Any pointers on off the bike chain cleaning? You have on the bike cleaning but I like my ultrasonic clearer method as per molten speed wax.

totally off topic... but as an M3 owner (previous and current cars pictured below), i absolutely love your new face masks. You guys are killing it with product design.

Thanks for asking.. here is my (and most pro mechanics) 'shake bottle method':

Here is info on ultrasonic cleaners and solutions to use in them, we are finishing a video on more details here but my video producer is on maternity leave, so happy to wait a few more weeks!:

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Check out my podcast, inside stories from more than 20 years of product and tech innovation from inside the Pro Peloton and Pro Triathlon worlds!
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Interesting note Josh, this weekend I used some of the SSSL drip wax on an already paraffin waxed chain and I noted that the surface tension of the wet lube was enough for it to sit on the surface and bubble between links of the chain. I then tried using a small artists paint brush (Don't tell my wife) and that did the trick to ensure that the lube was where I wanted it on and around the links. For curing, I like using a hair drier, is this been something you have tried? because I noted that using (not excessive) heat that I could see the original wax soften and the new liquid creep into the wax or at least that is what it looked like to the naked eye. I also do a run with a hair drier after I hot wax the clean chain, my theory is that under load the warmed wax will soften and squish out into the spaces on the inside of the roller and be better distributed. I have never heard my chain start to make noise even after a few 100 km when I do this sort of "cure" method. I would be very interested in hearing feedback on thoughts around this method to quick cure the wax or the liquid wax lube.

Rob Bell, thanks for the kind words, glad somebody noticed and if you like what we're doing, you'll love some of the stuff that's coming!!

s5100e, we are experimenting with heat but will likely not issue any official guidance as it is just very hard to put a process to that will be easy to understand and repeatable for people around the world. You are correct that in skilled hands, it is a very effective tool at both curing the wax and will certainly speed the penetration of drip wax applied over top of existing wax.. The best general advice is to do it indoors and let it sit for 24 hours before initial use. We have found that the chain will be completely dry all the way to the core in 1 hours at 100F and 10% humidity, which is great if you live in the desert, we've built a box with small heating element and dehumidifier to do the testing below which represents different humidities at 'room temperature' and are now creating additional cure plots with varied temperature at fixed humidity.



I would not recommend using heat to break your hot wax chain free as you do not want the wax squishing about or extruding out from inside the links if possible, I'm sure that there is some perfect amount of heat that would be fine here, but would worry about the risk of getting even a bit to much on it to allow the wax to begin to push out of the spaces where you really want it to stay.

The optimal state is to have the link and roller be at 100% fill of hard wax (which it should be when it comes out of the bath and dries) that is then compacted under load and burnished by the chain itself. I use a piece of PVC pipe that I run the chain over to break the links free one by one before install, and for our ProTour chains, we run them in mechanically before waxing, and then burnish the wax on a chain dyno where we can watch the chain get faster and faster for a few kilometers before being fully optimized.

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Check out my podcast, inside stories from more than 20 years of product and tech innovation from inside the Pro Peloton and Pro Triathlon worlds!
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I've always wondered about something that Jobst Brandt said back in the day:

"Paraffin (canning wax), although clean, works poorly because it is not mobile and cannot replenish the bearing surfaces once it has been displaced"

"Wax does not work and no
one, but those who believe in the unbelievable, wax chains. Wax is not
mobile and cannot return to a location from which it has been removed by
rotation of one part on another. It has little film strength and
as most adherents of this method admit, it falls flat with moisture
This exposes its absence from the friction surfaces."

Was he incorrect? Have new wax formulations overcome this issue?

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Or maybe he doesn't understand what happening (and NOT happening) inside the chain, particularly how the pins / rollers / plates move in relation to each other ??

I'm guessing that Jobst Brandt (he died in 2015) knew pretty well what was going on. He worked in tribology (at Porsche and at HP (disk drives)).

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Thanks for the thoughts Josh. I currently use a hair drier not a heat gun so I can be mild in the amount of heat applied. I have an infrared thermometer but have not quite gotten the nerdy yet but it is coming. To me you just want to get close to the melting point of the wax, ie around 60 deg C but not over that point you want it to soften in my thinking so that the pressure from the rollers and metal to metal surfaces allow it to smooth out faster than cold pressing.

I am curious if you have ever tried brushing the drip lube on instead of dripping, to me the drip mode was messy and wasteful but the brush was far more precise.

