The short answer
No. You do not need to clean your chain before rewaxing it. And the reason is simple: waxing is cleaning, deep cleaning even.
“When you wax your chain, the old wax gets heated up, becomes liquid, gets flushed out and replaced with new wax.”
Why hot waxing is the deepest clean for your chain
When you place your chain into the hot wax bath, something important happens. The old wax inside the chain heats up and becomes liquid again. That liquid wax carries out small particles and contaminants that were trapped inside the rollers and pins. At the same time, fresh molten wax flows back in.
In other words, every rewax cycle:
melts the old wax
flushes out contamination
replaces it with fresh wax
That process is essentially a deep internal reset of the drivetrain lubrication.
There’s no separate degreasing step required between waxing cycles, as long as you’ve been waxing consistently.
What this means in practise
If you’ve been waxing your chain, you can simply:
Take your chain off
Place it in the heater
Run the hot wax cycle
No extra cleaning required. It’s that simple.
The best way to wax your chain
If you want to experience the system yourself, you can find the Performance Wax Heater here:
