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WARNING: STOP USING CHAIN LUBE | ROADMAN PODCAST

with Roadman Podcast

31:15·6 June 2023

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ROADMAN PODCAST

Chain lube might be costing you more watts than you think. This episode dives deep into drivetrain efficiency with Josh, exploring why most commercial lubes are environmental disasters, how wax-based systems actually work, and the specific gearing choices that'll make you faster on both road and gravel bikes.

Key Takeaways

Dry lubes are garbage — they're only 10% lubricant and 90% carrier solvent that evaporates instantly. Oil-based wet lubes work better but pull dirt into the chain as you ride. Wax-based drip-on systems (like ceramic speed UFO or super secret products) deliver 75% of hot-wax performance without needing to strip and re-dip your chain.
Wax chains need a drop per roller, should dry overnight, then get a light reapplication after your first two rides. After that, reapply every 200-300km. Never use solvents again — just pour boiling water over the chain to clean, then re-wax.
Smaller cogs cost you watts: going from an 11 to a 10-tooth cog costs ~2 watts, and a 9-tooth costs ~3 watts more. Offset this by running larger chainrings up front (roughly 0.5 watts per 3 teeth), and avoid one-by setups for racing due to excessive cross-chaining losses.
Tire width matters less than rim compatibility: for road racing, aim for the rim to be 105% of the tire width (caliper both to verify). On gravel, wider is better — every 5mm wider tire gains 2 watts of aero drag but 10+ watts of real-world rolling advantage on rough surfaces.
Testing bias is everywhere in the industry. Companies aren't always lying; they're designing products to win on their specific test machine, wind tunnel, or lab setup. This doesn't mean the product is fast in the real world.
A poor chain lube choice can cost you 4–5 times more watts than upgrading to an oversized pulley system. Focus on lubricant efficiency first; it's the best watts-per-dollar upgrade available.

Expert Quotes

"Dry lube as a category is absolute garbage and you should never even consider buying it. Beyond garbage, they're all little environmental hand grenades — most are toxic cancer-causing PFAS chemicals on their way to being banned."

"You can't have a chain that wears out in a thousand kilometers and have that be a fast chain lube because the chain is wearing out because metal is scraping against metal. There's no way in hell that can be fast."

"At 500 watts you don't double the watt loss from a dry lube — a White Lightning product might be 11 or 12 watts of loss on 250 watts input. Those are brutal numbers. A hot melt wax probably buys you half an oversized pulley system's worth of savings compared to alternatives."

KEY QUOTES

“my rule of thumb there is that dry lube as a category is absolute garbage and you should never even consider buying it and Beyond garbage it's they're all little like environmental hand grenades right I mean most most of these companies selling this crap it's just terrible toxic stuff right”
Josh — Silca lubricant expert / podcast guest

“you look at a Finish Line Products or the white lightning products you know these are toxic cancer-causing pfas chemicals which are on their way to being banned thank God uh in in California and in a lot of Europe but they're terrible chemicals maybe 10 to 15 of total and then they're in a solvent like a pentane or a heptane or some worse than CO2 greenhouse gas causing thing that's literally there so that for five or ten seconds it can transport the cancer-causing pfas chemical into your chain and then evaporate instantly becoming a greenhouse gas”
Josh — Silca lubricant expert / podcast guest

“if you want to clean your wax chain you can literally just get a kettle of boiling water and just pour boiling water over the chain and the wax and all the dirt melts and falls out and then you just add more wax”
Josh — Silca lubricant expert / podcast guest

