You might remember Bradley Wiggins doing a time trail last year with a £6000 chain on his bike. The treatment was done by Muc Off, who say it had a NanoTube treatment to make it all slippery and efficient like. They’ve now announced that similarly treated chains are available to everyone, for £135 – £140 depending on your favoured flavour of chain.
Depending on how you view it, that’s a more than 97% reduction in price of the tech on Bradely’s time trail bike, or a roughly 364% increase on the price of a chain if you already buy kit in the range of XTR. For the extra moolah, Muc Off claim you will save 6 watts of effort, and that the coating will last 400 miles in dry conditions, or 250 miles in the wet, before requiring a £35 top-up from a bottle. It’s unclear how many fractions of a watt you’ll lose by inserting an untreated quicklink on the trail, but the press release describes it as “perfect for mountain biking” and there’s more info here.
The release doesn’t actually explain what these mystical ‘NanoTubes’ are, or what they actually do to reduce friction (do they work like tiny little rollers? Do they blow the chain along with their tiny lungs?) – presumably that’s a closely guarded trade secret…
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Yep”perfect for mountain biking” until you encounter some mud or such like that will instantly add extra friction to your bike thus negating the 6 watt gain you’ve made with your silly expensive chain. It’s not April 1st is it?
When nanotube-treated chains meet Peak District grit, who wins?
It can double my wattage! That’s incredible!
Hang on – why the distances? Watts/distance doesn’t exist.
hmmm – either I was confused on the article has been edited.
Ignore my watt’s per distance thing.
You’re not losing your nano-marbles: I realised the wording was confusing, so edited it 🙂
I can’t help wondering why is no good for cyclocross, which is really just UK mountain biking with less mud* and a road bike.
~DIY
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/chainclean.html
😉