the Silca stuff was just too expensive to make sense to me, so i'm happy w my setup. It's important to dilute the crap from the chain into the bowl of wax, it's that action that purges the contaminants from the chain; i dont want to spend 50 eur to maybe save 3 eur worth of chain on every chain for the next 15 years.
I melt the wax in a metal bowl in a double boiler on the stove (bain marie), that way the wax can't catch fire. It does reach recommended paraffin temps. i wiggle it with bent metal hanger, and voila. It takes 5min of work, and i dont need a dedicated rice cooker. I've also provided that setup to all the friends i've built bike for, it's pretty easy once you've done it a few times.
I would never go back to oiled drive trains.
As to stripping the grease from the factory, using white spirit and the likes does stink badly, and these solvents aren't actually cheap, but i bought 20 bottles of it once, so i'm set to use that for the next 20 years :)
I heard Silca opened a European warehouse so it might make more financial sense now for those in Europe. But i still feel their US prices are high for what they offer; but convenience has a price for sure.
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I am using paraffin wax and 1.6µm PTFE as additive
Moving forward I am planing to move to 4µm graphite powder as additive
Yeah, I've added this: https://www.amazon.com/Molybdenum-Disulfide-Micron-Powder-Ounces/dp/B00ICXS2OS/ref=asc_df_B00ICXS2OS?
It doesn't take much. It does discolor the wax but doesn't leave any add'l residue anywhere.
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I am using paraffin wax and 1.6µm PTFE as additive
Moving forward I am planing to move to 4µm graphite powder as additive
I was thinking of graphite as well, but I read it could possibly act as an abrasive.
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Paraffin wax, PTFE and Molybdenum Disulfide. tiny crockpot. works great. I just shake my chains up in a jar of mineral spirits then let them dry before dunking.
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KMC now sells pre waxed chains so no more cosmoline to degrease.
[https://www.merlincycles.com/en-us/kmc-x12-ti-n-pre-waxed-chain-12-speed-321064.html]
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I used old Christmas candle (Yankee Candle red...yes...) with Aliexpress PTFE powder.
I'm waiting for calcium stearate in order to clean the wax impurities.
After +400km everything is running smoothly on the road bike, so yesterday I waxed the gravel chain
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I used old Christmas candle (Yankee Candle red...yes...) with Aliexpress PTFE powder.
I assume your chain smells nice lol
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Plain paraffin on all my chains (MTB, gravel, road, commuter, indoor) with squirt drip in between waxes. Very happy with it.
I got 8500km on my chain on my indoor trainer before replacing it with 0.75% wear.
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Plain paraffin on all my chains (MTB, gravel, road, commuter, indoor) with squirt drip in between waxes. Very happy with it.
I got 8500km on my chain on my indoor trainer before replacing it with 0.75% wear.
I notice the squirt tend to attract road grime so I prefer to avoid using and to rewax every 500km.
How about you?
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I notice the squirt tend to attract road grime ...
Yea, that was my observation as well. Now I only use Squirt I have left for my indoor trainer bike. Plan to try out that Silca Super Duper Secret stuff, let's see how that works. So far I've been rewaxing with my DIY wax mix every now and then and it was enough for me.
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I used old Christmas candle (Yankee Candle red...yes...) with Aliexpress PTFE powder.
I'm waiting for calcium stearate in order to clean the wax impurities.
After +400km everything is running smoothly on the road bike, so yesterday I waxed the gravel chain
Nice! I bet you'll have a good smelling bike as well! ;D
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Red Apple Wreath, This is a Fruity fragrance.A happy holiday homecoming with the festive aroma of sweet apples, cinnamon, walnuts and maple. Top notes: Golden Apples, Cinnamon Leaf, Clove. Middle notes: Apple Peel, Cracked Walnuts, Brown Sugar. Base notes: Amber, Melted Butter, Maple Syrup, Vanilla. Top note is the initial impression of the fragrance, middle note is the main body of the scent and base is its final impression.
Yesterday night I was tuning the rear mech and spinning the wheel chain I can smell the candy apple scent...
