A new ‘Ultimate’ Chain Stripper and Wax Prep from Silca promises to ease and speed up the process of making your drivetrain faster. Debuting this weekend for gravel racing at Unbound, Silca’s new ‘Ultimate’ solution will strip all of the grease of your chain and have it ready for their fastest wax-based lube in 10 minutes of less, and you don’t even have to pull the chain off your bike!
Silca Ultimate Chain Stripper and Wax Prep makes you faster
We’ve pretty much all come to accept that waxed chain lubrication is the path to the lowest drivetrain friction and the fastest-spinning drivetrain on our bikes. But getting a properly waxed chain isn’t easy.
Starting from a factory-greased chain, it often requires multiple degreasing and ultrasonic cleaning steps to get the chain clean enough to make wax lubes properly stick. And if you skimp on this step, the wax lubrication won’t properly penetrate and adhere to your chain, so you won’t get those magic speed benefits. If you are starting with a used chain that’s already seen time on your bike, the process is even more fraught. Only by removing the chain, and restarting the degreasing & ultrasonic cleaning process do you have any hope. And our own experience suggests that truly getting a used chain fully clean again is a pipedream.
So what’s new here?
Silca’s new solution makes it super simple to clean away that old grease on your chain and make the leap to better wax lubrication…
The new highly-concentrated, biodegradable degreaser that makes up the ‘Ultimate Chain Stripper’ part of this new mix cleans away all of your existing chain lube. Then, the ‘Wax Prep’ part acts as a primer on the metal of your chain to help adhere your new wax lube with a single quick application.
Up until now, the biggest hurdle for cyclists looking to upgrade to wax based lubricants has been the time, chemicals, and containers necessary to properly strip the factory grease from the chain. Some of the recommended methods use as many as 3 separate chemicals and can take up to 2 full days to complete. By taking a totally different approach with this product, we’ve developed something that not only strips the chain completely of other lubricants, but actually leaves the metal prepped for optimal adhesion of the wax. This is a huge win on both fronts, we’ve ultimately increased application longevity and performance of the lubricant, while reducing the preparation time to achieve this from hours to minutes!
– Josh Poertner, Silca CEO
How do you use it?
Still on your bike, first brush all the gunky debris off your chainring, cassette & derailleur pulleys so you have a reasonably clean slate to work with.
Next, just apply a single drop of the new magic sauce onto each roller of the chain, let it sit for 5 minutes, then apply one more drop to each roller, then wait another 5 minutes. After that, simply rinse it off with a hose – no pressure washers please, but plenty of water flow to flush out all of the degreased residue. Then, simply apply a drip-on lube like Silca’s Secret Chain Lube – aka Hot Melt Wax in a bottle – and away you go with a faster chain.
The good news here is that it is compatible with other drip-on wax-based lubes, too – not only Silca’s. And if you are looking to hot wax a chain, this on-bike cleaning process is designed to better clean a used chain before you take it off, do the ultrasonic bath, and dip it into melted solid wax for extra long-lasting speed.
Silca Ultimate Chain Stripper – Pricing, availability & options
The new US-made Silca Ultimate Chain Stripper and Wax Prep is available in the USA now and will be coming very soon to Europe, too.
It comes in two sizes, but the smaller one only in a bundle with Silca’s secret lube. For $36 / 44€ you get a small 4oz/118ml bottle of Ultimate Chain Stripper and Wax Prep combined with a small 4oz/118ml bottle of Super Secret Chain Lube. That is said to be enough to clean around 4 chains, and make them super-fast.
The bigger 16oz/473ml bottle of Ultimate Chain Stripper and Wax Prep sells for the same $36 / 44€ as the bundle, but will be better suited for cleaning and prepping more than a dozen chains. Just to be clear, you should only need to do this clean & prep work once on a chain before you first apply a wax-based lubricant to it.
