Buyers Guide to the Best Mountain Bike Chain Lubes

This guide is going to be very much based in The Real World. We’re going to be offering advice for people who don’t really like to wrench.

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By ben_haworth

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Buyers Guide to the Best Mountain Bike Chain Lubes

Full marks for not including any crap from MucOff in a chain lube review!

You’d almost make ZFC proud 😉

Personally, I’ve been very impressed by Smoove lube, although just migrated to immersive waxing…

Rock N Roll. Didn’t read any further.

Pedros lubes work well in my experience, and yep @footflaps Muc-Off stuff, terrible.

people who don’t really want to spend loads/much/any time actually maintaining their drivetrain like a good human being does.

It’s very probably something involving wax and faff

thank god – a faff-free method; at last !! <reads on>

The chain link pliers are for removing the chain from the bike easily. The degreaser is for cleaning said chain, and also the cassette (take the wheel out of the bike and tightly wrap a plastic bag around the disc rotor). The toothbrush is for agitating the black stuff off the cassette, chain and chainring

Oh

Well, OK, so it takes more effort but it’s better than waxing, right? lasts longer, more protective.  Something

Needs more research. Things have moved on a bit.

Pedro’s syn lube is my go-to all year round

If you are willing to lube regularly, a light lube with wax additives, like TF-2 or Boeshield T9, keep the drivetrain much cleaner.

 

Singlepeed, Gates Drive.
You losers.

Rock n roll blue. Ride bike, hose bike off, squirt rnr blue onto chain, rotate cranks a few times, put bike in shed, go to pub, sleep, work, repeat. Spring, summer, autumn, winter. Sloppy mud, sticky mud, dry dusty mud, roads. Mountain bike, road bike. Good for about 40 miles in the most chain unfriendly conditions so just do it every ride.

I’m with STW here – the juice lubes Viking juice is hands down the best all conditions lube I’ve used.

I’ve tried most of the others on the list and a lot are good but seem limited to certain conditions or seasons. The Viking lube is the only one that truly keeps the chain smooth across the board and as a bonus doesn’t leave a massive load of residue / gunk.

Rock n roll blue. Ride bike, hose bike off, squirt rnr blue onto chain, rotate cranks a few times, put bike in shed, go to pub, sleep, work, repeat. Spring, summer, autumn, winter. Sloppy mud, sticky mud, dry dusty mud, roads. Mountain bike, road bike. Good for about 40 miles in the most chain unfriendly conditions so just do it every ride.

Exactly this. And the drivetrain stays immaculate with just a hosepipe or wipe down with a clean cloth. Haven’t used a degreaser in years!

3 for 2 on Viking Juice at, sorry, Amazon if anyone interested.

Edit:

Linky

Smoove Lube user here after using many, many others. Simply put I think it’s the bees knees.

i like a bit of Viking… i picked up some yesterday at Dean Cycles as they have all the Juice Lube stuff in stock.

Yeah, been using Viking all year round now for 5 years or so, very impressed, does everything I need it to.

Is the Juice Lube a wax-based lube?

Weldtite All Weather with Teflon is the only oil I’ve ever re-bought after trying loads of different types. It’s cheap too!

Weldtite All Weather with Teflon is the only oil I’ve ever re-bought after trying loads of different types. It’s cheap too!

This is my go-to chain lubricant as well. Why pay more?

I’ve been using Juice Lubes Viking for years and found it really good. I’m also a big fan of Finish Line Wet lube as well which has not only been used on drivetrains but also forks and shocks (until I got better suspension products)

Can only recommend squirt lube – so much better than the big pink brand and other generic lubes. I now always have a a bottle in the portable tool box and one in the workshop (aka garage). Makes the drivetrain reliable, and relatively maintenance free. I’m sure it also prolongs chain wear as my chains seem to last forever, they don’t gather the wintery grit that traditional lubes (especially wet lubes) have issues with.