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT3 SECTIONS

Why Chain Lube Choice Matters

So this isn't going to be a podcast for everyone this is going to get pretty nerdy pretty fast a the person that has the cheap bike a b the person like me who has a really nice bike at the moment like I'm rocking the worse than CO2 greenhouse gas causing thing that's literally there so that for five or ten seconds it can transport the cancer-causing pfas chemical into your chain and then evaporate instantly becoming a greenhouse gas and that just looks like he's probably like it you shouldn't even be allowed to sell this crap you know with our our super secret product that we launched was the first pure wax with a solid additive that would actually fully penetrate the chain it's one of those feel-good moments like everything we did in the lab actually worked in the real world in theory you're losing that ring and you're losing that feels like a big savings but you're actually that's a really dirty turbulent area of the bike that I think just the arrow effects are reduced because there's just so much nastiness going on as compared to Josh welcome back to the romance welcome podcast hey thank you for having me so this isn't going to be a podcast for everyone this is gonna get pretty nerdy pretty fast you're in that elite club of uh repeat uh return interviewees oh it's very exciting elusive Club well I am honored I'm not sure if it's a good thing I wanted to go with a little bit of a Pimp My Ride concept today I have two beautiful bikes actually more than two beautiful bikes but two that I want to focus on today a road bike and a gravel bike I want to make sure that I'm getting the very most out of it and I know there's a bunch of listeners because I get DMS over on Twitter all the time and they get a nice bike and then they're worried that they've done all the wrong things just because they're simply overwhelmed that they've done all the wrong things with the wrong tires the wrong chain lube and they worried that they could have got a bike for multiples cheaper they could have got like a 1500 Euro bike instead of a 15 000 bike and actually gone faster if they had a bit more knowledge so I want to to give those two types of people a the person that has the cheap bike who wants to you know get the maximum out of it a b the person like me who has a really nice bike at the moment like I'm rocking the factory austral van how can I get the most out of that too okay let's start on drivetrain and drive train efficiency because this for me is an area where I'm most overwhelmed if I go into my local bike shop and I know you guys have talked on your podcast and nauseam about uh Lubes and waxes and talks for longer than I ever knew was possible about the differences between like West Lubes and dry waxes and various viscosities it's actually amazing how long you can talk on that topic but when I go into the bike shop this just costs me so much overwhelm because there's not really an objective standard of what is fast we use just terms like wet and dry but I don't I don't know maybe it's just me that's overwhelmed I don't really feel like anyone has an idea what's a fast level and what's not yeah no you're totally accurate I mean us there's some good data and science out on the internet and unfortunately I think for us you know the the gold standard was um friction facts out of Boulder Colorado and then they were purchased by ceramic speed um and so their free and unbiased data ended you know five six years ago I mean is still out there but technology has moved on and so you know we've got um bits and pieces you look at our site you know we've posted some things that tour magazine has done in Germany and um a number of other um independent bodies have have done some testing and posted it but you know of course you know if silke's gonna post uh our own testing of course we're going to be the fastest right right so we try to we we try to do it and every company is that way right we're all um and I don't even think in a lot of cases it it's not even that the companies are lying to you it's that you know you have a test machine and you develop a Lube to be the fastest on that test machine that doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be the fastest on the other a little bit like wind tunnel testing right it's not so much that people are likely lying to you it's just that they're designing product to fit the test that they have and because every test is a little different there's variables right that that you can't with so we talked about this last time uh where you know a company goes in looking for an outcome that they want to prove that hey we have the fastest frame out there so they'll go in and they'll just use a bunch of different yaw angles until they confirm that hypothesis that they went in with yeah that happens too right so that that's what I would say that's testing and not development um yeah I think what I'm talking about and that to me you know taking your complete bike to the wind tunnel and then doing stuff until it's the fastest that's that's sketchy you know come on come on guys that sucks um but but in terms of like true development every wind tunnel is different and so if you're in there and you're developing the product in real time and making changes in real time you are unwittingly and and really unknowingly um uh you're building in things specific to that to that tunnel I mean it's a little bit like look look at Mercedes in Formula One right now right I mean they've designed this car last year that you know they just thought was going to be magic and it was super radical and what ended up happening was they had built in all this testing bias between their computational models and their wind tunnel models when they actually go to race the car the car sucks and and you know it's not that they tried to build a car that sucks and it's not that they were even lying to themselves they legitimately thought they were building a fast car they just weren't um because of this testing bias situation so that that's something to think about but back to your original question um yeah I think you know this space is full of total nonsense and it's it's full of really Antiquated companies making a lot of money selling you a lot of garbage you know I guess for starters you know the whole like wet versus dry lube is funny some companies it's like oh no this Lube is wet like it's oil-based and this Lube is dry like it dries and then other companies say no this is dry conditions lube and this is wet conditions Loop yeah um you know my rule of thumb there is that dry lube as a category is absolute garbage and you should never even consider buying it and Beyond garbage it's they're all little like environmental hand grenades right I mean most most of these companies selling this crap it's just terrible toxic stuff right and you know we're we're one of the first to make a real environmental statement about lubricants and say we're not going to use any of these chemicals that are really bad for the environment or bad for human health or animal health um and yet you have companies still doing it right and so if we're going to name names which I get in trouble for doing sometimes but you know you look at a Finish Line Products or the white lightning products you know these are toxic cancer-causing pfas chemicals which are on their way to being banned thank God uh in in California and in a lot of Europe but they're