 I haven't yet come across a forum or discussion on chain lubrication. That doesn't make my eyes bleed. Almost need a Xanax after I read any forum on that. So marketing around bicycle chain lubrication is the Wild West. Manufacturers have been able to claim whatever they like with basically nothing to back it up or quite possibly fudged data or completely unapplicable standards to back their marketing claims. So we can find absolutely glowing reviews for any of the known worst lubricants ever seen. Today I'm speaking with none other than Adam Caron of Zero Friction Cycling. If you haven't heard of Adam or the work that he does over at ZFR and you care about drivetrain efficiency then I don't know what are you doing with your life? You know, some of us have more important things to do than research for hours a day about which chain lube is going to save us a quarter of a watt. You know, like, alright, whatever, I've got my credit card ready, just tell me which lube I need to buy. Zero Friction Cycling is an independent test facility for bicycle chain lubricants. I want to emphasize that word independent. ZFR has no advertising and no corporate sponsors. The products that are sold on the website were simply tested and found to be the best in class. The testing process is also extremely involved. Each lubricant is put through 6,000 kilometers of testing. That is, if it can make it through the full test. Over that time it will be alternated through cycles of clean testing, dry contamination, wet contamination, extreme contamination, and of course, longevity testing. This way we get an idea of how the lube performs right when you put it on the chain after a long period of riding and after riding in a less than ideal environment like cyclists so often do. And this testing process can take two to three months. This is part one of a two part series. And in this part we'll be focusing specifically on the chain lubricant itself. But in the second part we'll be focusing on the other aspects of the drivetrain that affect efficiency, such as the chain itself, the cogs, chain rings, bearings, pulley wheels, etc. In this episode we'll be talking about what makes a fast lubricant and then we'll get specific and talk about which brands and products perform the best and which brands and products perform the worst or make marketing claims that don't line up with the test results. And yes we will be naming these companies and products explicitly in this video. Finally we'll go over the hot melt waxing process which is the most efficient and as you'll soon learn most cost-effective way to maintain your drivetrain. Let's get into it. Some people get very nerdy about drivetrain efficiency. I'm one of those people, you're obviously one of those people, maybe the nerdiest of all of them. But there are a lot of people out there that they, you know, you start talking to them about this stuff and they just don't, they just don't really care. They're like, ah, just throw whatever on my bike. Obviously better lubricants are going to make your drivetrain more efficient. But how much more efficient are we talking about and are there other benefits to having an efficient drivetrain? Yeah, absolutely. So I mean the first one, you know, so if it's sort of focused on races, from, I guess, the mechanical drivetrain efficiency side, your chain and its lubricant or lubrication is just that huge, low-hanging fruit. So I think, you know, typically stuff like bearings and, you know, ceramic bearing upgrades and time trial grease, oversized pulley wheels, all that stuff can obviously sort of creep into a racer's mind fairly, fairly quickly once they start looking at trying to maximize their efficiency. But literally just the right lubricant choice and so just understanding the basic maintenance for that lubricant choice. Other smart decisions such as having a dedicated race chain and training chain so that, you know, you're not rocking up to an important race. On the same chain, you just hammered out your last, you know, big block of training on all that type of stuff. It's just your big low-hanging fruit so you can, from a lot of people, you know, sort of three to five watts is your sort of typical easy saving that you can get from going from a random choice selection, you know, lubricant to a proven top lubricant that you're able to just, you know, understand the basics of maintaining. And that's a fair bit. You know, it's a lot more than you only get from spending a lot of money from a sort of full back-to-front, you know, ceramic bearing upgrade on your bike and changing lubrication is pretty cheap. So, and typically it's one of the few race upgrades that saves you a big bunch of watts that also saves you a lot of money. A lot of, you know, race upgrades can typically just sort of cost you more money. So, for the people who aren't as focused on saving watts for racing, you say, for instance, say three watts in your chain lubrication. Typically, that is going to be three watts of energy every single pedal stroke that is not going into eating through your lovely drivetrain components faster. You know, it's three watts that's going into now pushing you forwards rather than each pedal stroke instead of being lost into eating its way through operating through your lovely chain and cassette and chainrings. So, it's just such an easy, crucial one that there's so much money for most people to be saved, especially if you're on, you know, higher-end group set components. The cost you're replacing those cassettes and rings and chains is pretty high. And the rate at which you're burning through them on, you know, an average to poor lubricant choice versus a proven top lubricant choice, could easily be two, three times or more greater. So, over