Cycling weekly best lube - reviewing the review

[@stephenkohler3472]

I spent decades trying out different lubes hoping to find a good one. Every rider, every mechanic, every shop had a different opinion on what was best. All I got was a huge collection of bottles and roasted drivetrains. 95% of cyclists are still doing that.

[@jvogel431]

Me too. Then the lifetime of experimenting ended when I tried Silca immersive wax. It is completely amazing. Once you go wax, you'll never go back.

[@stephenkohler3472]

Same here. Now I've got a lifetime supply of door hinge lube.

[@TheUglyFrogKing]

Thanks for all the good information you put out. Enjoy your holidays with your family.

[@Kesevar]

You have convinced me, now i've started doing full wax immersions on my chain whip to ensure minimal watt losses when servicing my cassette.

[@zerofrictioncycling992]

You will have a grand ol time. In all honesty the most common feedback we get on IM waxing is a) this is so much easier than i thought followed by b) why didnt i start this years ago!! `

[@10ktube]

8 is a good number for bikes. One for each day of the week plus a spare. I like it.

[@zerofrictioncycling992]

i feel rather fortunate my favorite number is 8. Over time that has been an achievable zen match up. If my favorite number was say 37, it would have been a much longer and more difficult path on many fronts including the wife to get to that number of active bikes :)

[@fuzzy-supernova]

year 2024 comes to an end - CW test Smoove and Squirt, while skipping Super Secret or Flowerpower. Do they live in a cave?

[@ollimustonen]

REX Black Diamond lube is easy and great if you don’t want to get onto waxing. They have e-bike variant of that and it’s great. Clean and effective.

[@zerofrictioncycling992]

Yes rex ACTUALLY extensively test their products in development, as well as test A LOT with ZFC - which shows they ACTUALLY care about bringing genuinely high performing products to the market. I am still testing samples for products in development all the time for rex to go along with their own extensive field testing. And Rex are not massive like some brands - so Rex and some others certainly show what can be done when a brand wants to, vs what is common which is lets throw X out there, its a lubricant - pump on whatever fancy claims we like and just hope that maybe it does something remotely like one of those claims. Brands like Rex that genuinely do the work to deliver genuinely great products should be supported vs those that do not and throw out goodness knows what.

[@vidpoch]

Definitely add Fenwicks to the list. Seems pretty good to me for general cycling on a cheap bike, and they have a very good foaming chain cleaner to go with it.

[@kieranbarry8193]

Just switched from using Squirt for years to Effetto Mariposa, thanks to your endorsement :) Had 650kms in dry conditions on a single application and chain was still running well!

[@micklemitch1123]

shouldn't it be used after waxing chain? for proper longevity

[@neutronpcxt372]

@@micklemitch1123 Yes, but many people don't want to do ANY hot waxing. Ideally, for the maximum compromise between application longevity convenience, you should hot wax at the beginning of every season and use wax emulsions for in-between applications.

[@dawn_rider]

@@neutronpcxt372E-M recommend stripping the chain back to bare metal before first application. The wax base being sunflower based is chemically different than paraffin wax. This is possibly why E-M has their own 'Allpine Extra' pine oil based solvent ? I don't know if Flowerpower and paraffin wax mix under pressure or what the result is.

[@dawn_rider]

Cycling media need a rapid test that gives 'ballpark' values. To aid this I would use a cheap high wear rate chain and possibly arrange / use an extreme chainline. It might help to use a more sensitive test than provided by a standard chain wear checker ? After say 300km, I would try cleaning a chain back to bare metal, save the solution and use a magnet to extract the worn chain metal. This would be dried and weighed using a cheap 0-50g / 0.01g balance. A turbidity test ( how clear the cleaning solution is ) can't be used because many lubricants contain particles as additives. Also, turbidity is affected by particle size ( an unknown).

[@colinl2908]

Did the electric assist arrive for your BMC? Can't see it in the background?

[@zerofrictioncycling992]

sadly not yet, i will show when arrives, if it arrives......

