Lubrication: what works best?

[Roneblack46]

I have read a lot about what lube to use on my mtb chain. In the past I have used Epic White Lightning dry lube. However on my first wet ride that caused a lot of issues. So I went over to Motorex Wet Lube, the one endorssed for the Cape Epic. However on a ride like the recent Nissan Trailseeker #4 at Van Gaalens I used it. Had a lot of dust and sand stick to my chain causing some chain suck.

 

What is been used out there for wet races/ dry races?

[Peewee1]

Used that stuff too, been using the Boeshield stuff which works awesome, as well as the Blue Rock'n'roll stuff.

 

Solomons sells both for just over a 100 bucks.

 

Chain-L is great too but I find that too much crap sticks to the chain when I use that.

[cowboylegs]

RnR blue is very good! Swinging past solomons ASAP!!!

[Groenies]

I use Motorex as well, but the Dry Lube version, worked very well at Van Gaalens this weekend (did the 70)

[Pusher]

Squirt when it's dry and RnR or Boeshield when it's wet.

[rouxtjie]

Finishline wet(green cap) for wet

 

Boeshield t-9 for dry

 

Also like purple extreme...

[Stretch]

i have used finish line (green) for as long as i can remember and have been very happy with it. Have always had this nagging sensation in the back of my head about using squirt so i tried squirt for sani cos we were given a bottle and it was being squirted at every stop.....had endless shifting issues...not sure if it was related...but i am back on the good stuff now

[Stretch]

A note from JB's excellent pdf on chains

 

"The science of lubrication, friction and wear is called tribology and is a branch of engineering.

Tribology is a very well-understood science and tribologists are employed by lubricant

companies, bearing manufacturers, vehicle brake manufacturers and just about anywhere you

can expect to solve a problem of friction and wear. Tribologists know that the best lubricant for

bicycle chains is a long-chain hydrocarbon, commonly known as oil. Not wax, not graphite, not

liquid Teflon (which doesn’t exist) and not virgin olive oil, just plain old mineral oil. Often, you’ll

see a new chain lubricant on the market that promises to not suffer the same side effects as oil.

Stay away! If the manufacturer uses words like “dry”, “wax”, and/or ”clean”, it is probably rubbish.

It doesn’t matter that the product’s marketers claim that it was developed by a tri-athlete who won

the Australian open three times in a row back in the 1970s when men were still men and bikes

made of iron. The “developer’s” day-job is most likely that of third oboe player in the local

orchestra or speculating with pork-belly futures. He knows nothing about tribology.

Those popular dry wax lubricants are a combination of a volatile solvent or carrier fluid and a

waxy substance. Once squirted onto the chain, the solvent evaporates, leaving a waxy coating.

At first, the chain is quiet and lubricated and like the bottle says, there is no black mess. However,

this is no free lunch and very quickly – even after just two or three hours of riding – the waxy

substance is worked out of the joints and being a solid, it cannot flow back into the interface. The

result is a dry, noisy chain. Perhaps that’s why they call it “dry lubrication”.

 

Liquid oil on the other hand, gets pushed out with each cycle but also flows back as soon as

pressure is taken off the chain i.e. it flows back into the pin/sideplate interface during the link’s

journey from where it exits the chainring and enters a rear sprocket.

Testing the difference between wax and oil is easy: squirt some of the “dry liquid wax” onto a

smooth surface and wait until it is dry. Rub it with your fingers and note its texture, slightly rubbery

and certainly not slick. Notice that when you scratch a line through the blob, it does not flow back

to fill the void. Now put a drop of oil on the surface and do the same. Play around with the two

substances and you’ll notice that oil flows, wax doesn’t. You’ll notice that oil can be washed off

with soapy water and just about any petroleum solvent. Wax has to be scraped off.

Now imagine the “wax” on your chain. It coats well, but doesn’t lubricate once it has seen enough

work to push it out of the important chain wear interfaces. Washing it off is another matter. After

one or two applications you’ll have so much build-up on the jockey wheels and all parts of the

chain - where ironically lubrication is not needed - that you’ll be searching for something to

dissolve the mess.

