Lubricants

• Squirt Chain Lube for Bikes – Long-Lasting Lube for All Bike Chains – All-Weather Dry Chain Lube - 4oz ml Home Size 

• Squirt Chain Lube for Bikes – Long-Lasting Lube for All Bike Chains – All-Weather Dry Chain Lube 0.5 oz Mini bottle

• Squirt E-Bike Chain Wax with High-Pressure Additives for Mid-Drive E-Bikes - 4oz Home Size

Chain lube history

Back in the 1970s and 1980s bike racers discovered that if their bike drive chains that were treated with wax it would give them the best shifting and quietest drive system.  At the time there were no wax based chain lube products that existed. The way we’d apply the wax to the chain was to remove the bike chain from the bike, melt some candle wax in a double boiler, immerse the chain and cook it in the wax.  After all the air bubbles rose to the surface of the hot wax, indicating the chain was completely filled with wax, you would turn down the temperature and remove the chain allowing it to cool. At this point you had a chain that was stiff as a board and you had to bend it around the front sprockets and rear cogs and derailleur pulleys to get it reinstalled.  The chain would be rejoined with a chain tool. After that you’d ride a short distance and at first the wax saturated chain would make all kinds of noises as the excess wax would sluff off the chain.  After a short distance the bike chain would become really quiet and the shifting would become super smooth.  Of course, this cooking of bike chains was something that we could not justify doing for customers. It was reserved for our racing bikes on the racing team. The potential for starting a fire or for having burnt fingers was an ever-present danger. 

It was not too long after that we saw bottled wax products introduced like Boeshield and other products that could be easily applied to the chain and would result in chains with the same positive attributes that the cooked chains had.  Our double boiler was retired.

In terms of what available today, the best modern product that I have discovered is Squirt Chain Lube.  It mimics many of the properties we achieved by cooking our chains in wax.  Those include quietness and smoothness and it also gives you the ability to touch or handle the chain without any residue coming off on your hands or clothing.  If you ride in areas where there is sand it is very common for the front tire to throw up sand onto the front sprocket and then it gets carried by the chain throughout the drive system. If you use a wax based lube like Squirt the sand just falls off because there’s no dirt attraction to the wax like wet lubes have.  You can use whatever your favorite chain lube is but I can tell you that Squirt is going to give you a very good result and you don’t need to save up any candle wax at home! 

Last note on one of the most popular products for chain lubrication: WD-40. WD-40 used as a chain lube has destroyed more chains than any other single lubrication product. It attracts dirt like crazy and wears off very quickly, causing the chain links to seize. They now offer bicycle products and you can research those to see if it has the properties you desire but they appear top be the same old petroleum based product as before. I will not endorse any lubricant by that company for bicycle applications. I do owe WD-40 a tremendous debt of gratitude for all the replacement chains I sold when I owned my bike shop for 20 years. 

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