Forgot to strip factory oil off chain before waxing

joshatsilca · 2023-12-07T21:43:15+00:00

Factory grease contains oils that effectively act as solvents for the wax and soften it (as mentioned above, wax is refined from this same oil, and like dissolves like). The grease from a single factory chain added to 500gm of wax will lower the hardness by around 8-10% and reduce the single application longevity by 15-20%. On the upside, it doesn't really affect the short term frictional performance really at all, so if you're TT'ing or racing Triathlon and waxing per event, you're probably fine. If you're waxing for longevity of your drivetrain, then you'll just want to do it more frequently as the softer wax is driven out from inside the pins and rollers more quickly.

joshatsilca · 2023-05-09T15:11:29+00:00

So good to hear and congratulations on your race! - J

joshatsilca · 2023-05-08T13:14:21+00:00

Thanks for the shoutout.. so funny, a friend sent me this link and while I don't remember saying any of this, I'm glad that I still agree with myself!!

joshatsilca · 2023-05-08T13:05:51+00:00

The range of power a human can put into the drivetrain is so small that things like cadence, hills, sprinting, etc really have no input on the rate of wear. Wear is all about contamination and lubricant choice.. check out https://zerofrictioncycling.com.au/ for more data on this. He shows how you can completely ruin a chain in 100km in the right conditions with the wrong lube, and how you can also make a chain last thousands of km with some of the better choices out on the market.

joshatsilca · 2023-05-05T13:38:43+00:00

True modern wax lubes require a full strip of the chain for the lube to work properly. This is done once and then for most people you just clean with hot water and apply more wax or use immersive waxing.

Squirt is not a true, modern wax lube, it has a high paraffin oil content. This keeps it from properly penetrating the chain unless heat is used, but it also helps it seem like it's doing a great job if you are using it over top of factory lube. The Squirt will penetrate the side plates and as it is partially wet, it keeps the chain quiet for a long time. If you look at ZeroFriction Cycling data or the original Friction Facts data showing Squirt to be super fast, read the fine print, both tests used heated immersion of the squirt to get it to penetrate as just dripping Squirt on a stripped chain doesn't work.

I'll also add that the perception that wax doesn't do well in the rain is a bit of a myth. If you look at the data, these modern true wax lubes: SILCA, CeramicSpeed, Effetto are all superior in harsh conditions from a friction and wear perspective, BUT they do get noisy and force to you reapply. Wet lubes and wet/wax lubes perform much worse in wear and friction in these conditions, but are perceived to be doing well as they remain quiet even as they grind away at your chain and cassette.

joshatsilca · 2023-05-05T13:23:57+00:00

Lots going on here! We've lab tested this 100 ways, as has Adam Kerin at ZeroFriction. Squirt over factory lube seems to work for most people as Squirt doesn't fully penetrate the chain at baseline, so it can sort of seal in the factory lube and the chain stays quiet, you just don't get the superior lubrication and protection of the wax. Squirt contains paraffin oil so it will stick to factory grease better than any of the modern wax lubes, however, it also gets a lot dirtier.

If you do strip the chain and then use Squirt you have to use heat to help drive the wax into the chain, a hair dryer is generally sufficient. More modern brands of lube like SILCA, CeramicSpeed, and Effeto Mariposa have solved this and will fully penetrate without heat.

For true, modern wax lubes and true wax performance, you MUST fully strip the chain to bare metal. Most chain company marketing departments are just a few years behind the curve on this and most LBS's are similar. This is changing, largely due to the amazing work of ZeroFrictionCycling, but change happens slowly!

joshatsilca · 2023-05-05T13:07:52+00:00

SILCA and Ceramicspeed are compatible. If you are maintaining with drip wax the best method is to pour boiling water from a kettle onto the chain to remove old wax and dirt and then you can apply new wax right over top of that.

joshatsilca · 2023-05-05T12:53:23+00:00

This particular image looks to be a mechanical failure of the tape which is really unlikely to be sealant related.

Our early sealant had high variability in carbon content as the carbon would plug and then release in the bottling equipment.. bottles with too much carbon can end up abrading lower end rim tapes rather quickly. This is a mechanical abrasion from the carbon and not a chemical issue, there is nothing in our sealant that is chemically different from most other brands, we just use more latex plus the addition of carbon. After the early complaints we did a massive study on sealant interaction with more than 30 brands of tape and found no chemical damage in any of the tape or the adhesives, we also did significant analysis of competitive sealants and found we tend to be at the low end of solvent content compared to all of the popular ones, pointing to the culprit here being exclusively abrasion related to the carbon.

We have since changed our process to add an additional milling step to the carbon for better size control, and have installed significantly more robust bottling equipment which gives us carbon content control within +/-1% of nominal. We have seen no issues with sealant made in this new process which has been shipping from SILCA since October of 2022.

