Get Immersed With Silca Chain Waxing Station, Super Secret Wax, Speed and Endurance Chips, Chain Stripper

I’ve been a big fan of waxing chains, and have slowly perfected my process over the years as I have found products I liked and what worked. This included products to strip a brand new chain, slow cookers, waxes, chain holders, and just the right pot to cook the chain to clean it. And then Silca came along with their Chain Waxing Station, and well, I’m ready to throw out my slow cookers and not look back. All of the other stuff in the title, yeah, that stuff’s good too.

I had a chance to meet with Silca at the Philly Bike Expo this spring, and they set me up with a full kit for gravel and road. It included the Silca Chain Waxing Station, a bag of their Super Secret Hot Melt Wax, a Speed and Endurance Chip, a pack of the Strip Chips, a bottle of Chain Stripper, and small bottle of the Super Secret Chain Lube. Really, it was everything I needed, except the chains, which YBN helped take care of. More on those in another article.

Here’s a quick rundown of what everything is. Since we have a lot to cover, I’ll be breief.

• Chain Stripper – Strips the factory grease off of a new chain and preps it for waxing in 10 mins, with a little agitation. Good for new or used chains, but not for removing wax, just other oils/lubes.
• Chip Strip – A chip you add directly to your wax in the Chain Waxing Station and it strips your chain of factory lubes and waxes it
• Chain Waxing Station – Melting pot and cooling station for waxing chains
• Super Secret Hot Melt Wax – Silca’s hot melt wax
• Speed Chip and Endurance Chip – Add-ins that help reduce friction or prolong the life of each waxing
• Super Secret Chain Lube – A liquid version of Silca’s Super Secret blend that you can use to top up a waxing, or use on its own

So that is a VERY high level description of what each of these are. I’ll dive into them more below, as I talk about what they are, how to use them, and what I thought.

Clean That Chain

When waxing chains, it is very important to make sure the chain is cleaned. For best results, you want all of that factory grease or other lubes off the chain. In a perfect world, chains would come from the manufacturer without anything on them, but they add the grease to help protect them until they are used. Many people will even run the chains straight out of the box, but in reality, it is best to strip them clean and then add your lube of choice. In the past, this meant using some really nasty chemicals, alternating baths and usually took a day or so to do it. Silca (and other brands) knew there had to be a better way, or waxing chains would continue to be a niche thing.

Enter Silca Chain Stripper. I saw it recommended by Zero Friction Cycling, my favorite website when it comes to all things chain and lube related. They mentioned how you could easily strip multiple chains with one bath of liquid, in 10 minutes, and uses biodegradable chemicals. Silca’s process also preps the chain for waxing, promoting a better adhesion of the wax lube. I was sold. Even before this review, I had already started using it to strip my chains for waxing.

Silca’s process essentially drives the grease out from the chain, and encapsulates it to make it easy to rinse away. I use a glass mason jar that I fill up with Chain Stripper, and then drop my chain in, including the quick links. Next, I seal it up, and agitate everything for 30-60 seconds. From there, I’ll let it sit for about 10 minutes, agitate it for another minute, and then pull out the chain and links to rinse them off in running water. What you are left with is a sparkling bare chain that is prepped and ready for wax. From there, you can drop it right into the wax. I try and make sure it is pretty dry, but any remaining water will separate out and evaporate during the heating process. I’ve found I can get a good 4 or 5 strips per mason jar of Chain Stripper, and there are at least 2-4 jars worth, depending on how much you use. Eventually, it does get pretty cloudy, which means it is probably time for a new batch.

If you are cleaning your chain on the bike, you can drip Chain Stripper onto each roller, and then let it sit for 5 minutes. After that, spin the cranks backward and slowly to let it work into the rollers and bushings, before adding another drop to each and let it soak in for another 5 minutes. From there, rinse it with water. Honestly though, with how commonplace quick links are, I’d recommend popping the chain off and immersing it. But that’s just me.

The other option is the Strip Chip. If you don’t want to do a separate process, Strip Chip is for you, and the Waxing Station comes in really handy due to the temperature controls. Each chip can strip one chain, so just set the Waxing Station to 125 degrees Celsius, drop in the chip, let everything melt together, and then drop the chain in for 10 minutes. Drop the temperature back to 75 degrees Celsius, let it cook for a little, and then pull out the chain and let it hang dry. The Strip Chip essentially pulls out the factory grease, encapsulating it, and lets the Super Secret Hot Melt Wax get in and lube the chain. Once you hit 6 chips though, it is time to change the wax and start fresh.

