Back home in old Blighty, cycling in constant rain through liquid mud it was usual to burn out your drive train every year. We used to buy the cheaper LX versions because you knew that you’d be throwing it in the bin in 12 months time. When I started mountain biking in the desiccated continent of Australia I expected far greater longevity from my chain and cassette so I was somewhat annoyed, 12 months later, to be throwing my highly expensive XT kit in the bin. It’s not even that I’m careless with my equipment; as a compulsive bike fondler and tinkerer I’d lubricated that chain every trip. Wearing itself out seemed a poor reward for my careful attentions.
From serial retrogrouch and uber-curmudgeon Jobst Brandt we learn that; the principle factors in chain wear are load, lubrication and contamination, that you should never oil your chain on the bike (expect in extremis), and that wax is not a lubricant. Jobst Brandt has probably started more flame wars than the subject of chain lubrication, but he does have the annoying habit of being right.
What to do then?
I bought a new cassette and 3 chains. A new chain won’t run on an old cassette, but you can still get plenty of life from an old cassette. My plan here was to keep 3 chains equally worn and ride the whole lot into the grave.
In order to swap the chains over I needed to do away with the ‘Shimano single use joining pin insanity’. I’m a fan of Shimano but this one little device has put more on their bottom line than the Tour de France ever will. If you can’t take the chain off you’re not going to clean it, if you don’t clean it the chain will eat itself and your gears, once destroyed you’ll have to buy a whole new drive train. When you do, in the packet, free of charge, there’s another single use joining pin. Repeat.
Thankfully, it’s an easy fix. I’ve been using the KMC Missing Link or you can get 3 SRAM ones for ten bucks from the same supplier. Never had a problem, not one.
So, I’m set up with my three chains – what to use for lubricant? Well, that’s interesting. Back in the UK I used to use plenty of car engine oil – cheap, sticky and the only thing that would stay on through a river. In the dry and dusty conditions of Sydney oil had already shown itself to be a really bad idea. I’d been using ‘White Lightning’, a wax based lube on the recommendation of a friend. I quite liked it, but the proof of the pudding hadn’t been all that good. Also, it seemed a little out of wack spending $25 on a bottle of lube when I could get a whole new chain for $30.
Years and years ago, before mountain bikes were invented (or at least before they hit the UK) the guys in the cycle club would go for ‘Mad Hacks’. The original Shakespeare reads:
‘Shall I compare thee to a summers day? Wet and miserable?’
On a cold wet day we could still have a fun day out riding our road bikes cross country. Dave Johnson seemed to get the idea first. Anyway, the mad hack gave birth to the ‘hack bike’ that you didn’t mind getting trashed and you wanted to keep the hack bike running through liquid mud for the minimum of cost.
I’d experimented on my hack bike with dipping the chain in hot paraffin wax. I expected great things but it was crap – it hardly lasted 5 minutes. But today a lot of the new lubricants were waxed based so maybe it was worth another look.
This time around I thought I might dope the wax with a dry lubricant. I discounted graphite as being too messy. I thought about molybdenum disulfide or better yet titanium disulfide but it proved hard to get hold of. In the UK you can get miracle (snake oil) gearbox treatments with molybdenum disulfide but I couldn’t find them in Australia. In the end I settled for Nuflon, a miracle gearbox treatment using Teflon. From what I read, Dupont once made a statement that Teflon offered no benefit in metal to metal lubrication but today all cycle lubes are loaded with it so I don’t know if that still stands. Well, it doesn't stand in the way of making a dollar.
Regardless, 18 bucks later, 6 candles and ta-da - a wax bath with gearbox oil and Teflon.
Basically, I degrease the chain by shaking it in a plastic bottle with some kerosene, wash it in hot soapy water in the sink, dry it in the oven, cool it, then lay it on top of the hard wax in the oven at 90 degrees. This works fine apart from the oven stinks of gearbox oil which is a problem if you make scones.
Once everything is melted, I give it a bit of a wiggle in the hot wax, dig out the chain with a pair of pliers and clean it off with paper towels. Those pies at McDonald’s have a warning label saying they may be hot. I too have the IQ of a rabbit – I should really fix a warning label to the wax tray saying ‘This wax may be chuffing hot if it’s been in the oven’ or ‘Oi! Dumbnut! Where did you just put this chuffing tray of wax? In the oven or in the freezer? Is it going to be hot or cold?’. (Speaking of funny signs, I hear that in the US wing mirrors bear the label ‘Things in this mirror may actually be behind you’. I don’t know if that’s true but it’s the sort of story you could believe)
Once the chain is cool I stick it in a glad bag ready to go on the bike. I have a chain on the bike and 1 or 2 lubed up ready to go on. The only other thing I do is grease the pins of the missing link when I install the chain.
So, that seems like a mighty lot of effort. Is it worth it?
No, it’s crap. I wouldn’t bother.
Only joking.
It actually works pretty well. The Simpson Desert is the ideal environment for this kind of lube. While wax may be a poor lubricant it does fill in all the gaps; it’s very difficult for contamination to find its way into the chain. The gearbox oil softens the wax and the Teflon does Teflony things as only Teflon can. The chain is completely dry to the touch – it doesn’t pick up dust or sand.
I ran one chain for the first 4 days of the race– over 400km. I changed to a freshly lubed chain on the last day only because I’m a pathological bike fondler. It would have made a lot more sense to stick with the one that already worked.
How is it in the wet? Well, nowhere near as good, but then, what is? It’ll do about 100km. There was plenty of wet weather during my training for the Simpson. On the Double Double in the rain one lube would just about last the day. The problem here really comes back to contamination. As you fly down Andersons in the rain it’s like running down a sandy river. The chain gets covered in that lovely coarse Blue Mountains sand. It grates and grinds when you pedal. On the plus side you can wash the drive train in Bedford Creek (or give it a squirt of energy drink from your Camelbak) and you’re back in business. The chain is still wet so will pick up fresh sand but for a while the crunching stops.
I get a lot of emails nowadays from very kind people that I don’t even know. They worry that I don’t last long enough in bed, that I’m too small to please a woman or that I suffer from erectile dysfunction. But in my experience nothing drives a woman wild like bike oil on the carpet.
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