terrible chemicals maybe 10 to 15 of total and then they're in a solvent like a pentane or a heptane or some worse than CO2 greenhouse gas causing thing that's literally there so that for five or ten seconds it can transport the cancer-causing pfas chemical into your chain and then evaporate instantly becoming a greenhouse gas I mean it just looks like he's probably like it it she shouldn't even be allowed to sell this crap but so maybe Josh to like as a way to approach this question to reverse engineer it and think so what does make a fast chain loop and even back to you know friction 101 what is the function of effective chain loop the function of the of a chain loop is to fill the negative space inside the chain um with something lubricious uh that Under Pressure can keep the metal from contacting the other metal right in an Ideal World you'd have this little like wedge of lubricant that even under pressure is essentially keeping the metal from sliding against itself and and in the theoretical roller chain you have they would call like a point contact and all of the points aren't sliding they're actually rolling against each other and then you have this lubricant in there to because you think you've got this sort of like Point rolling friction that that ultimately becomes sliding friction in most cases and then you have the the side plates which are always sliding next to each other as the chain articulates through the drivetrain um and so the lubricants there to really form a barrier between those and prevent this metal on metal contact and that's why that uh Adam Karen at zero friction cycling the test that he does that just looks at wear is also pretty pretty indicative of efficiency in the chain because if there's nowhere in the chain there's almost certainly less friction because there's no metal on metal contact um what his test doesn't capture is that you know maybe one lubricant is equal to another at three or four times the viscosity and so that lube will have more viscous friction than the other lubricant but they may have the same wear but there's no way that you can have a chain that wears out in a thousand kilometers and have that be a fast chain loop because the chain is wearing out because metal is scraping against metal there's no way in hell that can be fast so that that's ideally what the lubricant is doing and so you get to these lubricant families you know we just talked about dry lube a way to think of it is you know you've got all the negative space particularly the the negative space between the roller and the side plates uh or the pin and the side plates that's where all the the real friction is coming from you've got this these little gaps and what you ideally want lubricant to do is fill up those gaps to keep the metal from touching the other metal and with something like a dry lube you're maybe 10 lube and 90 carrier that evaporates and so you have this little bit of negative space at best your 10 filling that up um which is why those products don't tend to last very long and then also if you're in the rain or dirt comes in the dirt and the water can get into those negative spaces it's probably the easiest way to think about it right and so you know you go to an oil-based Lube or what most companies would call a wet lube and now you can 100 fill that negative space with an oil and whatever ingredients are in the oil and that works much better than a dry lube but because the oil as the chain articulates the oil is kind of stirred amongst itself that dirt landing on the chain on the outside can be stirred into the inside of the chain um and so you know these lubricants in a clean dry laboratory environment can be incredibly efficient and last a very long time but as soon as they start to get dirty they carry contaminants down into the the pins and rollers um I guess that's a challenge if you're re-lubing on the go in Forever race which you see a lot of people do and you're at likely risk of bringing dirt down into the drive Shrine yeah and just the act of riding is actually pulling it in there you know you think of like as the chain articulates through particularly around the pulleys um you know a lot of these you know you have like 10 11 12 teeth in a pulley so you have a lot of you know you can have as high as like 30 degrees of articulation as the chain goes over the pool and so as it's articulating right it's it's literally stirring itself viscously it's like a viscous during action that's going to pull all that stuff into the inside and so yeah for like gravel racing re-lube with wet Lube you actually the the sad thing is you just want to use you want to wipe the chain real quick with like a microfiber towel and then add a bunch of wet Lube to it and then wipe it again with the towel because the the more you add the more it's going to kind of flush through whatever dirt that's in there but you don't you don't want Lube on the outside of the chain you know and I think that's sadly for the industry that was a thing that muck off sort of made famous with this little this little UV light that they have that you know you coat it until the chain turns pink Under This UV light but that's really just coating the chain with this sticky substance that's going to allow all the dirt that gets on it to attach what you really want to do is lube it really good and then wipe all that you know the Lube on the outside of the chain does nothing yeah so for like a mid-gravel race re-lube that's your best you know your best option is a wet Lube because it doesn't have any drying time uh and it also typically has the ability to flush some stuff out you know there's a lot of products out there that claim to clean and lubricate at the same time and you know these are typically oil Lubes or dry like PTFE or PTFE and wax Lubes that have solvents in them and if you look at the the zero friction data from Adam Kiran he's basically proven that none of these work um they're all actually somewhat effective as cleaners but they all are terrible as lubricants and so if it says you know on the bottle that it Lubes and cleans at the same time put it back on the Shelf because that that's just a lie and it's a proven lie and I think you know in some level it's the Holy Grail I'm not going to say that I haven't experimented with hundreds of versions of this in our own laboratory trying to figure out if it's possible and I've never been able to do it any better than any of the companies that are selling it it just doesn't industry seems to be kind of scrambling to like does a wreck there's a recognition of the one hand start waxing a chain seems to be the fastest way to go but then there's the inherent Hassle and hardship of taking your chain off having you know some sort of cooker to melt the wax everybody hasn't got the skills also to take a chain off and put a chain on so the industry seems to be kind of scrambling to figure out can they create something like ceramic speeds UFO where you can have something that you can drip on which gives the effect of wax would that be a fair synopsis of what's going on with it at the moment yeah I mean I think that's the most exciting thing in this space and I think where you you've seen a real arms race um you know our our product so ceramic speed head UFO which was the fastest lubricant in the market and it was a drip on wax base that I believe in its original form had a like a floral polymer additive to it which is not the most environmentally friendly you know with our our