Is it time to re-wax your chain?
Hello there fellow waxer! I take it you have already followed our guide on how to wax your chain for the first time? If not, I suggest checking it out here. Waxing has changed my cycling life (I say this seriously), my stuff stays cleaner (extremely important in a small apartment) and it lasts an incredible amount of time (important in the time of ever escalating prices). Today I will delve a little deeper into my process on how I re-wax my chains and how often.
The re-waxing process:
Wipe the chain - grab a silca gear wipe or microfibre cloth and give the chain a quick wipe. Full disclosure I sometimes skip this step if I have only been riding in dry and clean conditions. If the chain is really muddy and you didn’t get a chance to wipe it before the mud dried, flushing the chain in boiling water will remove all mud and contaminated wax (I have only needed to do this once in 12 months of waxing chains)
Remove the chain - hopefully you installed the chain with a quick link, if so this step is pretty quick and easy if you have quick link pliers. At this stage you may wish to set your quick link off to the side to re-use or throw it out, it really depends on what your belief system is.
Grab something to hook your chain on to - I use an old spoke, some use a an old clothes hanger and others use a flexible wire keyring similar to what cyclowax send in their kit. The key is to have something long that you can grab onto for step 6.
Turn on crockpot - grab your crockpot and put it on low and put the chain in. Yes put it on top of the wax puck. As the crockpot heats up, your chain will also heat up, Zero Friction Cycling (ZFC) believes this helps with adhesion and so do we. Don’t use a rice cooker, they heat up too quickly and then turnoff quickly. A slow cooker works too, just set the temperature to 90C and use the slow cook function so as not to heat the wax too quickly.
Leave until puck is melted - go back to work or whatever else you were doing and check back in an hour or so to see if the wax has melted.
Swish and swirl - once the wax is melted the chain needs to be fully submerged for maybe 10 minutes. Grab the end of the hook and vigorously swish and swirl the chain back and forth to make sure all the wax additives are mixed and finding their way into your chain.
Take out and hang to dry - some say wait until the wax starts to cool before pulling the chain out but I am in the school of taking the chain out whilst the wax is still hot. I have done both methods and leaving it until the wax cools just results in a bunch of excess wax that flings off on the first ride (ZFC agrees). Hang the chain up to cool and dry.
Break the links and reinstall - put the chain in a big sandwich bag and break the links so they aren’t stiff. A quicker way to do this is run the chain over a piece of wood like a broom handle, but this only works if you can go outside in my opinion. Full disclosure again, I only break the links some times, most of the time I just put it back on the bike.
Take your bike OUTSIDE for the first ride - this step is very important, DO NOT ride the bike inside with a freshly waxed chain or you will end up with wax flakes absolutely everywhere
Now how often do I re-wax my chain? In the summer when I am riding more, I wax once per week (usually on Monday because rest day), otherwise I use the ZFC recommended interval of 300km or my interval of whenever the chain sounds noisy, whichever comes first. I have found that having two chains in rotation works best so if you get caught in the rain or whatever, you can put a new chain on and not need to re-wax before riding again.
The above may seem like a lot but once you do it a couple of times it really becomes second nature and doesn’t add much extra time to any maintenance routine. In fact, waxing has saved me time, I rarely if ever need to wash my bike anymore because grease isn’t going everywhere after a ride in the rain. This cassette has done 7,500km and never been cleaned, you could probably eat off it:
I really had to zoom in here to show the wax flakes on my cassette
I am a New York City based cyclist formally from Melbourne. Races of less than an hour are my jam and I’m @wheresscott on the gram. You’ll find me taking photos to escape the accountant life and running through winter to escape the cold.