Between the two options, I personally like the Chain Stripper better, as I like to drop in a fresh, clean chain into a pot of wax, and focus on waxing and using the Speed and Endurance Chips, which I’ll get into later. If you want the quickest and easiest process though, Strip Chip is the way to go.

One thing to remember with either option. These are made to strip off grease from the manufacturer and oil based lubes. To clean waxed chains, a bath of boiling water is the way to go. I typically let the chain boil for a bit and run them through a few baths of water to get them as clean as possible before I wax them again. I’m a little OCD though, but it helps to keep containments out of the pot of wax as much as possible.

Let’s Talk About Wax, Baby!

This is the fun part for me, where I get to geek out a little, and why I love hot waxing over other chain lubes (I feel like I might have made some bad choices to get myself to the point of being excited about waxing chains).

When it comes to waxing, there are two to four parts here. The basics are the wax and how you are going to warm it up. Some brands have you boil their wax in a bag to heat it up and dip the chain in, which you can do with Silca’s Super Secret Hot Wax too. Others, you have to break out your crock pot, but I highly suggest getting a dedicated one as you are not going to want to cook with it after this. Crock pots are okay, but you can’t control the temps all that precisely, and I never could find one that worked well with the chain and hangers fitting in well, without it being really oversized.

Silca created their Chain Waxing Station to solve pretty much all of the problems here. The kit includes the wax pot, a cooling drip stand, and the chain coupler. It’s actually a very well thought out kit. The chain coupler allows you to thread the cable though the links to string it up for waxing and hang during cooling. The stand allows you to hang the chain after waxing, letting the excess wax drip back into the pot. The wax pot holds 600mL of wax, or about half a bag, and still has room to add some chips and the chain. The circular pot includes a vented lid to help keep temperatures stable without overheating and protect the wax when not using it. What really separates the pot from your typical crock pot is the ability to more accurately control the temperatures. It uses a PID controller for accuracy, and the front mount display and controls allow you to heat the wax to specific temps depending on the wax you are using. Silca recommends heating it to 125 degrees Celsius to get the wax melted, and then bring it back down to 75 degrees for waxing. Depending on the use of any additives, that temperature might change.

When it comes to the wax itself, the Super Secret Hot Melt Wax comes in a 500g bag. Silca uses a unique four wax blend, including highly refined laboratory-grade paraffin, which creates an extremely clean lubrication. Additionally, instead of harmful PTFE chemicals found in other lubricants, Silca adds a high concentration of 3 specific sizes of nano-scale Tungsten Disulfide to help reduce wear. Essentially, the wax not only lubricates the chain, but it also modifies the surface of the chain by filling in all of the microscopic imperfections on the surface of the metal. The more you use the Super Secret Hot Melt Wax, the faster the chain will get.

Next, you have the Speed and Endurance Chips. The chips allow you to fine tune the wax to either make it faster, or last longer. The Speed Chip helps improve efficiency by up to 0.6%, but also decreases the time between waxes. It’s made using a full synthetic wax produced from the same base oils as their Synergetic lube. Silca added 3 sizes of sub-micro and nanoscale Tungsten Disulfide platelets for even further reduced friction and anti-wear properties. One chip improves efficiency by 0.4%, but decreases the life of the waxing down to less than 200km. Add in a second chip, and it increases the efficiency to 0.6%, but drops the life down to under 100km. Think of it as one chip for a long stage or road race, while two Speed Chips would be for a time trial. Going in the opposite direction, you can run up to two Endurance Chips. It uses a semi-synthetic wax blend which includes some of the longest molecular chain lengths possible in a wax for enhanced durability. One chip bumps life from 300-400km to about 700km, while reducing efficiency down by 0.25%. A second chip takes you out to 900km, and reduces efficiency by 0.4%. You can also mix and match, to help increase efficiency without taking as big of a hit in distance.