super secret product that we launched kind of right at the beginning of covid was the first pure wax with a solid additive tungsten disulfide in our case that would actually fully penetrate the the chain and so if you read Adam's report on it at zero friction it's you know it's one of those feel-good moments like everything we did in the lab actually worked in the real world you know first to penetrate I mean we just kicked everybody's butt in terms of both friction and chain wear but of course when you do that you know we you now Teach the World how to do it and so within the next year I think we've had three companies essentially do what we were doing and so you know today you can get the new UFO 2.0 or I think it's they're on 3.0 now is a very similar wax base to what we've done um to solve the penetration problem with a different additive than we have so you've got you know you of course I'm gonna talk about my stuff but you don't have to buy my stuff so I got the ceramic stuff is really good a fetomeriposa has a product that's really good and there's a brand called true tension that also has a product that that's pretty good and all of those are going to get you somewhere in the 70s five percent of the performance of wax of hot wax sort of level and so what's the protocol for if you are using one of these so how many rides are you getting out of it before you need to reapply it and then when you are reapplying it what's the protocol for cleaning the chain yeah it it depends on the brand um you know for for hours and the ceramic speed one well for those three products you're probably looking at two to three hundred kilometers between applications and sort of your ideal setup you want to strip the chain and actually by the by the time this runs it will have launched but we're actually just launching a product that's a chain stripper um and it'll be the first to my knowledge product that you'll actually be able to strip the factory grease off a chain on the bike in about 10 minutes I mean it's a really cool technology there so you you want to get the chain completely stripped of factory grease and clean and then ideally with these these Emulsion drip waxes you want to add a drop per roller let it soak in and dry you think of the the mechanics here are that they're all between like 30 and 40 percent carrier right so instead of like a dry lube which is 90 and carrier super Secret's a 30 carrier but that still means that when it cures your empty space in the chain is only 70 percent full of wax and then because they're little microspheres of wax they will compress when you ride them and so like what we recommend to process that's apply it let it dry overnight and then after each of your first two rides do another light application of it because that 70 percent compresses to say sixty percent you add another application that'll fill it back to a hundred percent but then 30 percent of that will evaporate which probably leaves you in the you know 90 range and then after your second ride you can apply it again you probably end up somewhere in the mid 90 percent full of wax and then that's going to go to two to three hundred K add it again two to three hundred K keep going and then the the beauty of these wax products is that you know they're all like food safe medical safe waxes I know um I don't know the additives that everybody's using but like we use a Tungsten disulfide is like a Bureau of Land Management approved for painting boat halls and Bridge Moorings and things it's a totally bio neutral additive that's also incredibly low friction but the beauty of these is that once you've cleaned the chain the first time you never need solvents again and so like if you want to clean your wax chain you can literally just get a kettle of boiling water and just pour boiling water over the chain and the wax and all the dirt melts and falls out that's awesome and then you just add more wax and so so now that like with this this chain stripping product that we've developed it's also a biosafe organic chemical that that's not a volatile solvent like a lot of the solvents traditionally used to strip a chain yeah somebody else mechanics would use diesel or petrol to strip the Giants yeah that's that works the best right historically yeah so we've recommend it the challenge with getting the grease out is you want to start with grease is nonpolar and so like dissolves light and so you want to start with a nonpolar solvent like a mineral spirits or diesel or you know gasoline I mean one of these some pretty bad stuff and then you want to move towards a polar solvent you think water is polar you want to move to a polar solvent so that you can remove any residue from the nonpolar because you want bare metal for the wax to stick to it so that's the challenge you know a lot of these our method is two chemicals I think Adam's method is three chemicals um and you know some of those processes can take a day or two days to really get the chain stripped and so that was I would say the big negative both in time and Hassle and cost and environmental was stripping the chain but then once you're on a wax it's far and away the fastest most efficient it's the quietest your chains when you say the fastest you have data on because that's how much longer when you say the fastest you have data on how much faster it is in terms of what savings yeah the best I mean the best place to point you to there's tour magazine Germany did a big chain lube test and they found on their machine fastest lubricant I think out of 30 or 40 lubricants was this uh rollhoff um oil and then when they went to test wax chains they started with the roll-off oil and then they did US molten speed a couple other brands they did plain paraffin and every one of the wax lubricants beat the rollhoff oil that had been the fastest in their in their original test and in that particular test the fastest was our Hot Melt followed by our our super secret I think molten speed and ceramic speed were third fourth and then the worst of the the wax products was just plain paraffin wax with no additives in it but that was still I think a couple tenths of a watt faster than than the roll off oil so I don't have the data in front of me but I think on total we were about three Watts the oil the fast oil was somewhere in the five and change watts of loss on a 250 watt input and we were like three watts of loss on the similar input so content Improvement yeah this might sound a lot but we're going to move on now to talk about like stuff like cross chain and one boys and they're saving stare and then you can compound those with some savings on tires which will get on to some savings on handlebar shapes and they all start adding up with three Watts here five Watts here I think for anyone who's a competitive Racer the important thing to remember is a lot of these tests like you said there that's a 250 Watts if you're in a break and you're trying to make separation at you know 600 watts for a minute to get that big separation this starts becoming the difference between hey I got separation and I didn't get separation totally yeah totally yeah I mean the way to think of these frictional losses is the third percentage of input um based right so if you know we're three Watts so that's a little over one percent on a 250 watt input but you know some of these and some of these dry lubricants I mean I think the um in the test I think the White Lightning product was like 11 or 12 watts of loss on 250.

