Hot Wax Your Bicycle Chain

The best hot or immersive chain waxes will produce some of the lowest chain wear rates and will increase the number of miles you can cover for a single application. As well as provide excellent drivetrain efficiency and a pretty much spotless drivetrain. 

Lubricating a chain using hot melt wax is the benefits can be excellent. Waxing a chain ensures each metal surface of a chain such as the link plates, rollers, bushings and pins are covered in a layer of hard wax. This means there is minimal or no metal-to-metal contact and abrasion which is what wears chains out, accelerated by contamination such as dirt and dust. 

Though plenty of people wax their chains already. We often hear that it is too much hassle, or a little excessive, or over the top. Changing your cleaning regime and switching to waxing may require some initial investment and effort to learn a new process, but it's something you should at least consider if you want to achieve some of the best drivetrain performance available, saving yourself money and watts. If you aren't particularly good at degreasing and lubricating your chain using a drip lubricant, or if the bike shop tells you your chain is worn out again at every service, waxing may actually be the answer to your problems due to the ability to reset any contamination present in a chain with each fresh re-waxing, dramatically lengthening chain life. 

Mspeedwax recommends re-waxing a training chain roughly every 300mi / 480km, or 180mi / 290km for a race chain to help ensure maximum efficiency. Zero Friction recommends re-waxing around every 180mi / 300km. 

Drivetrain lifespan savings are can be enormous, grit doesn’t stick to the wax, which creates a physical barrier to reduce wear from metal-on-metal contact. A regularly waxed chain can last up to 15,000km (9,320 miles) before reaching 0.5mm wear on a chain checker. “

With the high cost of new drivetrains, tripling or quadrupling the lifespan of chains, chainrings, cassettes, and derailleur pulleys through waxing can mean huge savings. 

One final point is that waxed chains are much cleaner. Even drip lubes that claim to be “clean” or “dry” don’t come close to wax’s ability to shed dirt and grime. This means you’ll never get your fingers dirty or sport the dreaded chainring tattoo on your calf.

Unchained Bicycle Garage Sells Molten Speedwax and also offers a Hot Chain Wax Service. We even sell Prewaxed Chains of your choice, Shimano, SRAM, KMC, YBN. Click Here to view our selections