a year, that's a fair bit of money. And there's just so many other fun things to spend your money on and cycling. You know, it could be that new kit that you're covering or new shoes, new glasses, new helmet, whatever it may be. There's all this awesome stuff that most people want to try to get. And it's a lot of fun to be able to buy that stuff as opposed to spending that same dollars just replacing your cassette and chain and rings again. So yeah, and if you're if you're a regular cyclist, drivetrain components are what that's what you're wearing out. So if you can if you can prolong the drivetrain, you're definitely you're definitely going to be saving money. So what exactly is it about certain lubricants that make them faster or slower? Broadly, there's three main friction components in your lubricant. So you've got obviously your high pressure friction. So that's the, you know, how was it performing under the very high pressure loads from your pedaling? And the pressures are a lot higher than most things. So chain lubrication on a bicycle is actually quite an extreme challenge because the chain parts are very small. So the pressure loads are actually very high and the lubricants completely exposed to the elements. So there's there's not actually that many, I guess, machines out there where the lubrication challenge is actually as hard as it is for the humble bicycle chain. There's stiction, which is because a bicycle chain, you know, unlike bearings that are just turning, you've got all these surfaces within every within the link. You've actually got eight separate surfaces in every link that need to get moving from static to articulating around the chain ring, the cog or pulley wheels, and then articulating back at the bottom. So that's eight sliding surfaces that need to move from static to articulating or articulating. And that's happening. So you've got around, if you're pedaling at sort of 95 cadence in the large ring on say a road bike, you've got around 40,000 articulations and articulations per minute going on as you're pedaling. Each of those articulations and articulations, you've got eight separate, you know, sliding pieces of surface friction that need to move from static to articulating or articulating. So call it around, you know, for most people, depending on their chain ring size and cadence, sort of 200 to 300,000 individual pieces of sliding surface friction per minute as you're pedaling. So stiction, just that little bit of how much does, you know, force does it take to move it from static to articulating. That is an important part. So you can imagine if you've got a motor oil, stiction might be higher versus, say, a polished wax surface. Similarly, then you've got viscous friction. So how much energy is it taking before the links actually move through the lubricant? So, which is why widespread chain lubricants tend to be quite light versus, say, again, like a motor oil. So while stiction and viscous friction are your less dominant friction components as opposed to the high pressure friction performance, they still add up to something notable. That's what's going to often make a difference between what's, for instance, a three-watt lubricant and a five- or five-and-a-half-watt lubricant, even if their high pressure friction and wear performance is very similar. And then, but really what makes the best, I guess, or your lowest friction lubricant in the real world is the lubricant that remains clean. So the lubricant that is going to attract and absorb the least amount of contamination and attract and absorb it at the lowest rate and therefore remain the longest, like its performance, in a test lab. There's a lot of lubricants that are amazing in a test lab but will very quickly become abrasive from absorbing all the contamination that comes into contact. So your best lubricant, typically, is the one that stays clean. That question was a bit general, but let's get specific here. Can you get into specifics about which companies, which brands have the fast lubricants and which products specifically are doing everything right as far as lubrication goes? We've got...Silka really hit a lot of home runs with the products that they've released over the years. So when they sort of stepped into lubrication, they initially brought out some lubricants to try to take on the likes of, say, Nix Fiction, which is what they used to license. So they brought out Synergetic, which sort of lead Nix Fiction as one of the best-known wet lubricants, and then they stepped into the waxing space. So they've got the Silka Super Secret drip lube and their Hot Knot immersive wax. So Silka really brought out some great products. So all of their products really went to the top of the leaderboard. Along with that, we've got, I guess, the Old Guard, which was sort of molten speed wax, which right from the Fiction Facts days was sort of number one, and that had sort of been taking the number one spot overall. This immersive waxing has some advantages over dripping a lubricant on. They've improved their formula as well. So that's been always right up there in the top spot or extremely close to it. Ceramic speed with their chain-coding wax. They're the, I guess, have been the mainstays for quite some time now. Other great products that have sort of really come to light or come onto the market. A Fetto Mariposa with their Flower Power wax. So it's a different type of wax product, but that's been a great product that's come out on the market fairly recently. Rex, which are from a ski wax background, have focused really heavily on cycling, and they've focused very, how to say that, I guess as strongly as I've ever seen really any manufacturer on getting independent testing to back their products so