[@colinl2908]

@@zerofrictioncycling992 I'm very interested to see how it goes, but sounds you had a significant improvement without it. Going up to the hills, I'd want a dinner plate on the back 👍

[@zerofrictioncycling992]

@@colinl2908 yeah me too - im curious just to have a play with these kits and see if they are good or crap, how they hold up longer term, ability to get spares and repair etc. If it does work and zooms me back home faster and with just lightly turning the legs, that will be great, it will help my thursday training rides for sure as they have been a little dented by wednesday's overall hard day and late final slog home. This first test i didnt have time to change over the chain rings so i still had the 55/42 chainrings on, have now swapped to the 50/34 which will also help! but yeah even though in super commuter build it is not light (10kg) as a) its a tt frame b) handlebar bag, c) mega light with 500gram battery - it is still 3kg lighter than the mtb, doesnt have suspension, but mostly just road tires vs mtb tires is the big one - i will be saving a literal 10w per tire minimum - so even first test very knackered and tall gears - it was notably easier and also a bit faster getting home so that was nice. Looking forward to this week with the compact gearing, and cmon Livall ship my pikaboost 2 please! :)

[@szilardp]

That muc-off is horrendous. My partner used it on her beater commuter (the only of our 9 bikes with oiled chain). Last spring cleaning I attempted to degrease the chain on the bike thinking that the chain still had plenty of life in it, why not get the winter grime off for summer! What a mistake, Muc off turns into black gummy gunk impossible to fully dissolve even from the outside of a single speed chain after three passes with brushing on degreaser. The sprayover on the frame took major effort to clean off as well. I binned that chain oil even though I don't like waste. Warning to everyone, avoid that blue muc-off, it is a hazard to your components (and your sanity)!

[@zerofrictioncycling992]

yes whilst i havent tested that particular lubricant of M-O, their other wet lubes have been omg bad, and in the workshop days i cant remember seeing a bike using an M-O wet lube that wasnt a black sludge disaster and with very high wear for the km's they had ridden. The base they use is just.......worrisome.....

[@JonoRidesBikes86]

Hi Adam, I can attest from personal experience that the blue bottle Muc-Off is as bad or probably worse than the higher priced models you tested. They should change their name to “Muc-ON”! I started my cycling journey 4 years ago on MTB and have also fallen in love with road in the past 2 years. As an uneducated cyclist back at the start fell for the Muc-off marketing and used that exact Muc-Off blue bottle wet lube. I killed my first chain at 750km and by 1500km had burned an XT cassette, Chain ring, 2 chains and used that much degreaser trying to clean the horrendous black contamination of the lubricant I flushed all the grease from my XT mech and destroyed it too. I found your muc-off files vid and started to educate myself and can happily say I’m a long term viewer, and a 2 pot MSpeed waxer convert now for my bike fleet . Happily say my current road chain is now at 9500km and still reading 0 wear on my abbey LL tool 👍 Keep up the good work !

[@MrAlframseysrevenge]

I agree 100% with @JonoRidesBikes86 I too started riding four years ago and used Muc Off and I go sick of having to clean my chain after only one or two rides plus it was expensive. Been a wax convert for two years now after watching Adam and others. I definitely would not go back to wet lubes and once you're started with wax it's much easier and cheaper.

[@zerofrictioncycling992]

Thanks so much for sharing experience Jono and ha love the brand name suggestion for them!! that is indeed 100% correct!! Yeah i literally shudder to think about how many drivetrains have met a very early death thanks to such products- and especially the brands like M-O that must absolutely know their products are drivetrain killers but just cover up that with millions spent on marketing every year. And - more bike stores need to start doing better on chain lubricants. They can absolutely over time easily assess how their recommended lubricants are going for their customers. It is rare, but the odd bike store owner around the world writes in from time to time to say yep - we stopped stocking M-O after noticing our customers chains and drivetrains were always very worn for not that many km's. If more cyclists just track chain wear, and more LBS do the same for their customers (ie every bike booked for a service - what chain lube - how many kms for that chain, or how many months and how many kms per month on average do you ride) - over time the worst performing brands and products are easily ascertained - and then their sales should decline. I think it is practically criminal that products like this are still knowingly pushed by M-O, and they are very successful at LBS penetration because they offer very high margins on sale vs many lubricants (which are typically not great margins). one could ask how M-O is able to offer such great margins - how come their products can be sold so cheaply by them to LBS and they still make money? They must be much cheaper to produce - which is also worth thinking about.....

[@JayB-72]

I read this article and I saw the 'good' review of muc off wet. That stuff wore out a grx cassette and xt chain in 700 miles. It turns to industrial grinding paste, horrible stuff. I've moved on to silca hot melt 2 years ago and haven't looked back 👍🏼

[@zerofrictioncycling992]

yes indeed - whilst riders are going to be fooled by muc-off marketing, it really is well past time tech reviewers see what is happening. But M-O also spend big on advertising, so that gives me pause.... around why M-O keeps featuring in most major publications best lubricant reviews despite the rather mountainous evidence re their grinding pasteness...