Watts Lost: Lubricants vs Pulleys

That's brutal so you know at 500 watts you don't double that I mean that you know those are those are big numbers and the other point of reference I like to to use here is you know we talk about the oversized pulley system you know the the best of those is about a one and a half to a 1.8 watt savings and so to put it in kind of perspective you know a hot melt wax probably buys you a half of a oversized pulley system savings compared to a Emulsion wax like like our super secret product or the ceramic speed product um and those are probably buying you the other half of that pulley system but then a poor choice in Watts I mean the dry lubricant products they can cost you four or five times four or five oversized pulley systems worth of Watts so you know just to put it in prospective people especially when you think of like the money people are willing to spend on some things versus others it's pretty hard to beat the savings per dollar that you're gonna find looking at lubricants so I've got my lubricant boxed off I gotta wax up the chain on a nice for Ace chain now we'll want to move on to on my Factor road bike I'm running a two boy setup with a 4835 and it's 12 speed so I'm running the 10 on the back and I know you're going to absolutely Hammer this idea of a 10 on the back because I think I've heard to speak and previously said it was like 10. is there like a two watt difference between the 10 and 11. uh I don't have it in front of me but yes you know you just divide 360 by the number of teeth and you get the articulation angle and so as you get down I mean it really starts to grow yeah I think from a nine a 10 to a nine is like close to 3 watts an 11 to a 10 is like 2 Watts give or take but but then it starts to get smaller as you go up because because the angle change right is is getting smaller relatively so you know I Ideal World you're small your smallest Cog would be a 12 in my world you know I've teased with Shimano forever you know I wanna you know like a a 14 23 straight block and because and then just run bigger Rings up front because you see a similar effect the smaller the ring in front the more losses and the sort of rule of thumb on the the front ring is I you know something on the order of like every every three teeth is about half a watt on the front you know that's obviously over a narrow range but yeah we've got a ton of data on this I think we've got some stuff posted on our our site about it but yeah you know if you can go plus one tooth on every Cog in the back that's probably going to save you a lot or more when you're in your small cogs and then if you can offset that with a plus three tooth gain in the front that's probably going to get you another half a watt and then the other thing to think there is you know I am not a huge fan of one buy for racing uh I mean I think it's killer and elegant and it's fantastic for just writing um and enjoying yourself but you know the the problem with these one by systems is that they to give you a full range they typically require these super small cogs but then also because you only have a single chain ring position when you're in your uh larger cogs in the back you are just doing more cross chaining um and cross chaining you know something like a a big rain you know like a big big combination you can be five or six watts of loss just due to the Cross chaining is there an argument with the one boy to say that aerodynamic gains from losing that front Mech offset to cross China not generally because the losing the front neck then forces you to go to a much larger rear cage to handle the massive difference across the range of the cassette and so you're you know what in theory you're losing that ring and you're losing that the derailleur hanger and the front derailleur itself it feels like a big savings but you're you're actually that's a really dirty turbulent area of the bike that I think just the arrow effects are reduced because there's just so much nastiness going on as compared to especially if you get a little bit of Drive side yaw in the wind having much larger derailleur cage hanging down in most cases that I've seen it's about equal and and I would say similarly with like oversized pulley systems outside of like the the pure arrow ones you're typically offsetting your frictional losses with Aero drag increases in a lot of those products so so in terms of commercially available chain Rings who's making the fastest setup at the moment and what is that ratio look like on a road bike so you know I would have been coming from traditional 53 39 on the road and now it's a 48 35 with a 10 on the back those are the ratios that are going to allow me to be competitive in road races have enough gears to climb on Sprint than line outs what would you be riding right now on my Factor uh I mean personally and having worked with SRAM for for years I love everybody over there but I mean man those Folks at Shimano just continue to kill it uh in these efficiency departments so you know the durase chain continues to be more or less the fastest chain you can buy and a little bit back to your