prior to working with Zerifix and Cycling a lot, they were working with Real Energy. So they've always really wanted to have that independent verification that their products are, you know, as great as they claim in their marketing. So they've got some great products out from their Black Diamond. They've got a wax that should be coming out very shortly as well, an immersive wax. They're, I guess, the main brands and products that are sort of taking out the top 10 spots in the Zerifix and Cycling leaderboard. Whether you're riding road, off-road, harsh work conditions, one of those products in the top 10 is going to suit you. I think that every product that you just mentioned there is wax based. Either it's wax drip or it's a hot melt wax. And that seems to be the trend that wax is faster. Are there cases where wax is not faster or where something else could potentially be faster? Or is it always going to be wax? No, almost. So probably the main wet lube lubricant mentioned in there would have been, say, Super Cinegetic and Rex Black Diamond. Super Cinegetic is very fast. So that's basically right up there with your top wax products. And especially if you're riding, I guess, on-road for people that don't like wax. So some people just don't like wax. Lubricants would be drip or obviously immersive waxing. You might be a step too far for them. Then a top wet lubricant is just, you know, that's just how they roll. It's easier for them. So those two are fantastic. Once you step off-road though, it is really extremely strong recommendation by Zera Fiction Cycling that you should be on a wax-based product simply because of the dust contamination resistance. So wet lubricants and off-road just in Zera Fiction Cycling opinion and the test data really backs this up a lot. It's just a mismatch of product type to purpose because particles of dust are going to stick on contact to a wet lubricant. It's just basically what's going to occur. Most wax or top wax drip lubricants, they set very dry or they're either a chain coating type wax or they're going to be what's, you know, I guess we'll call it like a semi-solid or a paste. And so they just have much, much greater dust contamination resistance. And there's not really, when it becomes like a paste or it's a solid, there's not really a vector for the dust to move from outside the chain to inside where it's going to cause the friction and wear increase. So if you're riding off-road, you really want to be looking at the top wax product, be it drip or immersive or a combination of two and avoid the wet. So there are a number of wet drip lubricants that are marketed specifically for off-road use and that's just, it's always, it's a really bad way to go. You will absolutely pay for that in your wear and friction. So that brings me to my next question, which is it's similar to the question I was just asking, but which lubricants last the longest both in wet and dry conditions? Dry, the longest lasting tested is Rex Black Diamond. So the additive they have in that product just protects the chain from wear for an extremely long time. So it just keeps going and going. Synergetic, silica synergetic is also very long lasting in dry, but that so far has been the one that seems to cling on the best in the wet condition. So there are a number of products that test extremely well in the dry that just don't sort of carry that over once it gets wet so they can be, not so much washed off, what can happen, what often happens in the wet as to why it's such short lifespan versus dry. Is your chains not very waterproof? So the water is running right through your chain. It's bringing whatever contamination is in the water with it. So you've got a whole bunch of abrasive contamination now that just has this great transport medium to take it deep into the chain and that abrasive contamination is just physically abrading your lubricant off the surface of the chain. This is where, so a lot of your wax products, literally just the wax coating is getting your braided off and so this is where some of the wet lubricant products like Synergetic, the film strength that they're able to leave behind it's just not that easy for the water and contamination to remove that off the surface entirely. So it still gives you some, you know, protection there for a long time. So even for an off-road event it can be a way up sometimes if it was a long wet off-road event. Typically it's just saying, you know, for off-road you should pretty much always be on wax. There are times when perhaps, you know, Synergetic might be the best call or if you need to do a top-up that you go with Synergetic. An example of that was the Unbound 200 this past year was it was raining and it's an off-road event and it's 200 miles so it's long and it's wet and it's terrible conditions. I think I started with a wax chain but eventually I just asked for whatever lube that they had at the aid stops which was probably, I don't know what it was but it was making the chain work better. I mean for such extreme conditions like that what would you recommend? I mean it's a really tough one so this is where I guess the challenge for your chain lubrication is really, really tough and I think if people go into it with the mindset of this is an extreme lubrication challenge and that really no lubrication is going to operate in those conditions without having a notable increase because your chain is just completely exposed it's doing so much work and it's having all this water and abrasion thrown into your lubrication so it's tough. Depending on the length of your event so just for your top wax lubricants and immersive waxes you can have a little bit of a I guess a balance to weigh up so the waxes will stay still generally your lowest