I tried wax on my gravel bike, and it ran longer and cleaner than oil - as long as it was dry. However, as soon as it got wet it was gone and the chain was screaming for mercy.

Last year I used different versions of Rock N Roll (depending on conditions) with decent results. But I’m still searching for the unicorn tears.

For long rides, like DK200, I just clean and oil at each checkpoint, or sooner if needed.

Did you try hot dip wax, or the wax that comes in a bottle (like Squirt)?

I’ve done both.

I’ve mainly used an ultrasonic cleaner to clean the chain, than used a slow cooker with Molten Speed Wax to wax the chain. I still use this for indoor training during the winter.

I have also used Squirt, when needing to reapply while away from the slow cooker.

Neither hold up to wet riding.

YMMV

I don't do a ton of gravel riding, but I wax chains for cyclocross, and it works brilliantly pretty much in all conditions.

How long are your races? In my experience wax fails between 1 and 2 hours of wet riding. In a 7 to 17 hour gravel race I need the lubricant to last at least 4 hours.

Wax for dry training and racing.

NFS if it’s going to be yucky.

What’s NFS?

Do you lube and then clean everything before waxing again?

This is NFS.

I would just have separate wet and dry chains. The cleaning process going back and forth sounds tedious.

cx races are 30min to 1hr

This is 100% my experience too. Rock and Roll Extreme (blue) is my choice if the chain will be wet and the event is longer than a cyclocross race. I'm not sure what the unicorn tears solution is either.

Like Trail said, your best bet is to have a second chain ready to go if you think weather might be dicey or if there are a lot of stream crossings.

My waxed chain was SCREAMING at DK. It wasn't raining, but there was a little mud and some water crossings. The following year is used NFS and it was so much better.

It's fairly easy to apply lube while you are riding (tip: use your left hand through the main triangle of the bike). You could probably go ahead and apply Squirt to your waxed chain while riding and be ok, but i think you'd have to do it more frequently than you would if you started with a chain with a decent wet lube. The Squirt sample bottles are 15ml and easy to carry in a race.

If it's a real nasty weather day, I'll carry Muc Off C3 wet lube, because I like the 50ml bottle and applicator. It has a fairly long spout and shoots a nice stream. The 60 ml NFS bottles aren't great for on-the-bike lubing.

In testing wax seems to last longer than anything else in wet conditions (https://zerofrictioncycling.com.au/lubetesting/). For short events like cyclocross it's simple -- two or three prepared chains lasted me an entire rainy muddy week at nationals in Louisville. Still, I've done rainy days on the road that lasted much longer than two hours without issue.

Squirt is tempting for on the fly reapplication, especially as it won't totally contaminate a treated chain. Keep in mind, though, that it's not used as directed -- Squirt is intended to dry before use.

Yeah... I spent a lot of time on that site, reading the tests and following the instructions. That’s what got me into waxing in the first place. I think I found the site via GPLama (Shane Miller). I never achieved the same results in the gravel world, especially if it got wet. It could be the combo of wet and grit over long races. I do not dispute that wax works for short 1 and 2 hour efforts, but the gravel world is largely long, self-supported events, with 3-5 hours between aid stations. For me wax didn’t hold up for my needs.

About that link: if you go to the bottom right of the page, there are some downloadable (PDF) detailed reviews for each lube. And here's where the story seems to get complicated.

In the MSW test, Kerin (the ZFC guy) straight up says that MSW is amazing, even in wet conditions, including as a race-day MTB or CX lube. He thinks that water per se doesn't affect the wax. The dust and mud, however, will abrade it off after about 3-4 hours of continuous exposure. And then friction, chain wear, and noise will markedly increase - so, consistent with Crankshaft's experience.

He does seem to rate both Squirt and Smoove well by themselves for single very long events as well (i.e. use them and not MSW). It sounded like you had not tried Squirt alone. Reading his reviews for each lube, it sounds like each of them should do very well in single long dry and dusty events. For single long wet events, it sounds like he rates Smoove higher. The thing is, he says that you have to clean the chain like you would for MSW (i.e. ultrasonic cleaner, get all the factory grease off), then "layer" the lube - apply once, ride the bike a bit to work the lubricant into the chain, then add another layer once the chain is dry, then repeat several times. He seems to be thinking you need to do this for the first 5 rides on the chain. That's on page 50 of the Smoove review.

Oh, and he says that after a wet ride, you will want to deep clean a chain that you treated with Smoove. Yeah, this sounds like a lot of work.

His wet weather guide does endorse MSW plus Smoove to top up as a strategy for long wet rides. I realize this isn't consistent with Crankshaft's experience of using MSW topped up with Squirt at Kanza, however.