opening you know if you have a an inexpensive bike that you're trying to maximize efficiency on you know there's not a ton of difference between the 105 cassette and chainring but you can probably save two Watts by going to a durase chain and they're not that expensive but you know the durase chain is is on average probably three quarters to a watt faster than the top chain of the other brands it's just a it's a fast chain so you know I would look at at that and then gosh for gravel racing I'm not a huge off the top of my head gearing chart guy but I would go as big as you can get I mean I you know if you could get a 12 you know a cassette in the back that starts with a 12 and then work your chainrings to go with that I mean you look at what we're doing with a lot of the the pro Peloton I mean the teams that we work with half a dozen I mean if you look at them they're running 60 tooth chainrings in Road stages in some of these cases and you know I think a lot of the guys are running you know 50 56 42 I mean it it it's as big as we can get the companies to give us and then that just lets them run larger cogs in the back and and I mean hell for time trialing were you know I've got a couple of athletes on like 64 and 66 tooth chain rings for time traveling you know and the other thing they're thinking about the cross training particularly in a time trial type situation if it's relatively flat you know we will custom build a cassette to get whatever that kind of Sweet Spot one or two cogs right in the middle so that you're having minimal chain angle coming off of that that huge ring in the back because it's it's Watts right it's all watts and so moving on to tires and wheels so I'm running the Black Ink 45 Wheels a standard on my Factor they did come as stuck with a 28 male Goodyear Tire on it I changed that over to a 28 mil gp5000 s tubeless tire is that the best tire for those wheels or is there something you would say is faster than 28 mil oh that tire really is kind of right at that sweet spot of it's almost the fastest Tire going but is also pretty functional in the real world right there's there's a lot of stuff out there that may be a little bit faster but with a a big increase in in puncture risk so it's pretty hard hard to beat the the thing I would look at there um and Continental is one of the brands you know they they use different molds and different preforms for each tire size and so you know this whole idea of you know wider tires roll faster that's true but I think at a much smaller it's a much smaller marginal gain than most people think because a lot of the data that built that theory came from companies in the old days like you know with tubulars where you might have one treadmold and you're using that on three different widths of tire and so what happens is as the tire gets bigger the percentage of sidewall gets bigger and the tire becomes faster but if you were to as Continental does you know change the preform the the tire rubber kind of percentage-wise with Tire width then the gains become smaller so I think you know with Conti as an example you know the the 28 is I think it's less than a watt faster than the 25 and the 30 is kind of similar you know it's these aren't huge numbers um whereas if you have like a handmade open tubular style like the older uh that they're going away from the snap but like the older Victoria tires some of them you could actually see pretty pretty big jumps there because all of a sudden you you know you had a the tread from the 23 was also used on the 27 and you now just have a much smaller relative tread to the sidewall but yeah so on that wheel I think that probably is a good Tire I would caliper it you know my for road racing kind of my ruler 105 thing you want the rim to be 105 of the tire width the challenge we have anymore is that you know different Wheels have different inner widths some companies have different inner bead widths front to rear but then also there's no all of the new etrto standards we still have not solved the tire width kind of to label consistency problem right and so some companies are saying this you know this tire is 28 millimeters on a 17 millimeter bead width and some are saying well this is on a 19 or a 21 and so essentially that the number print it on the side of the tire is is meaningless and so you really want to get a set of calipers on it and just make sure that you know for optimal road racing particularly for time trialing you really need that tire to be narrower than the rim and that in most cases with with these fastest to the fast tires that's going to be a faster overall combination than having a slightly wider tire that's wider than the rim I had Dylan Johnson on the podcast shut down a couple of weeks ago and he just loves this super Voyage gravel tires like I'm rocking 44s on the gravel bike I think he's rolling like 47s on the gravel bike reckons are faster in almost every conditions yeah we we actually just had Dylan in the Wind Tunnel a couple months ago and you know one of the things we learned for for gravel is that you know it's back kind of some ways back to the rule of 105.