friction option up until the point where they don't so what tends to happen with the top waxes is the abrasive contamination that comes into the chain will physically abrade the wax off the surface but it tends to shed both the wax and a good amount of the contamination with it at the same time so a lot of the top wax lubricants are fairly self-cleaning up until the point where there's not enough wax coating left anymore for that to occur so the top wax coatings can tend to stay really low friction in really harsh conditions for X amount of time that X is going to depend on how harsh but there'll be a point where they'll go from staying impressively low friction in the conditions to all of a sudden they're going to really ramp up to high friction quite quickly because there's just not really any lubrication left so whereas a wet lubricant that is able to cling on it is going to increase because there's all this horrible stuff being thrown into the chain and it's going to become part of the lubricant and it's inside the chain but if there's lubrication remaining then you're going to tend to get a fairly steady line increase as opposed to a wax lubricant which is going to stay impressively low and then have a very sharp ramp up so depending on the length of your event and the conditions that can be what choice lubrication option are you going to stay with the wax and stay really low friction and then if you have to put up with a really high friction for the last 15 minutes that trade off is probably worth it if it's going to be you're going to have to put up with really high friction for the last hour or two hours probably not worth it and you're going to need to get something else in there or have made a call to go with a really long lasting wet lubricant that clings on well like synergetic from the start so there's that sort of balance to try to decide on if you know for instance that you know the unbound is going to be super long and harsh wet conditions that would be one where I would start with like a synergetic as opposed to a wax because you know that the wax is not going to last that conditions no lubricant is going to last those conditions and remain low friction you're going to need to top up and you want to try to make that as long as possible so you're really long lasting not easily washed off wet lubricant like synergetic simply you call other events it's going to be a way up if it's a four hour fairly wet fairly muddy XC Marathon mountain bike event probably still start wax and if the chain sounds horrible three hours deep throw something on any lubricant anything is better than no lube no lube you're looking at like a 2025 watt loss type scenario at 250 watt load get something on you bring it back to 8 to 10 and that's not obviously better so we've been talking about some of the some of the really top notch products on the market but let's let's go to the opposite extreme what are their products on the market that you think are are a waste of money or maybe they're a bunch of marketing hype and they can't back it up with the results this area gets a lot of fun so really a bunch of the worst products that zero friction cycling of tested have come from the muck off lineup so we've had a bit of a battle with muck off for a while now because muck off have some really fancy testing and heavily invested in their own R&D and so obviously they've got a lot of testing from some pretty high end test equipment and a PHD guy running the test lab there to say that their products are the best on the market but in zero friction cycling testing like the wear rates are just really high right from the start and the zero friction cycling testing being sort of wear rate correlation based wearing through the hardened steel components of your chain quickly just flat out takes friction so we've got a pretty big sort of argument between say zero friction cycling testing and say the likes of muck off can you explain the results and your testing versus my testing which we tried I've got a whole couple of videos which cover this topic and really I haven't been able to get answers to my satisfaction at all and so from the zero friction cycling side I can only really say that the products are that high wear that quickly that in the real world they're probably not going great and the other thing that really I strongly strongly dislike with some of their products where they include a UV light the Australian products and their other a lot of their normal sort of more I think actually comes with ludicrous as well which is their high end product now but a lot of the muck off lubricants include UV light and they have UV particulates in the product so you shine this light on your chain to ensure that all of your chain is coated in the product now ensuring that all of your chain is coated on the outside with a wet lubricant it is just a horrendous idea because you need lubrication inside your chain if you've got a whole bunch of lubricant on the outside of your chain you're just going to have just going to collect a lot more abrasive friction a lot more quickly so it's a terrible, terrible idea for a start and they don't explain why having a lot of lubrication on the outside of your chain is a great idea and it's just landfill they're including these little UV lights with little batteries, coinsaw batteries in every bloody bottle that they sell and it's just landfill so I really strongly dislike that other products and this goes back to more I guess a lot of the legacy stuff that's on the market so like a lot of your finish line products I've only tested one finish line product in the control test and that was absolutely horrendous that takes the spot as the worst lubricant by far ever tested so we're talking like