I’m sure you’ve often heard someone say that oil “attracts” dirt. This is nonsense. Oil has no

magnetic properties. It merely traps whatever lands on it. Yes it is a problem but far less so than a

chain that’s effectively dry after just a short ride. The dirt collecting on the outside of the chain

doesn’t matter; it’s the oil that’s still on the inside that is doing the work.

Silicone spray lubricants may silence noisy door hinges but they’re useless for bike chains. Again,

this is a two-part liquid – a volatile carrier and light oil. The liquid is sprayed onto the surface and

quickly penetrates deep into the chain. The volatile liquid then evaporates and leaves the surface

nicely oiled. However, the oil in silicone sprays is simply too thin for use on a chain and offers

little more lubrication than water, and is about as long-lasting as the latter. A chain lubricated with

silicone spray makes a sound typical of a dry chain. Try it once and memorise the sound the

chain makes after twenty or thirty kilometres. Memorise it and save your chain from wear

whenever you hear it again.

Something that looks similar but isn’t, is motorcycle chain lubricant. This is also a spray and

therefore appears similar to silicone sprays. It also has a two-part composition – solvent and

lubricant. The latter comprises thick oil in a volatile carrier and does a good job of penetrating the

chain and keeping it oiled in prolonged riding.

The drawback of spray lubricants is the mess. If you don’t develop a technique of catching the

overspray with a cloth, you’ll end up with grease marks on your garage floor. Overspray also has

the habit of getting onto the rear rim, where it at first makes it impossible to brake but later starts

to dissolve the brake pad rubber and creating a gooey mess on the rim that makes the brakes

grabby and noisy.

So how do you choose a good lubricant? Go to your bike shop and find a product that openly

professes to be oil. Anything with the word “dry” or “wax” should be ignored. Find an oil that’s

viscous enough (not too thin) to not fly off the chain when you start spinning fast but that’s also

not too gooey to develop long toffee-trails where the chain exits from the sprockets. Brand names

are not important here because I’m talking good old mineral oil pumped from the guts of the earth

and sold by the barrel on the commodity markets.

Bicycle oil is expensive by petroleum product standards and those little bottles are ridiculously

overpriced. If you don’t want to pay the equivalent of one million dollars a barrel, use plain old

engine oil. It works well, but I don’t like the fact that engine oil is just a teensy bit too thin and

 

throws tiny little drops of black onto my shiny silver rims. If you don’t want to start your own oil

refinery in the garage, I recommend one of the more tenacious bicycle oils typically sold as MTB

oil. I have experimented with chainsaw oil, sometimes called bar oil, on my chain. This oil is very

thick and designed not to fly off fast-moving chainsaw chains. However, it is a bit too sticky and

soils your back wheel by throwing off spider web-thin trails as the wheel turns. I have

experimented with a mix of engine oil and bar oil and came up with the perfect viscosity that

neither throws off drops nor pulls trails. This mix, which ended up as a 2-litre batch, will now last

me for the rest of my life. I dispense it sparingly onto my chain by using a commercial bike oil

dropper bottle.

New products on the market claim to outlast other oils by huge distances. Their claim is true. With

the addition of tackifiers, they managed to make the oil very tenacious and it stays on the chain

far longer than other oils on the market. Although this sounds good, it has a downside as well.

Riding that long with contaminated oil isn’t a good idea. It would be better to simply clean and

relube each day, rather than relying on something that may last you an entire MTB stage race.

When touring, I seldom take oil with me. The bottle always leaks and causes a mess in my saddle

bag. Instead, I make use of the free lubrication service offered at every garage in the country. Pull

in at a convenience garage, head for the black plastic rubbish bin and scratch around until you

find an “empty” oil can. Inside you’ll find at least 25 ml of oil, enough to lubricate the entire Tour

de Farce squad’s bikes. Now courtesy of your average smoker, find a used match. Tilt and

maneuver the can until you get some oil on top, dip the match and dispense the oil, one drop on

every second link, and ride into the sunset.

Prolonged wet riding effectively cleans all oil from bike chains. This isn’t a problem as long as it

keeps on raining. Water is also a lubricant and a wet, oil-free chain is still a happy chain.