Wider Tires Win on Gravel

Once the tire is bigger than the rim the the rim is really just serving is more almost like as a Spoke shortening device you know the Deep rims are a little faster because the spokes are shorter and you're maybe controlling the flow and some of the shedding a little bit better you almost can't can't see it and so you know we learned and I I think in our he did a video and I think we've got a blog post up about it but it was you know every five millimeters was like a water two of error loss I mean it was really fairly small and so when you looked at it and she's from you know from a 35 millimeter to a 45 millimeter tire is just a couple watts of aerodynamic drag but you know you go do Chung method testing in the real world and you find that that can be as the road gets rougher the advantage goes way towards the wider Tire um you know so maybe it's a two watt disadvantage an arrow but it's a 10 watt Advantage uh on a rough road surface and so yeah I think a lot of what Dylan is doing and where he's going is kind of informed by a lot of the work that he's been doing with us and and with uh Travis here and in our office but yeah I would say for for gravel and particularly rough gravel wider is definitely better

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Is dry chain lube bad for your bike?+

Yes, according to Josh Poertner of Silca, dry chain lubes are both mechanically inefficient and environmentally harmful. They contain PFAS chemicals suspended in solvent propellants that simply evaporate on application, leaving minimal lubricant where it is actually needed inside the chain's pins and rollers.

Is chain wax better than chain lube for cycling?+

Josh Poertner argues that immersive wax systems are significantly better than drip lubes, because waxing fully penetrates the internal surfaces of the chain where drivetrain friction actually occurs. Drip lubes, including popular dry variants, sit largely on the outside of the chain and do not reach the pin and roller interfaces that generate the most resistance.

What are PFAS chemicals in chain lube and why are they harmful?+

PFAS are synthetic fluorinated compounds used in many dry chain lubes as a friction-reducing agent. They are persistent environmental pollutants that do not break down naturally, and Josh Poertner highlights that the solvent carriers used to deliver them are also greenhouse gases, making common dry lubes a poor choice both mechanically and environmentally.

Is there independent testing for chain lubricant efficiency?+

Independent friction testing for chain lubes has largely disappeared since Friction Facts, the most credible third-party testing organisation, was acquired by Ceramic Speed. Josh Poertner points out that most lubricant efficiency data now comes from manufacturer-run tests calibrated to favour their own products, so riders should treat brand-published watt-saving claims with scepticism.

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Key Takeaways

Dry lubes are garbage — they're only 10% lubricant and 90% carrier solvent that evaporates instantly. Oil-based wet lubes work better but pull dirt into the chain as you ride. Wax-based drip-on systems (like ceramic speed UFO or super secret products) deliver 75% of hot-wax performance without needing to strip and re-dip your chain.

Wax chains need a drop per roller, should dry overnight, then get a light reapplication after your first two rides. After that, reapply every 200-300km. Never use solvents again — just pour boiling water over the chain to clean, then re-wax.

