methuselah of chains

 I gotta crow about the effect of paraffin lubrication on my bike chains.

I've found sources that say you should expect your chain to last 3,000 miles (see here and here). Now, I started waxing chains in January of 2020. I bought two inexpensive chains, cut them to length, cleaned them down to bare metal (I'm updating my procedure for that after ruining a batch of wax; look for another post about cleaning chain if you're the least bit interested), immersed them in melted paraffin, mounted one on the bike. When I got about 500 miles on the first one, I put the other on the bike, then cleaned the first and immersed it in the melted paraffin and saved the chain; I continued to replace, clean, and re-wax every 500 miles.

Since I started the process, I've put about 8,500 miles on the Yellow Maserati. Let's subtract the 500 miles for the Sensah Empire 11-speed experiment; that leaves 8,000 miles on the original chains, so each chain has about 4000 miles on it. I measured them today... and they still show less than .75% wear; they're still within specification. I plan to change them if they last to 5,000 miles, because, like, don't push it too hard.

Now, I like doing bike maintenance (as most riders probably don't), and I don't find either the cleaning process (my old method is described at the bottom of the "waxing the chain" page) or the waxing process to be onerous. Most of you will decide that your regular lubrication process, and changing chains (and maybe cassettes*) as you do is fine for your purposes. But this clean-and-wax thing has done wonders for my chain life.

*I'm still using the same cassette over all that time, too; there's been no reason to change it.