I've never used Squirt at all. I have a bottle for "emergencies," something other wax fans have suggested for long wet rides, but I've never had to use it. Again, it's supposed to dry before use, so I'm a little skeptical.

If I ever do events too long and wet for wax to work, I would probably go the wet chain vs dry chain route and keep the two separate. Much easier than recleaning a lubed chain sufficiently to use wax.

I've done a good handful of gravel events with wax and not.

DK this year I started with wax and by 60 miles had a squeaking chain. Couldn't believe it. Lubed each checkpoint.

DAMn (240 miles gravel) I made it 150 miles without a sound then did re-lube at 190 miles due to some sound. Dry conditions with some dew overnight (midnight start)

Gravel Worlds this year 150 miles. I don't recall dew. Start early AM, but it was warm and dry all day. I never re-lubed with a waxed chain and rode the entire race zero issues.

So maybe from what I'm reading above if a gravel chain gets wet the wax is abraded out. Maybe with wet lubes those hold up a bit better to real nasty conditions over a very long day.

For now I'm sticking with wax. If nothing else at DK I'll have a 15 second chain swap at a checkpoint? We'll see :)

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I'm skeptical of that. Last weekend I did two crits in the rain, on clean roads. My freshly waxed chain started going squeaky in the middle of the 2nd crit. About 90 minutes.

Conditions are complicated.

There are some places where road riding in the rain will essentially never cause rim brakes to eat through a rim's brake track, and other places where doing so can eat a rim in just a few thousand miles. Here in the PNW, the front wheel doesn't fling water at the chain, it flings an extremely abrasive wet compound at the chain. This leads to interesting differences in outlook. I've been told by very experienced cyclists, speaking with absolute confidence, that rim wear from braking is not a phenomenon that ever matters in the real world. But I also have first-hand experience witnessing rims explode due to brake track wear, a dramatic blow-out where the rim's bead hook separates from the rim bed with a sound like a gunshot.

I've never measured lubricant endurance in different conditions, but I'd be extremely surprised if it wasn't subject to similar complexities.

Same exact experience here. I use Squirt (liquid wax) when it's wet out and it stays almost as clean as wax and lasts a hair longer (so still not long but better), but it's way easier to reapply so no biggie - just apply after every ride if need be.

No wax.

I use Rock n Roll Extreme or Rock n Roll Gold, depending on conditions.

For Muddy Kanza (was it 2015?) my chain was submerged a number of times. Lots of mud and cow manure splashed up. My pit crew reapplied Rock n Roll Extreme at the two checkpoints (no cleaning other than the lube itself) and the chain never stiffened or made noise. (I couldn't say the same for my "sealed" bottom bracket.) The chain kept working great for months thereafter, with no additional maintenance. (The chain maintenance enthusiasts are probably fainting at the thought of no additional maintenance.)

For Open Range 200k in 2019 (about half of which was through powdery sand), I only applied Rock n Roll Gold the night before the race. 200k with no additional maintenance and the chain did fine -- and continued doing fine for months thereafter with no additional maintenance.

The one waxed chain that gave me trouble in rain was probably user error on my part. The second or third time I had treated new chains and I got lazy about getting the factory goop off before waxing. Having learned that lesson wax has served us well since.

My experience (also in the PNW) would indicate that it absolutely is. I've been around long enough that I waxed my chains way back in the day when this was cool the first time around, but I stopped after having bad experiences with this in the Seattle weather.

Things do change though, so I thought I would give MSW a try on my training bike just to see if it worked better than I remembered wax doing, especially in winter conditions. On an abnormally nice day (only about 1/2 hour of rain on a 3.5 hour ride) I was able to get... just the one ride out of an ultrasonically cleaned and waxed chain. It rained for the last 1/2 hour of the ride, and the drivetrain was starting to sound like an industrial accident as I rode back down the driveway at the end of the ride.
I'm going to give it another try since I went to the trouble of ultrasonic cleaning the entire drivetrain, but my strong suspicion is that I'll be back on NFS after that.

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I usually wash my bike down after every gravel ride, and I like to do a lot of training on this bike

I imagine you do similar w your cyclocross bike?

Will spraying the bike down w water make the wax on the chain fail sooner? Meaning, can I still wax every few hundred miles if I’m washing the bike down after each ride?

As far as I remember, on the Molten Speed Wax's offical web, I saw they suggest users recoat their chain "everytime" after usage in wet or dusty circumstances.
U can wax urs but I think that will be really labourous and cost inefficient.
Hope my reply helps u

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