Again on the newly waxed chain I only use a hair drier to just get enough heat to soften the wax, not to melt it, so that the wax distributes more evenly in the chain, otherwise you are using the pressure you need to apply as the means of smoothing the wax and breaking the cohesion. Again if the wax is slippery then when you break the cohesion (which I suspect is greater to itself than to metal), could you possibly be moving the wax off of the metallic surface and exposing metal when cold? Whereas if warm (not hot) you make the wax psuedo plastic and instead of breaking/ cracking it draws out and apart like soft gum? Just thoughts, so far I have no way to prove anything except how well my chain stays clean and quiet.

I really enjoy the discussion and the engagement you have with your customers Josh. As an addicted listener to the Marginal Gains podcast (my addiction is partially due to having had Josh answer a few of my questions on the podcast) keep up the good work and great products.

on this part of the thread I have always loved the BMW 2002 tee shirts, as an owner of two 2002's, 1973 one past, 1975 one (unfortunately) presently in partial rebuild state, I love those cars and so does my son.

Every time I'm on the Silca website I tell myself to order one of the 2002 shirts. I had one for a number of years and loved that car. It was so much fun on the track even though it was relatively slow.

While Jobst is often viewed as something of a god.. and he was truly beyond smart.. he wasn't infallible and also he was going off of a mental model which probably wasn't 100% accurate.. plus he had no access to the testing and data we have now.

His replenishment argument is true.. the wax is only working when it is where it needs to be and once it's pushed out, the effects are lost. With our formula, the WS2 is sized to match the surface roughness of the metal, so even once the wax is nearly totally gone, you still have a film of WS2 on/in the metal which serves as both a lubricant and anti-wear material until it too is gone. Unfortunately, the replenishment nature of oil is also a big part of the problem as the oil at the surface gets dirty and then that dirty oil gets pulled into the inside of the chain where it leads to increased friction and increased wear.

If you want to lube a chain and have it more or less be quiet for 1000 miles, oil is the way to go.. but we now know that modified waxes are both lower friction and lower wear, but they also require more frequent maintenance. For me, the key benefits to wax are the cleanliness and the silence, followed by the shifting feel.. a freshly waxed chain just shifts so much quicker and smoother due to the decreased lateral play in the links and also the much lower side plate friction experienced as the chain is climbing from one cog to the other. The increased speed and reduced wear are also nice, but I'm not racing, nor putting in a lot of miles.. I just want to make sure that the riding I do get to do is as enjoyable as possible!

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Check out my podcast, inside stories from more than 20 years of product and tech innovation from inside the Pro Peloton and Pro Triathlon worlds!
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Yes the 2002 was a fun car to drive, my son has picked up a ti engine because mine was a normally aspirated and only 4 speed. I always felt it needed that 5th gear when whizzing through the gears... so much to love about those cars. That is why I feel so bad it is sitting in parts right now but always hopeful that it gets put back together.

Mine had a 5sp from a 320i and side draft Weber DCOE carbs among other trick parts. I miss that car.

Of course, I now have a 1989 E30 M3. That's scratches the itch.

Thanks for the update. I cleaned and waxed my chain by immersing it in the 16 jar of your chain lube. I was extremely satisfied with its performance. On the trainer, the drivetrain was virtually silent, and I did not get any residue on the floor under the chainline which was a frequent occurence when using other wax based lubes.

After a few hundred miles of riding I decided to apply your drip lube without cleaning the chain first. Looking at the bottom of the bottle I noticed that it appeared that the additives seemed to have settled in the bottle. I shook the bottle vigorously before applying the drip lube. After approximately 24 hours, I did another trainer ride. Again, the drivetrain was virtually silent, but this time there was a noticeable amount of gray particulate on floor. I cleaned it off the floor. The residue did not return on subsequent rides.

Is that expected or should I have done something different?

Thanks,
Brian

Thanks Brian and no, you are all good with your methodology!

The WS2 will settle to the bottom of the bottle in time (it is tungsten based and heavy AF after all!) but shaking will redisperse those wax structures within the emulsion. The flakes and mess after the drip wax is from the wax that did not penetrate the chain. Adam at Zero Friction has great details here, but more or less likes to point out that a 'top-off' or 're-lube' with SSCL might be on the order of 5mL for the 114 links of chain which will be ~0.05mL per link, but maybe half or 2/3 of that makes it into the roller.. so there will invariably be residual lube to flake off after that, it's unavoidable. The hot melt method will nearly eliminate this as the hot melt is both a solvent for the existing lube and a new lube all in one, but has it's own limitations as well in terms of time and investment to get started.