Teflon is not great for the environment, so avoid any lube with added teflon if you care about such things.

But which lune for throwing on a filthy chain, that never gets cleaned, immeditely before a ride, with a bike/cassette that is already caked in mud from the last ride? Seriously, I don;t think I’ve ever taken a chain off the bike for cleaning, and with 3 kids there’s no way I have time for such faff. It needs to go on, work, and be able to be re-applied. No bathing in degreaser, no chemical cleaning, just chuck-it-on and go. That’s the level of maintenance that I have time for…. My bikes come out of the cold, damp dark shed, get ridden for a few hours, then get put back into the colder, damper, dakrer shed at teh end of the ride. They’re Lucky to have a hose/brush/cloth passed over them.

Looks like Rock ‘n’ Roll Blue could be the thing?

Muc-off is rubbish for this BTW…. It’s really awful…. And in fact may be why my cassette appears to have worn prematurely, based on the feedback on here..

keithb – Try the TF2 mentioned above. Give your chain a quick wipe with a rag after a wet ride, drip some on and leave it.

It’ll probably be good to go for the next ride, but give it another quick lube if you want to be sure.

@keithb – I’m the same. Wash down the bike (if it’s filthy), but usually just wipe down the chain before putting it away, add some lube and it’s ready for next time. I don’t even do that if it was a nice dry and dusty ride! Just wipe off the excess dust.

But hen I’m the kind of person that doesn’t measure and replace/alternate my chains very 45 seconds. I just run them until either they snap or the cassette starts jumping and then replace both together. And I still seem to spend less money on drive trains than my friends who run 2 chains and replace something as soon as it shows a tiny bit of wear (apparently this means they have to replace less and save money, but 🤷🏼‍♂️).

I also never saw the point in owning a hard tail for winter as when it’s wet and muddy I always wanted the extra traction (although now I’m a HT only guy) that the rear suspension offered.

Life’s too short and full of kids and fun things to do with them to waste it on stripping chains off the bike all the time.

Keithb – putoline. It doesnt ( in most but not all folks experience) need doing every ride but every few hundred miles even in filth

Had a mate who was like that – would apply lashings of lube just as we were about to roll out the drive. By the time we’d ridden the mile to the trail start you could hear his drivetrain – he’d moan constantly about it.

I can’t see past Squirt, been using it now for over 10 years and it really does make a difference to the drivetrain – I now can get just over 3 years from whole drivetrain (chain is showing wear after 2 years but it still works very well for another year). Bike gets a hose down every 3 or 4 weeks and the drivetrain stays pretty clean. I give the chain a ‘proper’ clean every 8-ish months…Squirt gets applied each time the bike gets washed. My chain isn’t spotless but it is far cleaner than an oiled chain and most of the stuff that is still on the chain is excess Squirt.

His argument was he didn’t have the 30 seconds the night before to apply Squirt (or any lube for that matter) to his bike, but he also had a right moan about the rate his drivetrain would disintegrate – he has since moved to Spain and has noticed his drivetrain lasting longer, but he still hasn’t changed his method, but it is a drier climate there.

Hated Squirt with a passion. Followed all the instructions but it just never worked for me.
Reluctantly tried Rock N Roll Extreme as it sounded very similar to Squirt, but it’s great and haven’t looked back. Giant refill from Merlin fills normal bottle 4 times and last ages.

Squirt for me. I have used all kinds of wet lubes and dry lubes and none have been easier than squirt. You have to apply it regularly but that’s really all I do. At the moment I rarely do more than a weeks trip so I carry a small bottle with me. For day to day riding it’s easy… use reapply after a ride. I use it on my Tern cargo bike as well as my mountain bikes.

I haven’t tried some of the other lubes that people are recommending so maybe I will experiment and see if another can beat squirt. It will have to be close to self cleaning to beat it mind…

Dryer months – squirt
Filthy months – fenwicks professional. The cowpat aroma one.