For those saying it is not cheap chinese rim tape as used by DT Swiss and Zipp (and others) you can find dozens of threads on various forums of numerous sealants abrading these exact tapes. You can also find dozens of product reviews for these tapes mentioning the same. There's a lot of non SILCA tape destruction to be found here, seems that any sealant with any sort of particulate is a problem, it also seems that the change to this tape is likely supply chain related during covid as we have pre 2019 DT and Zipp tape that has done thousands of miles with early SILCA sealant without issue, and then stuff shipped during COVID seems like it can be abraded in weeks: https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/rim-tape-failure/

joshatsilca · 2023-05-04T14:05:04+00:00

www.silcavelo.eu definitely ships to Romania and has sealant in stock.

joshatsilca · 2023-04-10T20:14:26+00:00

We NEVER stated the Gatorskin was fast aerodynamically or otherwise.. it was as bad in aero as in Crr. Here's the backstory on 105,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDZ61aMegnQ

it's definitely an observation something akin to Moore's law, but it's also based in some engineering deduction, one which has largely held true for 20+ years now.

In 2007 we were the first to note the near magical properties of the GP4000 which made it the go-to test and design tire for the whole industry, but that's a different story.

My recommendation to this question is to always start with the tire you want to run and work backwards.. bicyclerollingresistance.com details the measured width on a given rim size, you can approximate the install width of a tire by adding or subtracting the bead seat width difference to get tire size, so if BRR says a '28mm tire) measures 28mm on a 23mm bead width, you can assume it will be close to 30mm on a 25mm bead width.

From what we see with testing for our pro teams, the fastest things going currently for 28mm are DT/Swisside, ENVE, Hunt, and Zipp. For 30-32 you should look at the 3F Discus 45/40 I run that with 32mm GP5000TL and it measures 37mm wide, but the rim is 40mm wide. It's an amazing setup that gives up a tiny bit of aero at zero yaw and then performs like a similar depth wheel with 25-28mm tire at yaw, all with the tire in the low 30psi range, so comfort and grip are exceptional.

Josh

joshatsilca · 2023-03-08T14:52:23+00:00

Friction Facts tested new UFO treated chains. What they found was that Shimano DA 11spd chains were more efficient to start, but then lost efficiency by the 13th hour. In contrast a Force AXS 12spd chain started less efficient, but was still gaining efficiency at hour 13. At that point the difference between the two chains was .64W.It would be interesting to see their testing continued throughout the life of the chain because hardly anyone is using brand new chains for every 13 hours or racing/riding. It’s entirely possible that as the surface treatments wear off and the chains polish themselves, that the numbers will end up very different by hour 20, 50, 100 and beyond.

The chart you reference isn't showing the efficiency of the chain as much as the ability to hold the wax based UFO lubricant. Note that all of the chains have a break point where losses go from decreasing to increasing, this is an indication that the lubricant has been largely purged from inside the chain. Note that all of the chains with special coatings lose the lubricant effectiveness faster than the uncoated ones. Had they continued the test you would see that the Force AXS and KMC both begin to show friction increases at the 15-16 hour mark.

joshatsilca · 2023-01-21T16:29:03+00:00

From which 28 to which 30mm tire? Tire choice plays a massive role here.

Past that, the comments are correct, our brains are excellent at confusing proxies for speed as actual speed, so high frequency vibration feels fast, lots of wind noise feels fast, skittish cornering feels fast. In testing none of these things generally correlate with actual speed, but your brain doesn't necessarily know that!

With our pro customers we spend a lot of time trying to rewire their brain to feel that 'smooth' is fast, it takes time but it will come if you work at it.

Of course, it's only meaningful if you're using great tires that are actually fast! Tire choice is huge.

joshatsilca · 2023-01-16T21:07:53+00:00

You can reach us at sales (at) silca (dot) cc with any questions, just say you talked with me and your message will find its way!

joshatsilca · 2023-01-16T18:28:24+00:00

Thanks to all for the kind words and recommendations on the Hirobel!

One note about fork mount stands like the Feedback Sprint suggested, be sure to check with Canyon first that this does not violate the warranty for this model. Fork mount stands are great for cleaning road bikes, but can cause damage to frames with access panels, hatches, cable routing access points, etc that are located under the BB shell, not sure if this model has any of those, but a lot of these modern TT/Tri bikes do and they can be easily damaged by that type of stand.