Sounds to me like you are in a good spot, just wipe up the wax flakes and you will be fine.
Enjoy your quiet trainer rides and super fast shifting!
J

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http://www.SILCA.cc
Check out my podcast, inside stories from more than 20 years of product and tech innovation from inside the Pro Peloton and Pro Triathlon worlds!
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For those of you waiting for the ZeroFriction results, they are now live: https://zerofrictioncycling.com.au/lubetesting/

accompanied by his longest ever review at more than 40 pages!!

Reader's Digest version:

First and only wax based drip lube to fully penetrate in on-bike application (all others require removal of chain and immersion)
Lowest wear ever recorded in dry, sandy, loamy conditions.
3rd best in wet/dirty conditions (but we now know the lube was not fully cured for any of this testing so soon to retest)
Even with only partial cure, lowest cost per 10,000km of any drip lube ever tested
One of only 5 lubes to make it to Block6 of the test

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Check out my podcast, inside stories from more than 20 years of product and tech innovation from inside the Pro Peloton and Pro Triathlon worlds!
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someone needs to make a cribs version of all of Adam's reviews. Testing regime 10/10. Succinctness: 2/10

Is he going to be on the podcast any time?

HA! You should see his emails.. I actually copy them into word to do a count and then I tease him about it!!

Yes, we recorded a video and audio podcast with him a few weeks back, before he was even done testing, but we've been slow to get them out as my marketing ace who handles the editing has been on maternity leave. I hope to have them up on marginal gains and youtube in the next week. Funny enough, I tease him a bit about his lack of brevity and he picks on himself a bit as well! Lots of good stuff in this one!

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http://www.SILCA.cc
Check out my podcast, inside stories from more than 20 years of product and tech innovation from inside the Pro Peloton and Pro Triathlon worlds!
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Congrats on the awesome results. Also, love the podcast.

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Matt

Hi Josh,
Is it normal for the SSCL to be so fluid / have low viscosity or did I get a weird batch? I seem to be wasting a ton when applying because it just drips off the chain. I used Squirt for a while and it was a lot stickier... Is SSCL supposed to be similar in consistency?

Thanks!

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What's your CdA?

Read between the lines of Adam Kerin’s now completed review, and you’ll see that yep, this happens. With the drip lube, I switched to doing a thin drizzle several times, rather than trying to put one discrete drop on each roller. I am actually now on the molten wax, but I may keep using the drip lube on the gravel bike in winter.

The action of going through the derailleur pulleys is what replenishes and redistributes the wax.
This was well documented by Jason at Friction Facts.
His testing regime allowed for this by running the chain for long term testing through a derailleur but then putting it onto a direct track type setup for friction testing.

Hey Josh!

Thanks for putting this all together. I bought all the items your recommended in the YouTube videos and have cleaned my chains. I have some molten speed wax hanging around still. Am I suppose to wax the chains and then use your super secret lube or just the lube?

 
I am curious of Josh's comments on this question though this is my take.


The Zero Friction trial was on a plain clean chain no prior waxing. It was simply a test of the drip lube only and alone. If you have waxed your chain first then this may complicate things a bit because the drip lube will bead on the waxed surface. The wax is hydrophobic and the drip wax solution (as I assume uses alcohol(s)) is hydrophilic so then the drip may not be able to cause the wax previously applied to dissolve and allow the new stuff to get into the pins etc (ie the small spaces). That is what I have seemed to see in my trial. The other thing I am curious about is with the SSCL drip approach does the tungsten disulfide (WS2) actually bond to the metal because that is one aspect of the dry application of WS2 in industrial settings. Once you add it to the solution in SSCL does it still bond?

Insilvis, you can definitely hot wax and then use SSCL to 'top off' that wax every few hundred miles.. the best results we've seen in our testing come from doing a hot melt SILCA wax every 1000 miles with SSCL topping off every 200 miles or so. We have test chains at 20,000 miles that are nowhere close to the 0.5% stretch limit.

You can also use straight SSCL and replenish every 200 miles or so with ~90% the same results.

G Belson and weiwentg, yes, the low viscosity is how it manages to actually penetrate the rollers and links down to the pin.. if you read Adam's reviews of Squirt and Smoke, he goes into a lot of detail about how their high viscosity really keeps them from getting in there which necessitates immersion and warming the lube or the chain while you do it.. Also, we updated our application method pretty early in the production phase of the product which you can see around 7-8 minute mark in this video:

The new method for application is to cross-chain and then apply to the rollers right as the chain is about to contact the cassette cog..at this moment, the inner and outer links take some angle to each other opening up a slightly larger gap for the lube to penetrate into, and then the action of the links bending about the cassette and pulleys really seems to help work the lube down into the spaces we really want it.

