I don't get why people will pay so much for so little lube cos its cycle specific. The putoline stuff is £18 a kilo for the wax – not a few quid per tiny bottle that is mainly solvent.

i've used plain old chainsaw oil for ages. chain doesn't clog up. cassette stays free of gunk and i'm not the most pedantic of people when it comes to cleaning my bike…..

although, i did just recieve a bottle of Finish Line Synthetic Chain Oil for free from the bike shop yesterday.

some guy comes in and mumbles something about having a present for the mechanic. he then pulls out two bottles of this stuff and puts them on the counter. he mechanic explains that he change swap them as he doesn't stock it. "no, no. you can keep 'em" said the bloke. turns out he'd read an article in a mag saying it wasn't the best performing lube in their test so didn't want them anymore. the price tag is still on the bottle and says 8.50€!

some people have got too much money…. and i've got a bottle of lube.

I've switched from finishline green stuff to some generic drylube. The only problem I have now is I'm obviously not observant enough to know when I need to re-lube as after 30 seconds of being lubed it's the same texture/sliperyness/shinyness as 2 weeks later after several rides. When do I re-lube? How do I know it's gone "dry" lol?!

Rock n Roll Extreme for me, been great for the last 2 years for me in all conditions. Will continue to use.

Hello TJ.

You ready? 😉

I've just reverted to, uh, Finish Line Green wet lube.

I've used Putoline and also Squirt and I think they perform very similarly in terms of longevity and resistance to wet and mud.

Putoline is by far the cheaper of the two but is a faff to apply, Squirt is easier and more expensive.

However, being a huge chain and tyre nerd, I've seen the rate of wear accelerate over the last few months of using squirt. Its not a bad rate of wear comparatively, but its just not as good as my previous lube regime. Down my way, after 4 hours of schlcok, I've got rattly rollers. TJ and I have discussed this and he even took some links apart to examine where the lube remained after some use.

What he's found satisfied him that there was still lube in the right internal spaces of the chain, but I've been less convinced.

My reasoning is simple – wax is solid/semi-solid. After a few rotations at high pressure, its going to get pushed out of the way and cannot flow back to continue lubricating the chain. Wet lube can.

There's scant information available on this topic, and even less about microfilms and phase changes under pressure, so I'm quite happy to accept that I could be talking out of my posterior, but, it seems to me that wax keeps the exterior look of a chain looking good, despite what's going on inside. Therefore, I now use my squirt stock every so often to coat the chain so that it sheds mud and dirt easily, but leave lubrication to Wet lube.

YMMV.

Go Putoline, pedros or Squirt for drylubes.

Squirt. Best in the business.

Scienceofficer – interesting stuff. Can I assume by "just reverted" that you're not in a position to confirm if this hybrid lube system actually works? Does the Squirt actually prevent the Finish Line from doing the black gunk thing on jockey wheels and cassettes in dry conditions?

You may have discovered the next big marketing thing – they can now sell us two little bottles of expensive stuff instead of one. 🙂 Give it a suitable TLA ("HLS") and people will buy it in droves…

Squirt is what I use all year round. It's ace.

Hiya science officer – all data is good is it not 🙂

FWIW I don't get the rattly rollers – even after long wet peat mud rides which normally strips lube out of chains in minutes

Yes I really was geeky enough to take a chain apart and look for the wax in the links – there seemed to be some left in it and certainly it runs like it is still lubed even after long wet muddy rides.

I am reakoning that I get much increased chain life but I am working on impressions only. NO real data

+1 for Squirt.

Really good stuff. Best applied a little while before you start the ride.

Its not possible for me to say if this hybrid approach works or not, since as you rightly assume I've just moved to it.

Wet lube = black gunk IME, irrespective of the specific lube – I get about the same amount of gunk from finishline green as I used to from RnR Extreme.

I should add that irrespective of your lubricant, its my belief that the absolutely filthy environment MTB'ing exposes chains too is just too much.

Chain cleanliness, frequency of lubrication and then type of lubricant would be the three most important factors as I see it, ranked in order of importance.

The most I leave a chain before cleaning it is possibly three rides, but mostly one or two. I also run three chains in strict rotation.

The nice thing about squirt is it seems to be unaffected by my preferred degreaser – ecotech2, so it seems to assist with the removal of wet lube gunk, kind of like a reduced friction underlayer.

Yes, I know. Geeky. 😳

+1 squirt

Anothe vote for purple extreme, fine all year round no build up of gunk at all, and completley dry after a couple of hours.

Just received my sample of Squirt. Blurb suggests it'll be perfect for the dryer months, will report back…

My sample arrived today, too (free stuff, don't get much of that). It'll have it's first usage on the Dyfi Enduro, so that should give me a decent indication of its efficacy. I'm expecting great things given the – unprecedented – universally positive feedback.

Squirt is amazing! The Hub @ Glentress use it exclusively on all their hire bikes (120 + bikes!) and it works great, no degreasing required, and it sticks well.

Glad to see so many people on here agree that it's the dog's bollox (that hardly ever happens on the STW forum!!)….high praise indeed!

Got my free sample of Squirt today and also just bought some Rock N Roll Gold lubricant…off for some testing

Had a squirt sample, binned the remainder of it due to having a squeeky chain after a couple of hours on mendip, never happened with pedros Ice wax 2.0 so will stick with what i'm used to.

Its never nice to hear negative feed back when you feel like you put so much effort into promoting a product you believe in.
I havent long returned from a 3hr ride in the surrey hills.Its pretty snotty round here today and my chain is silent and clean.

I didnt bin my ice wax,maybe i should send it to you.

i use a juice lubes one at the mo!

+1 Squirt here. And i don't feel i need to leave it to dry and do a 2nd coat either – first time after a complete chain clean it's handy, but after that once and done is good enough – works great, things are smoother. Spot on.

just finished a spell on juice lubes wet lube.
Not a great time to try in view of really dry conditions.Found it worked well but collected alot of crap.
purple extreme and rocknroll run cleaner for oil lubes.

Finishline wet. Works great for me.

Based on recommendations on here, I've been running Rock'n Roll Extreme on the commuter and Squirt on the Spitfire… I've just ordered more Squirt.

PS Never Google for Squirt in work!

Bought some muc off dry lube as it was all I cold get my hands on locally. Seems pretty good, bit runny to apply though

http://www.scottoiler.com/newsdetail.asp?newsID=70

I ran a Scottoiler for about a year – I was happy with it at the time but the when the jockey died I moved onto Rock-N-Roll which was much less of a faff (although I do carry a little bottle of it with me for long rides when the chain gets squeeky).

Got a bottle of squirt to try now but if it fails to impress I'll be back to the Rock-N-Roll which I was happy with.