However, when it starts to dry out, the chain will start squeaking. Pull up at your first friendly

Caltex and make use of the free bike lube service."

[mikeMT]

Purple Extreme does the job

[Mr SingleTrack]

R&R blue

[mr_stig]

Boy, this is not the lube thread I was hoping it would be.

[Roneblack46]

I will try those you have suggested.

 

Any of those good for wet and dry or is the consensus wet 1 type of lube and dry another?

 

How about longivety? On a 70 km ride would I need to relube?

[GLuvsMtb]

Boy, this is not the lube thread I was hoping it would be.

The answer to YOUR question is K.Y.

[Roneblack46]

Boy, this is not the lube thread I was hoping it would be.

 

Maybe we should get Karma to reply? He seems to be the expert on those matters!

[Let's Ride]

JB, you have saved me a load of cash. From now on I will use normal car oil. I presume the thicker car oil will be better so I will ask the petrol attendants which ones are thicker.

 

I think the older the car the thicker the oil?

 

PS: Thanks Stretch for finding that article.

[Roneblack46]

A note from JB's excellent pdf on chains

 

"The science of lubrication, friction and wear is called tribology and is a branch of engineering.

Tribology is a very well-understood science and tribologists are employed by lubricant

companies, bearing manufacturers, vehicle brake manufacturers and just about anywhere you

can expect to solve a problem of friction and wear. Tribologists know that the best lubricant for

bicycle chains is a long-chain hydrocarbon, commonly known as oil. Not wax, not graphite, not

liquid Teflon (which doesn’t exist) and not virgin olive oil, just plain old mineral oil. Often, you’ll

see a new chain lubricant on the market that promises to not suffer the same side effects as oil.

Stay away! If the manufacturer uses words like “dry”, “wax”, and/or ”clean”, it is probably rubbish.

It doesn’t matter that the product’s marketers claim that it was developed by a tri-athlete who won

the Australian open three times in a row back in the 1970s when men were still men and bikes

made of iron. The “developer’s” day-job is most likely that of third oboe player in the local

orchestra or speculating with pork-belly futures. He knows nothing about tribology.

Those popular dry wax lubricants are a combination of a volatile solvent or carrier fluid and a

waxy substance. Once squirted onto the chain, the solvent evaporates, leaving a waxy coating.

At first, the chain is quiet and lubricated and like the bottle says, there is no black mess. However,

this is no free lunch and very quickly – even after just two or three hours of riding – the waxy

substance is worked out of the joints and being a solid, it cannot flow back into the interface. The

result is a dry, noisy chain. Perhaps that’s why they call it “dry lubrication”.

 

Liquid oil on the other hand, gets pushed out with each cycle but also flows back as soon as

pressure is taken off the chain i.e. it flows back into the pin/sideplate interface during the link’s

journey from where it exits the chainring and enters a rear sprocket.

Testing the difference between wax and oil is easy: squirt some of the “dry liquid wax” onto a

smooth surface and wait until it is dry. Rub it with your fingers and note its texture, slightly rubbery

and certainly not slick. Notice that when you scratch a line through the blob, it does not flow back

to fill the void. Now put a drop of oil on the surface and do the same. Play around with the two

substances and you’ll notice that oil flows, wax doesn’t. You’ll notice that oil can be washed off

with soapy water and just about any petroleum solvent. Wax has to be scraped off.

Now imagine the “wax” on your chain. It coats well, but doesn’t lubricate once it has seen enough

work to push it out of the important chain wear interfaces. Washing it off is another matter. After

one or two applications you’ll have so much build-up on the jockey wheels and all parts of the

chain - where ironically lubrication is not needed - that you’ll be searching for something to

dissolve the mess.

I’m sure you’ve often heard someone say that oil “attracts” dirt. This is nonsense. Oil has no

magnetic properties. It merely traps whatever lands on it. Yes it is a problem but far less so than a

chain that’s effectively dry after just a short ride. The dirt collecting on the outside of the chain

doesn’t matter; it’s the oil that’s still on the inside that is doing the work.