Smaller cogs cost you watts: going from an 11 to a 10-tooth cog costs ~2 watts, and a 9-tooth costs ~3 watts more. Offset this by running larger chainrings up front (roughly 0.5 watts per 3 teeth), and avoid one-by setups for racing due to excessive cross-chaining losses.

Tire width matters less than rim compatibility: for road racing, aim for the rim to be 105% of the tire width (caliper both to verify). On gravel, wider is better — every 5mm wider tire gains 2 watts of aero drag but 10+ watts of real-world rolling advantage on rough surfaces.

Testing bias is everywhere in the industry. Companies aren't always lying; they're designing products to win on their specific test machine, wind tunnel, or lab setup. This doesn't mean the product is fast in the real world.

A poor chain lube choice can cost you 4–5 times more watts than upgrading to an oversized pulley system. Focus on lubricant efficiency first; it's the best watts-per-dollar upgrade available.

Expert Quotes

"Dry lube as a category is absolute garbage and you should never even consider buying it. Beyond garbage, they're all little environmental hand grenades — most are toxic cancer-causing PFAS chemicals on their way to being banned."

"You can't have a chain that wears out in a thousand kilometers and have that be a fast chain lube because the chain is wearing out because metal is scraping against metal. There's no way in hell that can be fast."

"At 500 watts you don't double the watt loss from a dry lube — a White Lightning product might be 11 or 12 watts of loss on 250 watts input. Those are brutal numbers. A hot melt wax probably buys you half an oversized pulley system's worth of savings compared to alternatives."

KEY QUOTES

“my rule of thumb there is that dry lube as a category is absolute garbage and you should never even consider buying it and Beyond garbage it's they're all little like environmental hand grenades right I mean most most of these companies selling this crap it's just terrible toxic stuff right”
Josh — Silca lubricant expert / podcast guest

“you look at a Finish Line Products or the white lightning products you know these are toxic cancer-causing pfas chemicals which are on their way to being banned thank God uh in in California and in a lot of Europe but they're terrible chemicals maybe 10 to 15 of total and then they're in a solvent like a pentane or a heptane or some worse than CO2 greenhouse gas causing thing that's literally there so that for five or ten seconds it can transport the cancer-causing pfas chemical into your chain and then evaporate instantly becoming a greenhouse gas”
Josh — Silca lubricant expert / podcast guest

“if you want to clean your wax chain you can literally just get a kettle of boiling water and just pour boiling water over the chain and the wax and all the dirt melts and falls out and then you just add more wax”
Josh — Silca lubricant expert / podcast guest

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Is dry chain lube bad for your bike?+

Is chain wax better than chain lube for cycling?+

What are PFAS chemicals in chain lube and why are they harmful?+

Is there independent testing for chain lubricant efficiency?+

WARNING: STOP USING CHAIN LUBE | ROADMAN PODCAST

Key Takeaways

Expert Quotes

KEY QUOTES

Why Chain Lube Choice Matters

Watts Lost: Lubricants vs Pulleys

Wider Tires Win on Gravel

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

NEVER MISS AN EPISODE

READ THE GUIDE

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WARNING: STOP USING CHAIN LUBE | ROADMAN PODCAST

Key Takeaways

Expert Quotes

KEY QUOTES

Why Chain Lube Choice Matters

Watts Lost: Lubricants vs Pulleys

Wider Tires Win on Gravel

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

NEVER MISS AN EPISODE

READ THE GUIDE

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WARNING: STOP USING CHAIN LUBE | ROADMAN PODCAST

Key Takeaways

Expert Quotes

KEY QUOTES

1.Why Chain Lube Choice Matters

2.Watts Lost: Lubricants vs Pulleys

3.Wider Tires Win on Gravel

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

NEVER MISS AN EPISODE

READ THE GUIDE

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WARNING: STOP USING CHAIN LUBE | ROADMAN PODCAST

Key Takeaways

Expert Quotes

KEY QUOTES

1.Why Chain Lube Choice Matters

2.Watts Lost: Lubricants vs Pulleys

3.Wider Tires Win on Gravel

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

NEVER MISS AN EPISODE

READ THE GUIDE

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Why Chain Lube Choice Matters

Watts Lost: Lubricants vs Pulleys

Wider Tires Win on Gravel

Why Chain Lube Choice Matters

Watts Lost: Lubricants vs Pulleys

Wider Tires Win on Gravel