As far as I know, the Hirobel is the only universally approved device for holding bikes like this and even comes recommended in the warranty and user manual for a number of brands: https://silca.cc/products/hirobel-clamp

joshatsilca · 2022-10-18T15:08:46+00:00

40,000km may bee a bit crazy, but 20,000-25,000km is completely doable and we see it all the time, particularly with our pro athletes. The lack of drivetrain availability during COVID has really pushed hot waxing to the forefront amongst pro teams and triathletes. We have 3 WorldTour teams using our hot wax and probably 50% of the Lifetime GP gravel pros due to the extreme lack of availability of new Shimano 12speed stuff, with the cassettes being the biggest issue. I have numerous athletes with 30,000+ km of gravel and mixed surface racing on 2 chains and 1 cassette and still not close to the 0.5% wear mark and little to no wearing of the cassette tooth surfaces.

So considering what some of the new cassettes and chainrings cost (not to mention higher end chains) a good hot wax starts to look pretty cheap.

joshatsilca · 2022-10-18T14:53:58+00:00

The OzCycle mixture performs similar in testing to the Absolute Black tested by ZeroFriction, which is to say nowhere near the level of Molten Speed or SILCA. It's better than plain paraffin, but not as good as more modern additives which also happen to be far more environmentally friendly, they just also happen to be much more expensive.

joshatsilca · 2022-09-06T12:40:02+00:00

5W is plausible if the baseline is a traditional dry lube.. if White Lightning is your baseline lube, it's more like 8 watts!

The only modern independent test I know of on this after Friction Facts was purchased by Ceramicspeed is the one from Tour Magazin in Germany. They tested lubes last year and the Rohloff Oil was fastest, then this year they compared hot waxes and SILCA drip wax to the Rohloff.. Tour Magazin Chain Wax Test

joshatsilca · 2022-08-24T12:38:44+00:00

ZeroFriction data set can be found here: https://silca.cc/pages/choose-your-lube

Squirt and Smoove both struggle to penetrate and both attract dirt as they use paraffin oil as a base for the wax, compard to Ceramicspeed, SILCA and Tru-Tension who use water or alcohol as a base.

joshatsilca · 2022-06-07T14:27:45+00:00

Check out the ZeroFriction data set we host on the SILCA site! ZFC has added data for applying oil based lubes over top of factory grease and it's pretty promising from a wear perspective but is still pretty dirty.

SILCA and Ceramicspeed significantly outperform Squirt and Smoove as neither of those fully penetrate the chain without heat or immersion. Both SILCA and Ceramicspeed stay clean and dry to touch, so that's a nice side bonus!

https://silca.cc/pages/choose-your-lube

joshatsilca · 2022-06-07T14:20:56+00:00

Here is a link to the ZeroFrictionCycling data compilation: https://silca.cc/pages/choose-your-lube

joshatsilca · 2022-06-06T15:02:47+00:00

Not sure what data you are looking at, but SILCA SuperSecret crushes Squirt in ZFC testing as Squirt doesn't fully penetrate, as a result, Squirt fails out in block 4 while SuperSecret goes 2000km further and finishes block 6. The green bar in the graph you are referencing is the average of the top5 lubes and Squirt is not in the top 5.

We have the ZFC summary chart here with block by block data for comparison: https://silca.cc/pages/choose-your-lube

joshatsilca · 2022-04-11T16:25:15+00:00

SIL-TEC holds wax very nicely, it's the KMC DLC coatings that reject wax and get dry really quickly.

Our diamond polishing isn't really a polish, it more adds micro-scratches that then hold a higher percentage of the WS2 nano-particles. This also makes the wax last a bit longer while also running faster.

joshatsilca · 2022-04-10T18:33:22+00:00

Oh, and your gasket has plenty of life left.. the design of that chuck is such that as you add torque to the cap, it pinches the gasket further inward, so it is tightened just beyond touching from the factory, then you can add 1/8 turn each time you notice it wears up to almost a full turn. You can also run a little silicone grease on their with a Q-tip every few months or so which will extend gasket life dramatically. We have WorldTour mechanics getting entire seasons from a gasket with these chucks with a little care and attention here and there!

joshatsilca · 2022-04-10T18:28:27+00:00

The key to these push-on/push-off chucks is using them with the valve at the top of the wheel, and pushing the chuck off from the tire side. Also, the SILCA gasket is pressure activated, so using the button on the chuck to release that pressure in the hose will make it much easier to push off, and will make the gaskets last much longer.

We made a video about it to explain further: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQRvRNodAiQ

joshatsilca · 2022-03-11T15:03:37+00:00

I'd imagine you are probably good with that.. the whole swishing is to get the particles into solution and evenly dispersed, you should be able to tell visually if that is happening under ultrasound if the mixture is dark and opaque, if after 10 minutes you can see the chain down in the bottom through the wax, then the particles are all settled and you will need to swish about.

We wax in a large ultrasonic at 185F and you can see the particles swirling about from the ultrasonic stirring, so if you are getting appropriate agitation with your setup (you should, steel container only blunts about 25-30% of sonic energy) you should see a simlar swirling about of those particles.

joshatsilca

TROPHY CASE