Opinion: You shouldn't wax your HKK or Izumi chains

With the elite sporting world chasing efficiency in every way possible, some of the best minds did the maths and realised that waxing your chain can increase performance. The adoption of such techniques is obvious when you see that every major chemical supplier for the bike industry has a wax solution nowadays. The "cleanliness" of a waxed chain is a major part of the appeal, and something which I personally enjoy too, however I don't think it works for most track applications.

Top: Izumi Super V / Super Toughness (KAI), Second Down, Izumi 410 Silver, Third Down, HKK Vertex Gold, Bottom, YBN SLA410. Note the differences in the pin designs

Brands like YBN (specifically on their SLA410 chains) have a unique design, a roller sitting on top of pressed plates. This is more in-line with what we see in multi-speed chain design, like the Shimano CN-HG901 and Shimano CN-M9100 chains, and is fundamentally why the SLA410 is such a great chain to wax. Traditional track chains created by Izumi, D.I.D. (Daido), HKK and a few others, utilise a chain with an extra part - a bushing, reducing movement inside the chain to provide the best power transmission possible.

See the differences in the spaces between the rollers? Whilst the YBN is capable of holding wax, the roller appears to be a lot closer to the inner plates... Not really, and more on that below.

Zero Friction Cycling have covered this topic as well, and what they found in their testing is that if you do not break the chain in correctly that they will not be efficient, and wax will not lubricate the chain where needed. One belief that I have is that whilst running your chain in can help here a lot, it requires a traditional lube to be used for quite some time prior to converting to wax and leads to a lot of grime, in turn leading to potential wax contamination.... No matter how good you clean the chain prior to waxing.

The external overview

On the outside, chains like the Izumi and HKK look nearly identical, however they vary ever so slightly. The HKK has a different pin design with a "dimple" and a different design for mushrooming the head to lock the outer plate to the pin. Aside from the pin, the other standout is that the Izumi's (in both the KAI and 410) do not have a stamping mark on the outer edge of the plates, probably due to differences in how the plates are stamped. Meanwhile, the YBN sits in a category of it's own, hollow pins, cut-outs in the side plates (which help waxing these chains) and cut-outs in the inner plates - reducing unnecessary weight. 

The inner plates and bushings all share the same uniform design with less than 0.02mm variation between the bushings on all 3 chains that shared a common design.

What about the inside?

I'll preface this section, I am not surprised in what we found - and before writing this, we already knew that it was close, but not this close... Secondly, the marks you see on the inner plates comes from having to pry the links apart. Not an easy job given how tight everything fits together.

The HKK and Izumi all appear near identical in their construction, with no discernible differences visually, the YBN the most unique of the lot thanks to its low-friction design. We opted to not photograph the Izumi 410 Silver as it added nothing of obvious difference when compared to the KAI other than the coating.

Starting with the Izumi Super V KAI, 2 bushings (1 semi-extracted), a roller and the outer plate with pin. It's worth noting that the KAI appears to have a different coating and appears to have polished pins.

Next up the HKK Vertex Gold, 1 bushing (as the other remained attached to the opposing inner plate), a roller and the outer plate with pin. Differences in coating which likely help the HKK to perform efficiently, along with having fantastic corrosion resistance.

The YBN SLA410 Gold, the roller sits atop a lip on the inner plate and does not rely on much contact surface, potentially why these are so efficient when compared to other chains on the market.

How did the chains measure up?

This is where things get interesting, visually the chains all looked very similar, and they should. They're all "410" chains, which means they need to comply to a very specific set of tolerances, but what makes the YBN unique is the face that the inner plates are capable of floating on the edge of the inner plates, giving space for the roller to move depending on the angle of the chain and the load applied to it. It's this very thing that creates the perfect environment for waxing your chain, and it allows for extremely high efficiency.

During our measurements, we took a brand new Izumi SuperV "KAI" and attempted to twist the chain out of axis and the movement in the chain was extremely nominal, which tells us that any misalignment would cause friction and reduce efficiency quickly. The HKK showed the same, and the only outlier in the range was the standard 410 series chain, as it allowed marginally more misalignment than the others. I did my best to measure it, but it just didn't highlight well.

The inside of a HKK Vertex, showing the bushing and roller interface which is extremely tight. The damage visible is from prying the little thing apart as those bushings are pressed in TIGHT.

So if you're still following, it's probably looking pretty obvious that wax might just not get inside these chains, at least not in any functional sense, and your assessment would be right. To address the issue, I'll speak to the HKK and Izumi chains alone here - Our view is that the tolerances in between the roller and the bushing is too tight, thus not allowing wax to enter the pin, bushing or roller cavity. This is confirmed by an average of 0.08mm total clearance from our measurements across the three chains. Wax needs a certain amount of space in order for it to lubricate, it needs space to enter the rollers, and space to exit the chain and unfortunately these traditional designs do not offer that luxury. Many of the NJS and traditional bushing-style designs share a common design philosophy and our hot take - just don't do it.

Have you tried waxing an Izumi anyway?

Yes we have. In 2025, for the Australian Track Nationals, we were approached by an athlete who requested we wax his chain. The process for this was 4 chemical baths to remove all the factory grease/oil from the chain. The chain was then ultrasonically waxed (yes, it's a thing and we will write an article on it) at 80°c, for 30 minutes, 4 times over the span of 24 hours. Each pass saw more and more bubble emerging form the wax. What this tells us that if air is coming out, wax is going in. Even after all these passes and a light break-in, the rider described the chain as being absolutely trash to ride. The friction, noise and inefficiency made it unusable for competition.

Second to this, a close friend of the store asked if we could do his "used" chain a number of years back, and we agreed. It was a matter of weeks before the chain was making noise and clearly did not have enough wax. It ended up seized and in the bin within a few weeks. We dismantled it to find rust on the pins, along with grooves from metal on metal contact where no lubrication was present. Despite the best efforts it further reinforced what we believe around these bushing style chains being unsuitable for wax.

So, what chains can I wax?

We only offer and recommend the YBN SLA410 Chain as a pre-wax option for sale.

The outliers

There is no doubt in my mind that there are groups of people who have success waxing Izumi chains, and there are ways to increase the "success rate" of the operation, however the trade-off is likely that the wax will begin to degrade. Higher temperatures (in-excess of 100°c) tend to lead to the wax decomposing (the give-away is the burning smell and fumes), and it's why companies like Silca recommend keeping the wax below 80c as a general rule. Once decomposition has occurred, your wax has lost most of it's efficiency, and the unfortunate truth is that you've gone and un-done all of the work the chemical engineers have done to produce a mix that performs well over time. 

So am I wrong?

I've been told how wrong I am on many occasions, and I'm always open to new opinions and views, so if you've got some information or understand that I don't, please drop a comment and any references so myself and others can read, and learn. I believe only one thing in this world, "If you think you know everything, you can't learn anything", and I am not ready to stop learning.