what are you doing in between rides? Surely mud/sand etc is still getting into the chain, how are you getting that out without removing the wax?
I'm wondering the same. Here's my bike after a typical weekend ride just now. It's usually filthy, and the drivetrain is full of mud / sand / pine needles etc. As well as cleaning the bike, I spend 5-10 mins spraying the drivetrain with Peaty's Drivetrain Cleaner, brushing it with a special brush, and picking all the bits of trees / grass etc out. When the bike is dry, I re-lube with some Peaty's 'All Weather' Link Lube... and it looks like new again.
Yes. I do not do anything to my chain in between rides and I never do anything to the drivetrain except dry brush the cassette, chainring and deraillure if needed. I run two chains and bought a cheap slow cooker. I usually forget how long its been in between chain changes and swap out the chain when I do thorough cleaning of the bike just because.
Hose with water and dry with air
It feels smooth. The grit doesn’t stick to the wax because it is hard. imagine if you rub grit on a candle and then wash it off. The nice thing is the jockey wheels, chain ring and cassette are also clean because there is no oil to glue the muck to them.
I saw my mates drivetrain yesterday which he does same approach as you and with same products. Have to say his chain looked as good as mine before we went riding. I guess to some extent with rewaxing you’re doing a big initial effort in a controlled environment instead of lots of smaller post ride-efforts.
To do that after every slightly muddy ride is overkill. There is no need to do that. You can rinse the muc off with a gentle hose rinse, blow dry and it’s good to go. I’ve been waxing for about 10 years now and I get over a couple thousand miles out of my ebike drivetrain or about 2 years rotating 2-3 chains every 2-300 miles.
I'm keen to understand criteria that instigate a re wax.
I currently Rotate 2 chains on each of my bikes and I rotate them when i can feel when the chain is in need to be cleaned and re-waxed. You can hear and feel it. It gets a little noisy in the lowest gears and becomes a little notchy feeling. I used to automatically rotate every 300 miles, but now I just rotate when I can feel that it’s in need of rotation, cleaning and re-waxing. I check for wear after I clean and before I re-wax. If one chain begins to show more wear than the other, then I’ll run the one with less wear until it shows the same wear as the other.
The purpose for rotating chains is to extend the drivetrain life, because as the chain stretches out, the chainring and cassette teeth will wear faster, but if you rotate chains, the stretching doesn’t happen as fast and your chainring and cassette will last longer. Waxing also extends the drivetrain life by not attracting dirt, debris to the whole drivetrain like it does with regular lubes.
Well i got my first answer and it was a bit disappointing. 3 rides in 80km total and started getting chain noise, so ended up going for a rewax. Chain wear was reading 0.3mm prior to rewax.
No need to degrease if there isn’t any oil on it. To clean my chains prior to rewaxing, I fill a plastic bottle half full of hot soapy water put the chain in the bottle and shake it. Dump out the dirty water and refill the bottle with straight hot water and shake it some more. Repeat until the water comes out clean. Then dry the chain with a clean shop towel and let dry out in the sun. I rewax when it’s completely dry.
They actually do recommend using boiling water to strip the old contaminated wax off the chain before re-waxing. Otherwise you are increasing how contaminated your remaining pot of wax is with each re-wax cycle. It’s very easy to do with a kettle outside and takes <5 minutes.
