The Friction Facts Bicycle Chain Lube Process<\/h2>\n

Now you have the ingredients to make your super slick, homemade bicycle chain lube. \u00a0 I'll walk you through the process of making it in the next section.<\/p>\n

Clean the chain<\/h3>\n

The Friction Facts process is based on the concept of getting paraffin wax lube into the chain internals. \u00a0If a chain is dirty, there's already dirt and old lube taking up space in the rollers and other crevices. \u00a0For that reason, it's important to start with a chain that is completely devoid of lube.\u00a0 A chain that doesn't have lube in the crevices will wear faster and rob you of precious watts.<\/p>\n

For cleaning, Friction Facts recommends ultrasonic agitation in

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t[easyazon_link identifier=”B001FPHNTA” locale=”US” tag=”taicoaandthed-20″]lacquer thinner[\/easyazon_link].\u00a0 For the more practical among us, a good cleaning with

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t[easyazon_link identifier=”B0009WY5GY” locale=”US” tag=”taicoaandthed-20″]Simple Green[\/easyazon_link] will probably be enough.\u00a0 I clean my chains by removing them from the bike, immersing them in simple green in a plastic container and shaking them well.\u00a0 A couple minutes soaking, followed by repeated rinses with clean water rinses off any solvent.\u00a0 If you need to get rid of any of the water, you can always rinse the chain with rubbing alcohol afterward.<\/p>\n

Heat the wax<\/h3>\n

Fire up your crock pot and drop in the blocks of paraffin.\u00a0 Depending on the power of the crock pot, it'll take anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes for the wax to liquefy.\u00a0 You want a nice, uniform texture (it will seem a little bit watery if you dip something into it) with no chunks of wax floating.<\/p>\n

Mix in your lubricants<\/h3>\n

If you're using MDS and\/or PTFE, measure out the proper amount of each.\u00a0 You're looking for 1 gram of MDS and 5 grams of PTFE powder, and you can measure with a simple fine kitchen scale.\u00a0 To combat the mess (and the fact that MDS tends to permanently stain anything it touches) I measured out the lubricant powders into an old spice jar to keep the mess to a minimum.<\/p>\n

Once the paraffin has liquefied, simply dump the lubricants into the hot wax.\u00a0 You'll want to vigorously stir in the powders to combine them as much as possible.\u00a0 Friction Facts recommends a battery powered milk frother, but I've made do with just an old chop-stick or a screwdriver.<\/p>\n

Heat the chain<\/h3>\n

Remember your toaster oven?<\/p>\n

<\/a>This is where you're going to put it to use.\u00a0 Heating the chain has a dual purpose in this case.\u00a0 First, it helps to dry out and evaporate any remaining cleaning solution in the chain itself.\u00a0 It also heats the chain and allows the wax to flow freely into the internals of the chain instead of congealing on the surface.<\/p>\n

Friction Facts recommend heating the chain to about 200 degrees.\u00a0 Generally, 5-10 minutes in a 350-degree toaster oven is probably just fine.<\/p>\n

Dip the chain and agitate<\/h3>\n

Once you've heated the chain up, it's time to lube.\u00a0 Pick it up with something (careful, it's going to be hot) and dunk it in the hot wax as shown below.<\/p>\n

<\/a>You'll want to agitate the chain for a few minutes to ensure the wax is able to penetrate each and every part of the chain.\u00a0 This is where Friction Facts recommends an ultrasonic agitator to ensure the chain is completely penetrated, but hand stirring is just fine for most of us.<\/p>\n

Remove excess wax and lube<\/h3>\n

Grab the chain out of its wax bath and let it drip off.\u00a0 This will get most of the excess wax off quickly.\u00a0 It will also prevent the wax from caking in your shop towel or burning you as it soaks through the towel.<\/p>\n

<\/a>It's important to get as much excess wax off the outside of the chain so that it doesn't gum up the rest of your drivetrain.<\/p>\n

Cool it, loosen it and install it<\/h3>\n

Once the chain has cooled and the wax is congealed, you need to loosen up the chain and install it.\u00a0 Before installing the chain I wrapped it around the handle of a bench vise and ran it back and forth to loosen it.\u00a0 Just pull one end, then the other to force the links to bend around the vise handle.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Installation is a simple affair.\u00a0 If you have a new chain, you can follow the instructions in this post<\/a> to size it properly.\u00a0 Once you have the chain installed on the drivetrain, you can give it some “run in” by jumping on the trainer and spinning for a few minutes.\u00a0 Alternatively, I spun the cranks while shifting through the cassette for a few minutes then took it out for a ride outside.\u00a0 This prevents any black wax bits from flying off onto your living room carpet.<\/p>\n

Initial impressions and some thoughts<\/h2>\n

The initial impressions on the Friction Facts process have been relatively favorable.\u00a0 I like the fact that the chain doesn't pick up crap out on the road, even in the wet.\u00a0 There's no gritty feeling to the drivetrain after a couple hundred miles that occurs with oil-based lubricants.\u00a0 It also looks immaculate after a couple hundred miles of use.\u00a0 This includes some moisture infiltration after getting caught in a small cloudburst.<\/p>\n

On the downside, the chain seems significantly louder than it was with oil-based lubricants.\u00a0 Typically, when cross chaining big\/big, there is little to no noise in a properly lubricated drivetrain.\u00a0 With the paraffin wax lube, there's some distinctive clatter in the chain on the big\/big combo.\u00a0 Outside of the big chainring and 2 biggest cogs, the chain is only marginally louder than one well lubricated with oil.<\/p>\n

Initial durability seems to be very good with the paraffin lube.\u00a0 Friction Facts recommends repeating the process every 500ish miles to ensure proper lubrication.\u00a0 This isn't too bad of a time interval.\u00a0 For an average recreational cyclist, this would be 4 times a season.\u00a0 For a really avid racer, you may be re-lubing 8-10 times a year.\u00a0 This is still better than every 200 miles a normal lube lasts.<\/p>\n

One way to offset the big time commitment of waxing a chain is to buy several new chains.\u00a0 You can wax them all at one time and then rotate them every 500 miles.\u00a0 Once you work through all the pre-waxed chains, clean them and re-lube them in bulk.\u00a0 They can hang, cleaned and waxed until needed.\u00a0 This bulk waxing process cuts down on the time commitment and makes changing to a new, clean chain a snap.

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If you want the last 1% in power and efficiency, look to your bike. Bicycle chain lube can account for 5 watts of efficiency, meaning more power makes it to the rear wheel. In this post, I’ll detail how to wax your chain with the Friction Facts process and free up some extra watts to help make you faster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[177,66,206,170],"yst_prominent_words":[651,644,652,642,648,5563,609,650,653,658,641,643,647,5669,656,646,645,649,657,5668],"wppr_data":{"cwp_meta_box_check":"No"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/This-bicycle-chain-lubecan-save-you-5-watts-e1470486250846.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9700"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9700"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13703,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9700\/revisions\/13703"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9700"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=9700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}