To top up between rides, or use on it’s own, Silca makes the Super Secret Chain Lube. This is a liquid chain wax, but has similar properties to hot waxing, and can be used with the hot melt wax. It keeps it cleaner, more efficient, and protects your drivetrain for longer than typical oil based lubes. It was their solution to help make using the Super Secret blend easier to use for everyday cyclists that didn’t want to do hot waxing. Technology from the IndyCar world helped to create the Super Secret Chain Lube by infusing micro-scale wax powders into a quick drying solution that forms a coating similar to hot waxing. The air-drying liquid wax infused with Tungsten Disulfide has created a lube that is not only easy to apply, but also just as efficient as the best hot waxes on the market.

For this review, I decided to use two chains, one for gravel (YBN SLA110 Ti-N Black), and one for road (YBN Titanium SLA211 Ti-N Gold), that were being used on two different bikes. The plan was to train on straight Super Secret Hot Melt Wax, add an endurance chip for a long gravel event, and then add a speed chip for a 135 mile road event a few months later.

On The Bench and The Road

Stripping the chains was straight forward. I already talked about the process earlier, but the chains went straight from the packaging to and into mason jar with the Chain Stripper, and then out to be rinsed in water. The Chain Stripper did the job, and the chains came out clean and ready for waxing.

Setting up the Chain Waxing System was straight forward. The stand took a few screws to assemble, and the pot sits on top of the base. From there, plug it in, add the wax (about half a bag), and let it all melt down. I started by following Silca’s recommendations about melting the wax down at 125C. While the wax was heating up, I fed the cable through the links to hang the chain and then screwed the cable into the other end of the handle. Once everything was at temperature, I added the chain. First, I swished it around a bit with part of the chain, and then dropped the chain in so it was completely submerged. With the lid on, I left the chain in the pot for probably a solid 10 minutes, swishing it around a few times. It might be a bit longer than what Silca calls for, but I like to make sure that the chain heats up to temperature as well. After the last swish, I pulled the chain out, and let it hang to drip dry back into the pot.

After letting the chain cool and dry overnight, I cut them down to size on the bikes. Make sure to clean out the channels where the quick links lock into to make sure that they solidly connect. Waxed chains need a little bit of a break in period, so started by popping the bikes onto the stand, and spinning the cranks. Excess wax will flake off, so make sure to do it some place where you can clean it up easily. After a few shifts up and down the cassette, you should be all set, but don’t be alarmed if it takes a little longer for everything to break in, but trust me, all of the work is worth it.

Before I go into how the wax worked on the road, let’s talk about adding the chips. Before my gravel event, I added the Endurance Chip to the wax. When waxing the chain, Silca recommends turning up the heat to between 90-95C for best results. I waxed both chains with the endurance blend after using them for a few hundred miles of training and then cleaning in boiling water. Later on, before my 135 mile road event, I slipped the Speed Chip into the blend. Silca recommends 75-80 degrees, so I split the difference, and went with 85 degrees. I followed the same process in swishing and letting the chain sit in the pot as with the straight Super Secret blend.

Now for the fun part, actually riding my bikes.

I’ve ridden waxed chains before, and found them to be very smooth and quite. Silca’s Super Secret Hot Wax Lube is no different. After the break in period, the chain ran smooth and quiet. Shifts were quick and accurate, and as the miles ticked on, the chain didn’t change. I put about 200 miles on the gravel chain and about 300+ miles on the road chain, all in pretty optimal (dry, clean) conditions, and the chain felt fast and smooth.

Before the LuLackaWyco Hundo, I popped the chain off my Ceepo Rindo and ran it through a few baths of boiling water, rinsing the chain and changing the water after each bath. The chain wasn’t completely stripped back to a bare chain, but it was pretty clean with just a little wax still on the chain. Again, you don’t have to take it back down to a bare chain, but I am OCD and like the chains to be clean as possible going into the wax.

I added the Endurance Chip, and rewaxed the chain. The event was only 100 miles, but I wanted something that I was sure would stand up to potentially bad conditions from years past. Well, besides being crazy windy, it was actually a beautiful day, so much for that. But, the Endurance Chipped version of the Super Secret Hot Wax continued to run smooth and quite from beginning to end. I’ve put on a few hundred more miles since the event, and it feels and sounds like I have plenty of miles left on the waxing before I would need to rewax. Now, if the conditions had been a different, and it was a wet and sloppy day, the base wax should be enough for the worst conditions, but the Endurance Chip adds just a little more durability to the wax.

