My adventures in chain waxing: goals, reviews, suggestions...

[tritiltheend]

Not saying that is the reason but Oz's chain cleaning regimen is: gasoline, degreaser and methylated spirit (aka denatured alcohol, methyl hydrate).

Isopropyl alcohol is not the same as methylated spirit, is it?

I don't like the idea of gasoline for cleaning chains. It's highly flammable, the fumes are toxic, and it can't be used safely inside. I've had perfectly good results using mineral spirits, you may have to do an extra bath or two but it's way safer to use.

[darrydonds]

Not saying that is the reason but Oz's chain cleaning regimen is: gasoline, degreaser and methylated spirit (aka denatured alcohol, methyl hydrate).

Isopropyl alcohol is not the same as methylated spirit, is it?

I don't like the idea of gasoline for cleaning chains. It's highly flammable, the fumes are toxic, and it can't be used safely inside. I've had perfectly good results using mineral spirits, you may have to do an extra bath or two but it's way safer to use.

I use mineral spirits instead of gasoline too.

[TobinHatesYou]

I have a jar of OMS (odorless mineral spirits) that I leave new chains in overnight. After that I rinse the chain off very well and then place the it in tall plastic deli tub. I fill the deli container with 8:1 hot water vs Zep Citrus (or Simple Green Extreme.) I fill my ultrasonic cleaner with hot plain water. I place the deli container in the ultrasonic cleaner. I let it run for a few minutes. I remove the tub, pour out the murky solution and fill it with fresh 8:1. I run the ultrasonic cleaner again. I do this until the solution stays translucent…it won’t be perfectly clear but it really doesn’t have to be. After that I just rinse the chain off with water and immediately wax the chain.

[tleo]

I don't like the idea of gasoline for cleaning chains. It's highly flammable, the fumes are toxic, and it can't be used safely inside. I've had perfectly good results using mineral spirits, you may have to do an extra bath or two but it's way safer to use.

Fully agree with this. I use mineral spirits followed by 91% isopropyl alcohol. And I don't even have any gasoline powered gear anymore so I just buy mineral spirits in gallon cans which lasts me for years.

[mgrl]

I give it a couple of overnight soaks with white spirit (mineral turps), then meths overnight and then in the ultrasonic with meths again. Never had an adhesion problem.

[gSporco]

I think I need an ultrasonic cleaner now

[GregR]

Can anyone recommend an ultrasonic cleaner? I'd prefer a smallish one because my place isn't all that big.

[takolino]

I have a jar of OMS (odorless mineral spirits) that I leave new chains in overnight. After that I rinse the chain off very well and then place the it in tall plastic deli tub. I fill the deli container with 8:1 hot water vs Zep Citrus (or Simple Green Extreme.) I fill my ultrasonic cleaner with hot plain water. I place the deli container in the ultrasonic cleaner. I let it run for a few minutes. I remove the tub, pour out the murky solution and fill it with fresh 8:1. I run the ultrasonic cleaner again. I do this until the solution stays translucent…it won’t be perfectly clear but it really doesn’t have to be. After that I just rinse the chain off with water and immediately wax the chain.

That's brilliant! Does the water not collect at the bottom of the wax? I guess it evaporates? If you don't need to dry the chain, that's a bonus.

It seems that the important step is the mineral spirits as this seems to be the one step in common for ppl that have success. I have an old rock tumbler that vibrates. I use it to agitate the chain in a container of mineral spirits for 1 minute after an overnight soak. Then, I use denatured alcohol before drying and waxing. This has worked for me. Even on dusty gravel rides, i can get a couple of hundred miles. I even wash the bike after each ride and wax stays on.

@cocohardi, after waxing, is your chain as stiff as a stick? One way to tell if the wax has stuck to the chain is by holding out about half the length of the cooled chain horizontally (with rollers vertical) and see if it stays straight without the links "breaking". My chains are super stiff before I break the links. Early on when I did a bad job of cleaning a chain, the wax woudn't stick as well and it would be much easier to break the links. Those chains had to be cleaned again. BTW, the AB wax is not stiff at all. It's much easier to break the links. I think it's a softer wax. MSW seems to be just as stiff as plain wax.

[takolino]

Can anyone recommend an ultrasonic cleaner? I'd prefer a smallish one because my place isn't all that big.

CO-Z 2L Ultrasonic Cleaner with Digital Timer and Heater
$65 on a-z in the US.
I have this one. It's fairly compact. Has a good heater too.

[wheelsONfire]

A bit off topic, but i just mounted a FSA WE chain and a FSA crankset to go with Etap. Not only the most silent combo i've experienced with Etap, also clean clean clean. This made me think, what am i supposed to use to keet this status, talking chain lube?

[cocohardi]

Thanks for all the food for thought. I'll definitely give waxing another try. The terminology and translations are a pita though, so I took a deeper dive into the solvent world. I decided to share my findings, maybe it can be of some use to someone else.

White spirits is also called petroleum spirits or turpentine substitute, not to be confused with turpentine. The latter is used as a thinner for oil paints (think Van Gogh) and probably the reason for white spirits to be colloquially referred to as "turps", since white spirits can also be used as a paint thinner (don't try this with high quality oil paint though). Kinda confusing, right? It helps looking at translations in different languages, to find out what's what. White spirits are called "terpentinersatz" in German, literally "terpentine substitute". Me growing up in the Netherlands, I got to know the stuff as "terpentine" and funnily enough during my bmx-racing days in the 80's, I used it to clean my chain!

Okay, Methylated spirits, called denatured alcohol in international english (apparently) is basically ethanol with, most of the time, methanol added to it to make it unsuitable for consumption. In german this is called "brennspiritus" in dutch simply "spiritus". I remember my grandma cleaning windows with it. I use it out camping in my alcohol stove.

With that out of the way, there's still something left to talk about in the cleaning department. Sure, ultrasonic cleaning definitely is interesting, acetone surely could work too, but I'd rather step into the degreaser territory as a cleaning step in between. Acetone being at least as volatile and flammable as gasoline, I'm having a hard time accepting it as a solution to my problems with cleaning (but thanks for the advice nonetheless!). @Tobinhatesyou already lifted his curtain a bit by saying he uses Simple Green or Zep Citrus (an industrial and a stove cleaner) as degreaser combined with ultrasonic cleaning. I'll guess I'll try out some stove cleaners I can find locally an will report back with the results, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on degreasing agents. Anyone else using some sort of degreaser in their cleaning steps?

@takolino: yeah, the links are stiff after hanging the chain to cool. Well, most of them are. There are always a couple that'll start to move after moving the chain about.

[TobinHatesYou]

Specifically Simple Green Extreme.

[rudye9mr]

look up the MSDS sheets for solvents

methanol is highly carcinogenic iirc

[TobinHatesYou]

look up the MSDS sheets for solvents

methanol is highly carcinogenic iirc

No, it isn't. It will do bad things to you if ingested, but light skin exposure isn't going to do anything.

Still, don't use methanol to clean your chain lmao.

[musiclover]

1. Length of chain submersion. Some instructions say that the chain must be in the paraffin for at least 10-15 mins so that the chain reaches the temperature of paraffin. Is that a good idea? On the other hand, you may have troubles with metal expansions?..
2. When to break the chain? Most of the guides suggest to fully cool the chain and then break it (usually, without explaining why). This is my pure speculation, but I thought that if you break it while it is still hot the paraffin may get inside of the moving joints right where it is needed? By the way, if you break it like that it does not become hard afterwards and remains mobile.