When thinking about what the best thing to lubricate a bicycle chain is, you will generally think ‘oil of some kind’ as a default starting point. If you then go to the web or a bike shop with that starting point, you will find all sorts of options. Some will be thicker, others thinner. Some will be cheaper, others more expensive. Some will have exotic additives, others will be marketed as eco friendly. Here’s the thing….none of them are particularly effective at lubricating a chain!
It seems counter-intuitive to say, but the very thing that’s really great at lubrication in a wide variety of other uses isn’t that great on a bicycle chain. This is for a few reasons, but the main one is that the chain is open to the elements. If it were like the inside of an engine and a sealed unit, oil would be ideal. Let’s look at why that is….
Oil Attracts Dirt
If there’s one thing that is almost a guarantee if using oil on a chain, it’s stopping for a cafe stop on a ride (or getting to work) and finding a black mark on your right calf! It’s so common it’s got a few names, one of which is a ‘chainring tattoo’. The reason for this is that oily residue on the chain – even when just exposed to the air when used indoors – attracts dirt and dust. It also holds any metal rubbed off the chain in the course of the chain wearing. This dirt, oil, dust and metal all combines to make a fairly effective grinding paste, further wearing your chain. For this to be eliminated, the entire chain must be cleaned. This may seem a fairly easy job until you consider that where the lubrication most needs to be – and where the dirt most needs to NOT be – is the inside of the rollers of the chain. This is highly unlikely to be cleaned properly with the chain fitted to the bike. Anecdotally, when preparing chains that have been used for waxing I have run dirty chains through multiple baths of powerful degreaser and hot water whilst shaking the container until I had a chain that looked perfectly clean. When putting this into a bath of white spirit, the spirits went immediately black – showing that the inside of the chain was still very dirty.
Wax Is Clean
As above, not only is your chain clean, but everything else will be. Mechanicals and punctures won’t leave your hands totally covered in a black mess from touching your chain. Cleaning your bike will be a dream in comparison to using wet lube. No longer will you have to get a screwdriver/stick and scrape the gunk off your jockey wheels. No longer will you have a fine spray of oil mixed with dirt that’s all over your rear wheel and the back end of your bike and has somehow managed to weld itself on, requiring harsh degreasers and scrubbing until your arm hurts (let’s be honest, as cyclists this won’t be long!). You will be able to clean your bike with mild soap and water only, and in half the time.
Wax Is The ‘Fastest’ Chain Lube There Is!
At this point, multiple tests have been done by multiple companies, and the outcome is clear. The most effective lubricants in terms of power losses through the drive chain are, in order; immersive wax, drip on wax, everything else. This means for racing, you will be saving power that others will have to put out to match your speed. If you’re looking at total optimisation, wax is a no brainer.
Wax Lubes Make Your Chains Last Longer
The above point about speed may mean a lot to you if you’re a top level time trialist or road racer, but the rest of you may be thinking “I’m not too interested in how fast the chain is”. Here’s the thing – what makes a chain fast is a lack of friction, and friction causes wear. A LOT of wear. Add in contamination (which wet lubes will attract and cling onto and wax will more effectively shed) and you have an awful lot more wear per revolution of the pedals.
“How much difference can it possibly make?”, you may be asking. To answer that, let’s take some data direct from Zero Friction Cycling’s test results for a ‘clean block’. This is when a brand new fully cleaned and freshly lubed chain is run on a machine simulating riding. This block is run for 500km of simulated riding. In this test, the chain treated with the worst performing wet lubricant was 37.7% of the way to the wear limit- meaning it would require changing in less than 1500km. Bear in mind that’s in lab conditions, with a totally clean chain and no water/dirt added! The immersive waxed chain showed a wear rate of 0% – yes, actually no wear at all – due to the wax being a sacrificial protective layer which meant that the metal surfaces of the chain never actually received any friction to wear them!
For another example, let’s look at the ‘extreme contamination block’. This is the same as the above, except dirt and water are added to the chain during the test which simulates what might happen when riding in the wet. In that test, the worst chain lube lasted just 250 km until the chain had passed the wear limit. The best lube (which of course was immersive wax) lasted 3,571 km. Yes, that’s really more than 14x longer!
Wax Lubes Make Other Parts Last Longer
You may have read the above and been impressed but thought ‘no big deal, chains are fairly cheap anyway’. Well, aside from the fact that the cost of the chains I buy has increased by 25% in just the last month, that’s only one part of the equation. An inefficient drive chain will not just wear itself out, but also your cassette, chainrings and jockey wheels. If they all wear out, you’re looking at £300-500 to replace them – and that’s if you can get parts! These days cassettes and chainrings in the most common sizes are hard to come by, and increasing in price every day. If that’s not a good reason to look after what you have and try to preserve it, I don’t know what is.
Wax Is Better For The Environment
Wax lubricants themselves are substantially more environmentally friendly than most other lubricants. The main base of them is paraffin wax, which is an inert substance. They are also solid at room temperature, so unlikely to get into the water system when disposed of. Another place that they shine is the lack of harsh chemicals needed to clean the chain. With a waxed chain hot water is about the only thing needed to clean a chain (once it’s been initially prepared for waxing), with maybe the odd wipe down with methylated spirits to get it clean and shiny (these are fairly toxic but used in tiny quantities on a cloth rather than poured on the chain and dripped on the floor/down the drain).
Compare that to a wet lube which would be flung off the chain onto the road/your bike, make a sticky black mess and require lots of time and harsh degreaser to be able to remove it fully and you have another winner for waxing!