Silicone spray lubricants may silence noisy door hinges but they’re useless for bike chains. Again,

this is a two-part liquid – a volatile carrier and light oil. The liquid is sprayed onto the surface and

quickly penetrates deep into the chain. The volatile liquid then evaporates and leaves the surface

nicely oiled. However, the oil in silicone sprays is simply too thin for use on a chain and offers

little more lubrication than water, and is about as long-lasting as the latter. A chain lubricated with

silicone spray makes a sound typical of a dry chain. Try it once and memorise the sound the

chain makes after twenty or thirty kilometres. Memorise it and save your chain from wear

whenever you hear it again.

Something that looks similar but isn’t, is motorcycle chain lubricant. This is also a spray and

therefore appears similar to silicone sprays. It also has a two-part composition – solvent and

lubricant. The latter comprises thick oil in a volatile carrier and does a good job of penetrating the

chain and keeping it oiled in prolonged riding.

The drawback of spray lubricants is the mess. If you don’t develop a technique of catching the

overspray with a cloth, you’ll end up with grease marks on your garage floor. Overspray also has

the habit of getting onto the rear rim, where it at first makes it impossible to brake but later starts

to dissolve the brake pad rubber and creating a gooey mess on the rim that makes the brakes

grabby and noisy.

So how do you choose a good lubricant? Go to your bike shop and find a product that openly

professes to be oil. Anything with the word “dry” or “wax” should be ignored. Find an oil that’s

viscous enough (not too thin) to not fly off the chain when you start spinning fast but that’s also

not too gooey to develop long toffee-trails where the chain exits from the sprockets. Brand names

are not important here because I’m talking good old mineral oil pumped from the guts of the earth

and sold by the barrel on the commodity markets.

Bicycle oil is expensive by petroleum product standards and those little bottles are ridiculously

overpriced. If you don’t want to pay the equivalent of one million dollars a barrel, use plain old

engine oil. It works well, but I don’t like the fact that engine oil is just a teensy bit too thin and

 

throws tiny little drops of black onto my shiny silver rims. If you don’t want to start your own oil

refinery in the garage, I recommend one of the more tenacious bicycle oils typically sold as MTB

oil. I have experimented with chainsaw oil, sometimes called bar oil, on my chain. This oil is very

thick and designed not to fly off fast-moving chainsaw chains. However, it is a bit too sticky and

soils your back wheel by throwing off spider web-thin trails as the wheel turns. I have

experimented with a mix of engine oil and bar oil and came up with the perfect viscosity that

neither throws off drops nor pulls trails. This mix, which ended up as a 2-litre batch, will now last

me for the rest of my life. I dispense it sparingly onto my chain by using a commercial bike oil

dropper bottle.

New products on the market claim to outlast other oils by huge distances. Their claim is true. With

the addition of tackifiers, they managed to make the oil very tenacious and it stays on the chain

far longer than other oils on the market. Although this sounds good, it has a downside as well.

Riding that long with contaminated oil isn’t a good idea. It would be better to simply clean and

relube each day, rather than relying on something that may last you an entire MTB stage race.

When touring, I seldom take oil with me. The bottle always leaks and causes a mess in my saddle

bag. Instead, I make use of the free lubrication service offered at every garage in the country. Pull

in at a convenience garage, head for the black plastic rubbish bin and scratch around until you

find an “empty” oil can. Inside you’ll find at least 25 ml of oil, enough to lubricate the entire Tour

de Farce squad’s bikes. Now courtesy of your average smoker, find a used match. Tilt and

maneuver the can until you get some oil on top, dip the match and dispense the oil, one drop on

every second link, and ride into the sunset.

Prolonged wet riding effectively cleans all oil from bike chains. This isn’t a problem as long as it

keeps on raining. Water is also a lubricant and a wet, oil-free chain is still a happy chain.

However, when it starts to dry out, the chain will start squeaking. Pull up at your first friendly

Caltex and make use of the free bike lube service."

 

I was thinking of using chain saw oil but that is answered in your reply.

 

This is obviously not applicable to SA ito the lube service at filling stations. I would not want any attendant going near my bike. Have you seen those township bikes?