Before a training block in Florida, I boiled the road chain and rewaxed it with the Endurance blend. While in Florida, I put on almost 250 miles, including some in the rain, and probably picking up a little sand while riding along the east coast of the state. Again, the chain ran smooth, fast, and quiet, and everything shifted well. Even after returning home, I put on a few hundred miles more before starting to prep for the 135 mile event.

Next, I added the Speed Chip to the endurance blend. This is actually the cool thing about Silca’s chips. You can mix and match the chips to find the right blend for your needs. If you want the absolute fastest blend without worrying about durability, then add two Speed Chips. If you want the ultimate in durability, then add two Endurance Chips. By adding one of each, it brings in some of the efficiency properties without losing as much of the durability as you would with the Speed Chip alone.

For the road event, I didn’t have much time to break the chain in, but I don’t feel I needed to, other than the initial spin to flake off the excess external wax. Again, it was a beautiful day for a ride, and the bike felt fast and smooth throughout the event.

Final Thoughts

Okay, so this article became WAY longer than I thought it was going to be, but there was a lot to go through. Hopefully by now, you are still here.

The ecosystem that Silca has created for waxing chains is great. Like I said, I have been using their Chain Stripper for at least a year before the review, and it really does the trick without the need for a long process and nasty chemicals. It quickly and easily strips chains to their base and preps them for waxing. There isn’t really much more you need. I didn’t test out the Strip Chip yet, but I may in the future and use that wax as my more everyday training wax and keep the Speed/Endurance blend for events.

For waxing, I was a little skeptical at first if the Chain Waxing System was really necessary, but if it is in the budget, I highly recommend. In the past, I was using a crock pot with a metal probe thermometer, trying to make sure I was hitting the right temperatures. Now, I can just set the temp on the digital display, and let the pot do its thing. It takes a lot of the guess work out of the process, and the drip stand allows me to easily let the chain cool. In the past, I would typically snake the chain off the hook, hang it from a nail, let it drip into the crock pot sitting below. This might seem small, but it’s just one more thing that makes waxing easier for those that are on the fence.

For the wax itself, I can’t confirm the friction reduction myself as I don’t have a lab, but per testing from Zero Friction Cycling, Silca’s Super Secret blend consistently tests at the top of the charts in efficiency. You can check out their website for more details, but they are the people I trust when it comes to making decisions about the lubes I use on my personal bikes when I’m not testing products. They are in the process of testing the Endurance and Speed Chips, but early reporting is that the Endurance Chip greatly increases the life of a waxing. From my own experience, I would completely agree.

My final thoughts on all of these products are that I recommend all of them. If you have not hot waxed chains yet, what are you waiting for? Silca’s Chain Waxing System is great, even if you decide to go with a different brand wax. I haven’t tried popping out the cooled wax yet, but I’m sure you can pull it out from the pot, put it into a container for later, and proceed with a new batch of wax. I’ll be doing that the next time I need to strip a chain and decide to use the Strip Chip. The Chain Stripper is my go-to, and the few bottles I picked up before the review will last me for quite some time, even with all of the chains that YBN have sent over. And the Super Secret Hot Melt Wax, even without the chips, is quiet, clean, and easy to work with. Personally, I won’t go back to regular lubes, other than adding the Super Secret Chain Lube to top up my chains. With the chips, you now have the option to customize the wax to exactly what you want it to be. About the only negative is the costs. At $99.99, it is an investment over popping over to Target or your local garage sale and picking up a cheap crock pot, but you won’t get the precision of Silca’s Chain Waxing System. You can also find cheaper lubes out there, when it comes to hot waxes, $40 isn’t that much of an investment for the amount of use you’ll get out of it. The chips might be a luxury, but if you are going to go with one, most of us would see great results using the Endurance Chip. And the Chain Stripper, seriously, just get it. It will save you a ton of time and you won’t be using some seriously nasty chemicals. It’s probably also cheaper.

• Chain Waxing System – $99.99
• Super Secret Hot Wax Lube – $40
• Super Secret Chain Lube – $16
• Endurance Chip – $29
• Speed Chip – $29
• Strip Chip – $24
• Chain Stripper – $36

When I’m finished with reviews, sometimes I get to keep the products. If I continue to use them, that shows that I really believe in it. This will definitely be a time I keep using everything Silca sent me. It has made life easier for me when waxing, but the wax products have worked great and kept my bikes running smooth, clean, and efficiently. So, really, make the change to waxing, and you’ll never go back. Silca’s got you covered.

www.slica.cc