Silca

I love the thickness and cushion of this tape. When installing you can really torque and stretch it unlike most other cushioned tapes to get it to lay down perfectly. The backing tape is strong but still allows you to undue and readjust if needed. The added butterfly piece for the hoods and the finishing tape are top notch. It doesn't feel or look bulky on the bike but has great dampening and it is nice and grippy. Definitely my got to tape from now on.

To preface, I've started measuring my wax intervals by ride time instead of distance since I ride mixed surfaces, and dirt is slower. Aside from mud and wet, I've been finding that road vs dirt ride time between rewaxing tends to be close, while distance is not.

That said, the EnduranceChip definitely works, and I am getting at least 50% more ride time before I start to hear the little chirps my chain makes when it's about time to rewax. I'll consider adding more endurance additive for some upcoming long bikepacking trips! The only downside I see is that I may want multiple pots for multiple wax blends. Or I'll just have to go all-in on the endurance blend, since the efficiency loss is not an issue for me in my riding.

The main thing with this is you have to pour it in, it can't get through your valve even with core removed.

It does work very well though, what I really wish they'd finally do, is sell the fiber bits as a standalone, so I can add them when I mount the tire, and only sell the sealant without the fiber bits, so we can inject it and not make a mess. Or, we can put more in if we want, or maybe add them to another brand sealant if we want, but either way, sell the fiber bits. Otherwise we're using glitter, or black pepper, or whatever we are all doing to clot holes faster.

Seems to last ok, but isn't great. It shouldn't be though, because if it lasts long, it's watery, and won't clot. If it's too thick, it seals everything but is dry in a month.

Works though.

As part of getting a killer deal on a new bike, I decided to spend some of my savings on the Silca chain waxing system and convert several bikes to wax. Yes, even with the Silca system on sale you can probably cobble together a Rube Goldberg solution out of a cheap slow cooker and other bits and pieces. But why try so hard to save $20 or $30? If you're looking at wax as an alternative to conventional lubes, you're probably already spending many multiples of the potential savings on other bike stuff. Don't cheap-out now. The Silca Chain Waxing System is complete and highly functional, and the wax pot comes with a digital control/thermostat so you can truly control the temperature of your wax. A cheap slow cooker isn't going to have that.

I'm delighted to no longer be dealing with dirty drivetrains. I pack and travel with a bike a few times a year and it will be a lot easier when I no longer need to clean/cover the drivetrain each time. Performance is good -- the newly waxed chains are quiet and work well after a brief ride to loosen them up.

My only regret is using the strip clip. No question about it, the strip clip does indeed work great on a factory-greased chain. But if you're converting an existing bike, you'll want to do a deep clean of the entire drivetrain and IMHO the easiest part of a drivetrain deep clean is stripping/scrubbing the chain. And this could just be the type of conventional lube I had been using, but the strip clip didn't work at all for an existing chain that I converted. I needed to start over and conventionally strip/scrub the chain because when I skipped that step it ended up being a gloppy mess.