[@JK-wl5bx]

Can see Adams blood pressure rising with the sight of wt 1 😂

[@zerofrictioncycling992]

Yeah omg that product and its claims!!! If it actually performed well i would a) still rubbish the claims but b) be able to say hey despite the clearly illogical marketing claims around cleaning as it lubes and its 0.0015ml per link cleaning agent - at least the lubricant itself is high performing etc. A big part of the reason why wet lubricants such as synergetic and rex black diamond do so well comparatively to other wet lubricants in the dry contamination test block is that so little of them is needed to effectively lubricate for a long time. So they are much less "wet" than many other wet lubes, and so they attract a lot less contamination and don't pump it through the chain like very wet lubes do. WT-1 is a very wet wet lube, so whilst it might test great in a clean lab test, it is just a nightmare offroad (for which the brand heavily markets). So quickly gathering a lot of contamination and becoming very abrasive is not a great path. And then claiming it will clean as it lubes, whilst at the same time still rapidly gathering as much contamination as possible - just jeezus wept give me a break!!! what annoys me is that they worked with a lubricant company apparently - if they dont know what is going on and why, did not do any robust field testing vs key competitors with chain wear checking etc - I dont know whats worse - no one involved in the project of making a lubricant has a logical neuron working to know it is going to fail, or that they do know but the answer is to just put out marketing they know many will fall for, and many wont realise it is poor because only about 1% of cyclists track chain wear to kms to realise they are running liquid sandpaper- the only reason many products are actually able to exist. If one day we can get even 10% of cyclists tracking their lubricant choice performance via km and chain wear tracking a lot of products will be in trouble. But yeah either massive incompetence or massive knowingly misleading - which is worse in this case. And it pushes my buttons because WT should be above this behavior - they make a lot of great quality products- and repairable, with parts easily available etc - why are they sullying themselves with this product - it really gets me!!

[@camperp195]

Muc off dry lube,i use it all year round,best out there imo

[@zerofrictioncycling992]

Lol. I would a) check the ZFC test data table, i can assure there are many many products that work much much better. Maybe it is the best lubricant you have personally tried, but a) do you track your chain wear km's for that product and b) perhaps try doing that for M-O dry and then something actually good such as Rex or synergetic or revolubes of Nix Frix shun etc etc. M-O do marketing well, and many shite products are used by many people because they simply never actually assess their performance vs other products. It will feel like a lubricant, because it is a lubricant - but it if you pitched it against any of the above, you are going to circa double or triple or more the lifespan of your chain and cassette and chain rings - they are simply much superior products. Remember the zfc test is the product in its use case - it is on a bicycle chain running on a bicycle drivetrain over thousands of km's and includes contamination. There is no hiding from those comparative wear rate results. Variables like power, re lube intervals, contamination (type= same, amount = same, introduced when = same) - are all controlled, so the wear rate comparison between top performing, meh, and poor - it is very clear. I do find it difficult to agree when a normal cyclist advocates for a particular product as "the best" - when they will have in no way assessed that product objectively, and the number of other products they have tried is likely very small, and assessment not controlled in anyway, just going off feels.

[@stephencharles6932]

Looks like no science and totally subjective testing going on there. Cannot be taken seriously at all. A pity for that publication to do that as weakens trust in all that they write after.😢

[@joules2936]

My bet, it’s all about affiliate links.

[@better.better]

I mean honestly that's what every one of those articles is like, no matter what the product, and to be fair that's how most people decide on what chain lube works best for them anyway... I always went by how long I seemed to need between applications, and how often I needed to buy more. I didn't really think about how many chains I would go through, and I always figured that high component wear was just a price I payed for using the ultra-light components, and I'm pretty sure that's the assumption most people operate on until they see actual long-term test data such as what ZFC collects. prior to finding ZFC, the only other actual attempt to test lubricants that I found was a guy comparing scratches on a spinning cylinder, which I guess is a fair dry-block comparison, but obviously that's the least telling test block that ZFC does, and lots of lubricants that do great on that first block are surpassed by the others in the following blocks

[@psychoal1967]

If a publications testing on one aspect of cycling, be it in this case lubes, appear to be so wide of the mark in their recommendations for most items tested, how trustworthy are their tests on other gear i.e. bikes, components, apparel etc? They are sowing the seeds of doubt in the trustworthiness and objectivity of their tests. It is not just CW. Testing a good range of items objectively costs a good bit of money, and I understand that there must be considerable financial pressure on the publications to attract sponsorship, advertising and sell subscriptions and hard copies to pay for this and make a profit. I guess, as you know full well Adam, good long term objective testing is not easy or cheap, indeed drive train wear and lube effectiveness are probably the most difficult to do. So why don't they ask you?

