![]() ![]() With that out of the way, there's still something left to talk about in the cleaning department. I use it out camping in my alcohol stove. I remember my grandma cleaning windows with it. In german this is called "brennspiritus" in dutch simply "spiritus". Okay, Methylated spirits, called denatured alcohol in international english (apparently) is basically ethanol with, most of the time, methanol added to it to make it unsuitable for consumption. Me growing up in the Netherlands, I got to know the stuff as "terpentine" and funnily enough during my bmx-racing days in the 80's, I used it to clean my chain! White spirits are called "terpentinersatz" in German, literally "terpentine substitute". ![]() Kinda confusing, right? It helps looking at translations in different languages, to find out what's what. The latter is used as a thinner for oil paints (think Van Gogh) and probably the reason for white spirits to be colloquially referred to as "turps", since white spirits can also be used as a paint thinner (don't try this with high quality oil paint though). White spirits is also called petroleum spirits or turpentine substitute, not to be confused with turpentine. I decided to share my findings, maybe it can be of some use to someone else. The terminology and translations are a pita though, so I took a deeper dive into the solvent world. MSW seems to be just as stiff as plain wax. Early on when I did a bad job of cleaning a chain, the wax woudn't stick as well and it would be much easier to break the links. My chains are super stiff before I break the links. I even wash the bike after each ride and wax stays after waxing, is your chain as stiff as a stick? One way to tell if the wax has stuck to the chain is by holding out about half the length of the cooled chain horizontally (with rollers vertical) and see if it stays straight without the links "breaking". Even on dusty gravel rides, i can get a couple of hundred miles. Then, I use denatured alcohol before drying and waxing. I use it to agitate the chain in a container of mineral spirits for 1 minute after an overnight soak. I have an old rock tumbler that vibrates. It seems that the important step is the mineral spirits as this seems to be the one step in common for ppl that have success. That's brilliant! Does the water not collect at the bottom of the wax? I guess it evaporates? If you don't need to dry the chain, that's a bonus. After that I just rinse the chain off with water and immediately wax the chain. I do this until the solution stays translucent…it won’t be perfectly clear but it really doesn’t have to be. I remove the tub, pour out the murky solution and fill it with fresh 8:1. I place the deli container in the ultrasonic cleaner. I fill the deli container with 8:1 hot water vs Zep Citrus (or Simple Green Extreme.) I fill my ultrasonic cleaner with hot plain water. After that I rinse the chain off very well and then place the it in tall plastic deli tub. I have a jar of OMS (odorless mineral spirits) that I leave new chains in overnight. ![]()
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