the just the clean block it wore through nearly all of the chain just in the first clean block and that was despite adding a lot more of it than is standard for the protocol just because it was just running out of lubrication so quickly that is just terrible so although I've only tested one or control tested one finish line product to see that result I've just never seen a customers bike come in where they're using a finish line lubricant and you check how many kilometers they've done and then you check the wear rate of the chain I've just never remotely seen a good result for anybody using your finish line product and getting a happy number of kilometers to the recommended wear mark or you know versus their wear rate other traditional ones like your white lightening line up things like that there's just a lot of legacy stuff out there that's just terrible it's kind of like maybe once upon a time they were an okay lubricant once upon a time Commodore 64 was an awesome computer it's not so much anymore things have really moved a long way shifting gears a little bit let's talk about hot melt waxing because obviously hot melt waxing has shown great results but it is probably the most time intensive way to lubricate your chain and there are a lot of questions that pop up from it I don't even talk about this stuff that often on my channel but I have gotten quite a few questions about what the hot melt waxing process looks like so could you speak to that yeah for sure so this is probably one of my favorite topics so I actually switched a long time ago personally I sort of do contend a little bit that it's the most time consuming I think once you've got yourself set up and you've done your first few waxings or a lot like a surprising number of cyclists immersive waxing will actually save them time versus maintaining a low friction chain just by a drip loop method because what a lot of people are doing to try to maintain a low friction chain outside of immersive waxing is involving a lot of degreasing and cleaning whereas immersive waxing once you've cleaned off the factory grease which you have to do anyway if you're going to run any top lubricant you do need to remove the factory grease and run that lubricant choice so whether you're immersive waxing or not the factory grease needs to go as step one so taking that that is I guess a like the like for any lubricant choice then that's kind of time neutral in terms of immersive waxing because it has to be done from there really so you're popping your chain off putting it on a pot turning your pot on once it's melted you switch the chain around in your lovely melted wax hang it to set and then before you next ride you're getting that chain you usually have to break the bond of the wax on the links because it'll be pretty much you can almost hold the chain out straight so you can't install the chain like that but breaking that wax bond doesn't take very long then you just reinstall the chain and you're set to go on average it should be a total of about four minutes labor time four minutes as well so about you've got your hot melt waxing process down quicker than I do that most most once they get used to it so call it about say a minute and a half to or even say it should be a minute to pop your chain off your bike turn it on to a swisher put it on to a pot turn the pot from off to low some people take four minutes just to take their chain off their bike once they've done it a few times they should be alright it's pretty easy so might take you that the first time your 10th waxing in it'll be it'll be a minute now for that what you've got is so every time you rewax the chain whatever small amount of contamination has penetrated the chain and in most conditions that is extremely low so unless it's been wet which the water brings stuff in but your chain will already have a very low amount of contamination in it because you have high contamination resistance possible when you're running a true solid lubricant on your chain and then when you do the immersive wax obviously the old coating is melting off you're recoding it with now a new fresh coating of super slippery wax so day in day out that's the easiest fastest most time efficient way to have a super low friction low wear chain just all the time now if immersive waxing isn't for someone the great news is these days is that products with the likes of say silka super secret drip also ceramics media UFO or true tension tungsten or weather these are also using like a really highly refined sort of paraffin base wall wax base blend with very similar additives as to what's in the actual molten wax versions themselves so it's really popular these days and makes just takes that sort of I guess rewax anxiety off some people a bit that am I going to be able to keep up with rewaxing all the time because they can just wax relubicate the next sort of three to five times with one of those lubricant options after say the third to fifth time that I've done that then do another rewax to reset any contamination that may have started to build up in the chain because you're using a fully immersive wax compatible lubricant you don't need to do any cleaning of the chain before you rewax it so the wax is going to re bond to the chain perfectly finds you know straight with those lubricants so depending on the conditions in the person that means that there are any needs to do an immersive rewax every sort of you know 1000 or 1500 ish kilometers thanks for watching I left the link to the zero friction cycling website down in the description if you want to check it out and I highly recommend that you do if you enjoyed this video be sure to give it a like subscribe and share it with your cycling friends I'll see you in the next one