Why Every Cyclist is Talking About This 1 Upgrade

there's a new upgrade Trend in cycling that claims to extend the life of your drivetrain by keeping it quieter cleaner and more efficient and this upgrade can be done to any bike so today we're going to find out how much it costs how hard it is to do and if this is something that we actually want to do to any of our bikes so there's a lot of different brands that make product for this but my deep Tech dork engineer on the Spectrum friends they all use Sila so I figured they put way more time and effort into this than I ever would so I'll just follow their lead so that's who I hit up and serendipitously they just released a whole system for doing this and it was just good timing thank God because it's going to make all of this much easier to be clear this video is not sponsored by Sila I needed the right tools for the job and they came through beyond that everything is fair game there's two different paths you can go down to accomplish this the DIY dirt bag version which is going to cost a little bit less but it's going to cost you more in time and effort the other path is the convenience version which tends to cost a little bit more but often you'll save in time and effort generally the convenience version is the preferred method so let's see how convenient it actually is so today I'm going to use Sila's new chain wax system it's a whole kit which is going to make life so much easier but this could be done with a thrift store crockpot and a bottle with Degreaser it doesn't have to be that complex I don't think is that [Music] true pour wax pellets to fill up until 20 mm remain until top there's no indicator 20 [Music] mm I'm glad I made that 20 mm Mark Hot Melt chain wax lubrication with Nano scale tungsten disi I've read that 35% of all bicycles are dulfi deficient and the bike we're going to use as a guinea pig is my Allroad Sith I treat it poorly in the worst conditions the first step in this process is degreasing our chain now they suggest using a brand new chain or using a chain that has less than 500 miles on it this chain has about 495 grimy Pacific Northwest winter miles so I'm going to push my luck and use this I added this chain when I put this fake F pulley wheel system on there H look at that I broke my fake ceramic speed how on brand to super glue the AliExpress ceramic speed knockoff pulley wheel so there's two ways to go about degreasing the chain the DIY approach is putting the chain in a jar doing a round of mineral spirits around 10 minutes and then doing a round of acetone or isopropyl alcohol the other version is with sil's system if you had a factory chain all you'd have to use are these strip chips which actually go in the wax that you're waxing your chain with insanely convenient because my chain is already grimy and I'm pushing the boundaries on if I should even use it for this or not I'm going to hit it with a bunch of speed Degreaser from Finish Line to try and get as much grease off of it as possible for this to work effectively we've got to get all all the grease off of it we're essentially going from oil to vinegar so we don't want to cross-contaminate because then we're just wasting time and resources wow that speed Degreaser works really good look at how clean the cassette is look at how remarkably clean this chain got yeah okay so now what we have to do is add some of this strip chip to the melted wax and then we continue the process from there in the past I've used a Crockpot to melt wax and it takes a tremendous amount of time an hour or more it's so slow but this Sila Croc it melted the wax in like 10 to 15 minutes which is something to consider that's almost like the perfect metaphor for convenience versus DIY so it looks like you get about six chain strippings out of one package which is pretty good that's a lot of chains this and this stand are going to be very helpful for this process this is a check in the convenience box because without this you're going to have to DIY something and I was thinking it would have to be like a something with angle brackets and and maybe a piece of wood you know this would work but you're still going to have to make it you know you just put some more angle brackets up there or just one yeah that would work gently lower chain using cable coupler into wax and lightly agitate for 30 seconds oh sh I'm not sure how you're supposed to submerge this chain without the coupler ending up in the wax I'm sure it's fine but it feels wrong being careful not to spill or splatter any of the wax oh my God I'm making a mess then lower temperature back down down to 75 C on the melter oh it's called a melter having like something to pull this stuff out of the wax very helpful ow so how to tell if the chain was clean enough there's not a bunch of dark spots on it so I I think I did pretty good actually and apparently when it's time to rewax the chain you pull it off the bike pour boiling water over the chain let it dry and stick it back in the melter it is easier if you articulate each link breaking them free prior to installing on the bike all right let's put this on this thing is like rig mortise at least my hands aren't dirty all right we're in there got to work The Kinks out all right so I