Maybe I’m alone here, but I find that hot waxing yields the worst performance for chain lubes.
How can I say that? I was a product tester for Shimano and tested many things including Di2 and component cross-compatibility, wheels, along with four years of chain testing.
Shimano provided dozens of chains as well as lubes. I can’t get into the specifics, but I kept records of chain wear every 200 miles. I had a special chain-wear tool from Park Tool and three others from Shimano. The tool from Park Tool was calibrated by Shimano. There were some interesting conclusions that I fed back to Shimano that they incorporated into their modern chains to make them even better.
For this discussion and interest a summary of conclusions follows. Note, all chains were 11-speed and consisted of Dura-Ace and Ultegra. All chains were tested to 75% wear (Park Tool) and ‘go/no go’ using Shimano’s chain wear tools.
- The best upper-end liquid (wet) chain lubes yielded about 1,700 miles (2736 km)
- Squirt chain lube doubled the mileage to about 3,400 miles (5472 km)
- Smoove chain lube improved the mileage to about 6,400 miles (10,300 km)
My hot-wax position, summarized: I tested hot wax, along with three Shimano engineers, and what we found was that it worked fine when and if the chain was in a straight line, but when the chain started deflecting (example 53/26 or 39/13), the wax would be sheared off from the chain. The hot wax was gone from the chain in under 200 miles. If you look at the companies that have a test jig for testing hot wax, the chain is under constant load. But, in real world conditions, the chain is subject to continuous and various loads – high, low, high, low, etc. Squirt and Smoove are made for this type of realistic riding. Another thing we learned was that using Mobil1 30 weight synthetic motor oil performed the same as the top tier chain lubes. Adding Teflon powder did not make any difference in mileage.
Coach Rick Schultz is an avid cyclist who has trained, raced, and coached in Southern California and now resides in Bend, Oregon where he works as a bike fitter and bike fit educator. Rick is an engineer by trade and a prolific cycling product reviewer. He’s the author of Stretching & Core Strengthening for the Cyclist in the RBR eBookstore. Check his coaching site, www.bikefitnesscoaching.com. Click to read Rick’s full bio.