Once dry, the color of wax was white and not red
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Red Apple Wreath, This is a Fruity fragrance.A happy holiday homecoming with the festive aroma of sweet apples, cinnamon, walnuts and maple. Top notes: Golden Apples, Cinnamon Leaf, Clove. Middle notes: Apple Peel, Cracked Walnuts, Brown Sugar. Base notes: Amber, Melted Butter, Maple Syrup, Vanilla. Top note is the initial impression of the fragrance, middle note is the main body of the scent and base is its final impression.
Yesterday night I was tuning the rear mech and spinning the wheel chain I can smell the candy apple scent...
Once dry, the color of wax was white and not red
I can imagine using an indoor trainer and you hit some real peak output power/speed and REALLY start smelling the candy appple smell: "Oh yeah, baby, getting ON IT NOW!!!"
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Somewhat interesting update on paraffin wax for bikes:
I've been waxing my bike chains for years. Many, by now.
Last year, i started using the fanciest paraffin wax i could source, from a professional seller. Very low oil content, i think pretty much lab grade, whatever that really means. I have now ridden thousands of km with the stuff.
I get virtually no wax residue in the cassette, chainrings, pulleys.
In the past, with wax pellets i bought on amazon / supermarkets that were marketed as multi purpose paraffin wax (i assume mostly bought to make candles), i had instances where i had to remove wax residue between cogs, because it was causing mis-shifts. And the pulleys needed degunking regularly (mostly big flakes rather than outright gunk). It wasnt bad, i assumed it was normal, because it's wax after all.
But i've realized that this is entirely gone.
Now, does that mean my chain / drivetrain last longer? No idea. I have to test chain wear (i'm only on chain #2 on my LT268), but it's not like i'm on chain #6, and as a chain lasts for thousands of km, i really dont keep track over time of how long chains last in any scientific way.
But i thought i'd share here that paraffin waxes DO differ. Without additives, whether that makes a difference to lifespan, idk. But my drivetrain is always clean AF, it's really just black dust / incredibly thin black flakes that come off my drivetrain. It's so, so nice not to deal with oily and gunky drivetrains. My rotors are now way nastier than my drivetrain, funny enough. Because if i rub my rotor with my calf, i get a black mark. W the chain, virtually nothing.
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Somewhat interesting update on paraffin wax for bikes:
I've been waxing my bike chains for years. Many, by now.
Last year, i started using the fanciest paraffin wax i could source, from a professional seller. Very low oil content, i think pretty much lab grade, whatever that really means. I have now ridden thousands of km with the stuff.
I get virtually no wax residue in the cassette, chainrings, pulleys.
In the past, with wax pellets i bought on amazon / supermarkets that were marketed as multi purpose paraffin wax (i assume mostly bought to make candles), i had instances where i had to remove wax residue between cogs, because it was causing mis-shifts. And the pulleys needed degunking regularly (mostly big flakes rather than outright gunk). It wasnt bad, i assumed it was normal, because it's wax after all.
But i've realized that this is entirely gone.
Now, does that mean my chain / drivetrain last longer? No idea. I have to test chain wear (i'm only on chain #2 on my LT268), but it's not like i'm on chain #6, and as a chain lasts for thousands of km, i really dont keep track over time of how long chains last in any scientific way.
But i thought i'd share here that paraffin waxes DO differ. Without additives, whether that makes a difference to lifespan, idk. But my drivetrain is always clean AF, it's really just black dust / incredibly thin black flakes that come off my drivetrain. It's so, so nice not to deal with oily and gunky drivetrains. My rotors are now way nastier than my drivetrain, funny enough. Because if i rub my rotor with my calf, i get a black mark. W the chain, virtually nothing.
what kind of paraffin did you buy? Or any specific keywords I need to use to looks for the "lab-grade" paraffin? When I initially switched to wax, I tried using paraffin and candles with and without ptfe but it never felt right. the chain was quite noisy and the wax didn't bind to the chain very well so it was just grinding of the chain very quickly. I switched to silca since then and it worked fantastic but I'm tempted to give pure paraffin another go simply because I don't really like that silca is black and it's making my drivetrain look dirty.