guess it is necessary to break each link free before you put it on which I didn't do that I was impatient I just put it on and now I'm dealing with my sloppiness let's see how she rides anybody else out there got an extra bike or six that they've been meaning to sell but you just haven't been wanting to deal with Craigslist no I will not hold it for you or even worse offer up it clearly states pickup only well lucky for us there's a new player in town looking to change the game in the pre-owned bike Market they're a small group of cyclists that go by the name bicycle like buy cycle bicycle.com oh I get it what makes them so special they offer buyer protection secure payments and they even have ultrasonic carbon fiber checks it's a girl to look for stress fractures and delamination in carbon frames I could probably use that and for those of us whose Partners think we have a bicycle problem the selling process is streamlined with suggested pricing a fast convenient listing option that's nothing I heard Ron listed in under three parex and your posting will have a global reach of over 30 countries take that Craigslist not to mention they'll send you a box shipping supplies a label and schedule the pickup thank God so whether you got a road bike gravel bike mountain bike even a tri bike they're interested they're like a pre-owned bicycle cornicopia is that how you use that word so check out bicycle.com to make all your pre-owned bicycle selling and acquiring dreams come true I really I'm really hoping you're n plus one in here but if you sell and replace that that also works I suspect this thing is not going to run that great to start in fact it it does not run that great to start you got to break that wax up sounds like garbage to start that doesn't take long it's about 5 minutes and that thing's broken in I know cuz I I looked at my clock we have 5 minutes 40 seconds smooth that's great it kind of feels like the drivetrain has a lather of butter over it just like a little bit a little bit smoother it's subtle but it is there there is some residual chain skipping but it diminishes throughout the ride I'm about 10 miles in and it's more or less gone okay hang tight I'll let you know if this juice is worth a squeeze and it's suggested to rewax your chain every 500 miles or once it starts getting a little noisy you'll be able to hear it and then you know it's time to redip the chip all right we're calling that properly tested you can still see a little bit of wax on there but I'm a feeling it's all going to wear off so maintenance for this after grimy wet rides is either one of these Sila gear wipes which is basically a glorified wet wipe you know it's a strong material but not totally necessary the other thing you can do that's not going to cost any money and you can infinitely reuse it is a microfiber towel but you just wipe it off and that's it you don't have to reapply anything you just clean it off put it away ride it again huh it's getting some stuff off I would say the gear wipe is a slightly better way to go but the microfiber is going to be just fine all right let's talk numbers for a second if you were going to do this as a DIY method you'll need a crock pot a jar candy thermometer so you can tell the temperature of the wax mineral spirits as acetone angle brackets and chain wax coming up to a grand total of $110 versus the convenience method which includes the Sila chain waxing system the chip strip chain wax coming up to a grand total of $164 resulting in a difference of roughly $54 but one thing to consider is the DIY method is going to take more of your time and effort if that's worth $54 then there you go I'll put links to everything down below all right on a scale from fun to frustrating I would call this whole process fine it's right there in the middle it's actually very similar to setting up tubeless tires and it's also similar in the fact that you have to maintain it over a certain amount of time or miles an upgrade like this is interesting because it's basically taking a lot of little bits of Maintenance and consolidating it into one session of Maintenance so it's not that it isn't done it's just done in a different way and so far it's a much cleaner way which is I'm all for that and the fact that it extends the life of your drivetrain by keeping it cleaner there's less maintenance throughout the season I think this is an upgrade that's definitely worth considering yeah and think think of all the many little Watts you'll be saving over an extended period of time that's marginal gains that's savings you can take to the bank who writes this now to get a full understanding of what an upgrade like this can do you'll have to watch this video where I go over a very obscure upgrade that had some unended consequence consequences they were results which what's the difference [Music] it feels so weird to put this away and not Loop the chain

Channel: Everything's Been Done

Views: 160,233

Keywords: ycling upgrade, drivetrain maintenance, Silca chain wax, bike efficiency, cycling tips, bike maintenance, chain waxing, ride improvement, dustin klein, dklein, cycling upgrades, bike upgrads

Id: MHZswXFECRM

Length: 13min 7sec (787 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 22 2024