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http://www.SILCA.cc
Check out my podcast, inside stories from more than 20 years of product and tech innovation from inside the Pro Peloton and Pro Triathlon worlds!
http://www.marginalgainspodcast.cc

Josh, while we have you here, I'm wondering if there are any issues with mixing SSCL with the wax. In particular, I think you have said that SSCL has some slack wax, which I know has some oil. It seems like we should degrease a chain which has has SSCL before putting it into the wax pot. Is that correct?

In contrast, I know that with MSW, you only really need to clean the chain if you've had a ride in the wet, and their protocol says boiling water is sufficient for that.

So the drip wax will penetrate into a hot waxed chain especially if you are doing the cross-chain style application. The liquid really doesn't want to sit on the hot melt wax on the outside of the chain, but it definitely does want to wick its way down into the places it needs to go if there is a crevice for it to do so. We've had a lot of people a bit freaked out by how much it wants to drip off of the outer surfaces of the chain (as Adam also mentions in the review) but as he also found, it really does get in there better than you might think!

As for 'bonding' to the surface, it really more impinges the surface and finds its way into the nooks and crannies of the metal.. the effects are long last until it is exposed to water and friction combined which oxidize it and also help sweep it from the texture of the metal. Similarly, when spray applied as a dry film, the effects are not permanent and the durability varies widely depending on environmental conditions and exposure. But, as I said above, if you keep wax in there and keep moisture out, a chain can last nearly indefinitely as the wear surfaces essentially become a constantly replenished coating of these little WS2 platelets.

weiwentg the slack wax is really just a mix of paraffin powder and paraffin oil.. it's the precursor from which you would make both products. I think of this as similar to making ice cream.. rather than use whole milk you use skim milk and milk fat so that you can get the proportions just right.. in our case, the dry, powdered paraffin has the consistency of powdered sugar and doesn't want to adhere to itself unless you get it hot.. so if we put some in water and made an emulsion and then let the water evaporate, you would get powder again as it has no real affinity to itself. The bit of oil in there makes it want to stick to itself after it is dry. If you've ever bought paraffin for canning you would find that it is slightly pliable.. this is because it still has some of the oil in there (as much as 10% oil).. whereas the 99.5% laboratory grade paraffin feels like concrete.

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http://www.SILCA.cc
Check out my podcast, inside stories from more than 20 years of product and tech innovation from inside the Pro Peloton and Pro Triathlon worlds!
http://www.marginalgainspodcast.cc

Josh it must be fun to be able to do all the trial and testing you do (though I am sure there are frustrations) that we can not do out here in the wild. The wealth of knowledge you have gained from trials and that you freely share on the forum like this is much appreciated. I found myself being drawn into the rabbit hole this week while thinking this stuff over and looking into info on WS2. But my frugality got the better of my geeking out to slow down the slide into the proverbial wonderland. Both you and Adam are great resources to touch on for info and are so freely willing to help out in an honest way. That is refreshing these days. Thanks for the great products and please stop coming up with so many cool things, that I want so much more than I need, I may have to start a separate bank account and my second job, just for Silca stuff..... :-)

Fwiw, MoS2 bonds quite well to steel ( buddy worked in a molybdenum mine, every steel surface was covered with it). How well it bonds to a treated or coated steel surface I don't know. There is also the possibility that it ones so well that the wax doesn't.

MoS2 is excellent for using in vacuum, but doesn't do well in humidity.

Haven't been able to find much info about WS2, but I expect its properties to be similar. Don't have any info about the humidity behavior.

I am re-reading my question, and it came out totally garbled. This is what I meant: if I’ve used Silca’s drip lube on a chain, do I need to fully degrease it before I put it in a pot of Silca’s wax?

Hi Josh,

Love the product. I applied the lube to a new chain (did not strip / dip) and am on the 'replenish every 200 miles or so' train. I've searched for this but can't find the answer, do I need to wipe down the chain prior to reapplication? If so, I know you recommend your gear wipes, but would any old (clean) shop towel do? If the idea is to clear the chain of any large pieces of debris etc.

So I thoroughly cleaned the chains on both my road bikes and my trainer bike. Apples ans let dry overnight. Ive been a rock n roll gold user for years. Have gotten a lot of miles out of all my chains using it and was pretty happy.
First ride tonight on my trainer and I can say the chain is noticeably more quiet and smooth.

Is it worth using it on my mountain bikes? I’m a fair weather roadie so my chains never get wet on those bikes. Does this stuff work good and hold up off road or should I stick with r n r?