I used this product called Hot Tub which is a plastic tub with the solid wax compound already in it. You put the tub in a pot of water on the stovetop, put the chain on top of the wax, let it melt and leave the chain in there over the heat for 15 minutes. Then you pull it, hang it, flex it etc as normal. I had been wanting to wax my chain but was absolutely not buying a crock pot so I thought I’d give this a try. I cleaned the chain (it has 1800 miles on it) with an overnight soak in Park chain cleaner, and wiped it down with isopropyl alcohol then did the wax immersion. Cassette was degreased and scrubbed. Everything went according to plan — no hiccups. I reattached the chain and went for a ride and enjoyed my totally silent drivetrain. We’ll have to see how long it lasts, but I just thought I’d share because it’s easy and mess-free. Plus I presume I can use the same wax that’s still in the tub when it comes time to rewax.
Anyone else ever used this stuff?
by Ill_Initiative8574
3 Comments
Kelly Clarkson!
Low melting point waxes, in general, lack staying power, they are brittle and flake off easily.
A combination of waxes (not just paraffin, but microcrystalline/beeswax) and greases that ends up with consistensy of hard silly putty require higher temps (about 100c, which is hard to achieve in a water bath), but work much, much better – they create a sort of “o-ring” around the friction pairs, not just resist, but prevent water ingress and are slowly consumed to last more than 1000 miles (in good conditions, mud/heavy dust/pouring rain shortes the logevity but still good for 150-200 miles or whereabouts, tested by guys that do brevets and also offroad).
The downside is just they take much more time (like 50-100 or so miles) to properly “settle” into that oring shape and stop adding extra resistance due to stickyness (which is like a couple of watts I guess, but its there).
You don’t need a Crockpot [sorry Foresty Forest!] I just use an old saucepan on the stovetop + some paraffin wax.
Keen to try beeswax at some point too.