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i geeked out on the internet, i dont remember specifically how. But it was evident that retail websites weren't cutting it (there was no information about oil content, for eg), so i started scouring the wider web, and so on. I did find a seller who refused to sell to me, because i was not willing to buy 100kg or whatever his MOQ was :)
I did order 5 or 10kg though, i dont remember. I hooked up many of my friends.
the very idea of not just buying any wax came from that youtube channel with the Australian guy who tests chains, who hates hambini. I have come to realize that he's right about hambini btw. but that's a different story. It's from there that i specifically looked for wax with low oil content, because oil leads to gunking up.
Search engines did the rest.
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I have a slow cooker full of wax that I use when waxing. Once I started running low on the good stuff, I just threw in an additional bar of paraffin wax. I'm not really concerned about wax gunk. Unlike chain grease, boiling hot water just melts the wax away. Also I'd rather just use plain paraffin and wax more often. Not sure I want to be exposed to "forever" chemicals just to have a smoother drivetrain! :o
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You’ll need a fully refined Paraffin wax. Oil content lower than 0.5%. https://www.petronaftco.com/semi-vs-fully-refined-paraffin-wax/ (https://www.petronaftco.com/semi-vs-fully-refined-paraffin-wax/)
You can get it in Europe here. https://dwoil.de/en/shop/paraffin-waxes/paraffin-wax-52-54-c-solidification-point-as-granules-fully-refined/ (https://dwoil.de/en/shop/paraffin-waxes/paraffin-wax-52-54-c-solidification-point-as-granules-fully-refined/)
From 1kg and up. Shipping is expensive though. I’m ordering some.
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Not sure I want to be exposed to "forever" chemicals just to have a smoother drivetrain! :o
Funny how they're called "forever chemicals" but they don't stay on that damn chain forever, huh! I guess I'll pass them on to my grandchildren's children through my dna, but I have to re-lube my drivetrain after only 100mi or so
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Funny how they're called "forever chemicals" but they don't stay on that damn chain forever, huh! I guess I'll pass them on to my grandchildren's children through my dna, but I have to re-lube my drivetrain after only 100mi or so
I don't even wax for the supposed performance gains. My main thing is having a clean bike and the possibility of longer lasting components. Even when my chains get a bit gunk'ed from wax, I can either wipe it down with a dry cloth or throw it in the ultrasonic cleaner. Cassettes I can just pour boiling water and it's clean.
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Cassettes I can just pour boiling water and it's clean.
This is exactly my reasoning, as well. I can't stand touching my chain and getting a big, ol' nasty black grease stain. Or having the same on my leg should I brush against it. Actually, the wax I use is pretty dark so the flakes of wax that fall on my white frame tend to actually look pretty messy. BUT they come off super easy with some hot water from a kettle, which I pour over the cassette and and chainstays.
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This is exactly my reasoning, as well. I can't stand touching my chain and getting a big, ol' nasty black grease stain. Or having the same on my leg should I brush against it. Actually, the wax I use is pretty dark so the flakes of wax that fall on my white frame tend to actually look pretty messy. BUT they come off super easy with some hot water from a kettle, which I pour over the cassette and and chainstays.
This one time I met a guy on the road with a snapped chain and his hands were covered in black chain grease. I was thinking had he just switched to immersive waxing he would have avoided the mess. Maybe not even snap his chain! Seeing that, I'm never going back to drip lube! ;D
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A mzon Germany have a 1kg bag for 10eur and free delivery, which claims to be "Burns clean – thanks to the very low oil content of only 0.3%"
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I forgot to add that IK ea claim that some types of their tea lights are also low oil and even contain stearic acid which is the most important component of sikla's special sauce for removing factory grease
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I've used few like squirt, effetto mariposa flower power, ceramic speed ufo, dynamic slick wax and bike 7 pro wax is the best one in my experience. Chain last super long, wax life is long, easy to apply and very clean. It's so good I can't justify going hot wax and putting extra work.
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I just put on my 3rd chain on my bike. i get c.5000km out of a YBN 11s chain using immersion wax. Probably 5500. Less than 6000km. I change it when it gets to 0.5%, not 0.75%.
Curious how much life people get from their setup.
A YBN chain costs c.20 eur, and the wax has no additives, so it's probably c.10 eur/kg or so, maybe 15, i dont remember, once you factor in shipping or what not. 1 pot of wax can do 10,000km, arguably, idk.