[@zerofrictioncycling992]

well said and correct - and they should realize that point exactly and take more care. I know it is a tricky area, but there are distinct risks if done poorly and it looks like just promoting X product as great that they clearly have not been able to objectively assess at all, are just re hashing the marketing, and now i am wondering if some like wolf tooth are good advertisers for them. And if so how much credence can i place in their other test reviews and recommendations etc. A number of publications have been great with making contact and getting input - Road.Cc, Bike Radar, Cycling tips in days past and now Escape Collective, Lennard Zimm etc. I am not yet sure why some other publications wouldnt just reach out for a chat with a company that purely focusses on chain lubrication and testing if that is what you are focussing on and you are clearly having some fun trying to objectively assess, and are not 100% sure on clear findings for the products. Should one risk saying a lot of great things about a product that you absolutely could not objectively assess anything, only to find an independent test found the product and claims to be way off - or should you just go forth and type and hope..... I am biased but i cant help but think checking is the better option! :)

[@better.better]

it's a shame you didn't come up with a way to automate on-the-fly chain length logging -maybe using the change in position of the bottom jockey wheel over distance- I think it would be much more intuitive to see real-time chain-wear curve comparisons

[@zerofrictioncycling992]

thats some innovative thinking there, i like it. Im not sure it would work completely though, as some lubricants become contaminated, they can gum up the spaces that is created with more worn pins, rollers etc, such that the tension a rear mech spring can provide is insufficient to overcome, it can take pretty decent load to ensure parts pulled through gummy / dirty lubricant to their true elongation wear position for an accurate check measure.

[@TnFruit]

Wrrrrr 😆

[@adadinthelifeofacyclist]

I thought GCN used to be bad before they adopted a completely open and informative stance about channel sponsors, which I respect and see as the way forward regarding channel sponsors. I started watching Cycling Weekly quite recently (when they sponsored and broadcast on KZbin a recent track meet in the UK that I wanted to watch, also something I respect) and found that they are worse than GCN used to be and often borderline crass! Most KZbin channels I subscribe to I watch everything, but with Cycling Weekly I'm quite selective about what's worth watching 😕

[@zerofrictioncycling992]

yes i know they area decent size publication, they just havent been on my radar much - so when i saw this article pop up in my feed i was keen to see what they were up to - but now having gone through that i must say i have some concerns... :(

[@lltany]

It’s not a real test, just another spam listicle. It’s like another article on rim vs disc brakes. Completely meaningless.

[@zerofrictioncycling992]

Correct it really isnt sadly - but i had hopes at the start that despite the difficulties - they would have had at least something viable for their audience from that time and effort. And ha yeah one channel i have seen is BIG on how bad disc is and how amazing rim is and how its all a big commercial conspiracy at the end of the day for Disc (little bit similar on electronic shifting...) I dont get it. Like many i ran mechanical for a long time. Electronic is simply better, and now with oh so many bikes being integrated and internally routed, the annual ish maintenance for mechanical can be expensive vs the often never need maintenance electronic. My oldest DI2 bike is now over 50k km old on that groupset and it shifts today like the day i bought it 10 years ago, with no maintenance to the groupset. Pretty groovy. And not sure if you heard the last escape collective geek warning - Ronan touched on the Rim brake colnago bike that they recently launched, and apparently the total number of orders is less than the model number of the bike (c68,,,). So this particular channel that made a big deal about ah ha!!! rim brakes are back as they are superior in many ways etc - i just think if rim brakes were better, there would be a lot more market demand for them. Whilst many mfg might still push for all disc as making a rim and disc version of a model is really too expensive, if there was a market - you can guarantee there would be at least one or two brands still stepping into that space to get that market. I must say i havent clicked on any of those articles or channels on rim vs disc for many many years - to me it is just such a settled topic from at least 5 years ago - minimum. Sometimes progress and a better product is just that, and there is no deeper conspiracy unless one always wants to find one (which is too many peoples favourite way of thinking these days..)