But it’s sandy here, so nothing sticky that will hold sand is the main priority. So no old-school wet lubes. It’s got to be stuff that dries on the night before.

3 for 2 on Viking Juice at, sorry, Amazon if anyone interested.

3 for 2 (mix & match) is also available at Juice Lubes themselves, with free delivery over £25.

Dryer months – squirt
Filthy months – fenwicks professional. The cowpat aroma one.

Summer Road Bike (never sees rain) – Squirt
Gravel Bike – Fenwicks
CX Bike(s)/Winter Road Bike/MTB – Putoline

I’ll not try to convince anyone that Putoline is less faff, or cleaner, as I think that’s debatable, but having stripped the old Putoline of my CX drivetrain in favour of some Viking Juice, I realised how much the Putoline had been masking the wear on the drivetrain, as soon as I stripped it off and applied the Viking Juice the drivetrain pretty much ceased functioning because the hooked chainring teeth were trying to pick up the chain as it dropped off the bottom of the chainring. After re-applying the Putoline I’ve got another 500km at least out of the same drivetrain. Really demonstrated (to me) how much the wax ‘fills in’ the gaps between the chain rollers and pins.

I’ll move the summer road bike and the gravel bike over to Molten Speed Wax once the chains are worn, mainly because Putoline is still too dirty for bikes with white paint… 😎

This is hands-down the most important choice you can make in your cycling life. No other choice impacts how much money you waste, how much time your bike spends in the shop, or how bad your shifting gets. Choose the wrong lube, and if you ride often on high-end gear it will be costing you hundreds of pounds a year in cassettes and chains. And most lubes are the same – rebadged and over-hyped motor industry stuff.

Here’s the thing: this is the topic cycling journalists are the very least-able to comment on with authority. I say this having written about 250 articles reviewing cycling gear in the last decade. There are just so many variables, the wear rates are so slow and the lack of measurement so dire, that I frankly call BS on any journalist publishing opinion on any lube beyond comment on how it looks/feels/smells. Just like pro mechanics can’t tell 5Nm from 6, we can’t tell you if a lube is good, bad or indifferent for chain wear. It takes repeatable, exact measurement at durations and scales impossible to reliably replicate outside of a lab.

Having spent a year looking at this in depth, it is very clear that the ONLY person on the planet qualified to offer independent, verifiable opinion on wear rates for cycle lubes is Adam Kerin from zerofrictioncycling.com.au

His methodology is clear, repeatable, and is based on simulating real-world conditions in tightly controlled lab environments.

The answer to the question ‘what is currently the best wet lube for off-road use’ is clear: Silca Synergetic. And for e-bikes, Silca Synerg-E.

If you want to faff with waxes, go for it, they’re better.

As a journalist my Silca Synergetic review cites Adam’s findings, and I’m very happy to confirm that in the real world using Synergetic or Synerg-E means you never have to use degreaser ever again, your drivetrain stays sparkling clean, and a bottle will last you well over a year.

I’m worried, I find myself having to agree with tjagain – Putoline chain wax and a slow cooker for me

Agree with the above, Rock’n’Roll blue is an excellent all rounder.

I know it isn’t in this category, but WPL Forkboost Lube is a really good product – helps clean and lube fork seals.

Squirt, been using it for years without any issues and this time of year i switch to the low temp version.

This is hands-down the most important choice you can make in your cycling life. No other choice impacts how much money you waste, how much time your bike spends in the shop, or how bad your shifting gets. Choose the wrong lube, and if you ride often on high-end gear it will be costing you hundreds of pounds a year in cassettes and chains

Missed this at teh time… but LOLZ! 😆

Using Muc-Off Dry on the road bike and so far it’s been fine.

CX Bikes, mainly for racing, I’ve been using Morgan Blue. It’s actually quite good and doesn’t make a mess. For the short use they get it works well enough.