KEY TAKEAWAYS
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.
"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."
Many "dry" chain lubes consist of 10-15% PFAS chemicals (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) suspended in volatile solvents like pentane or heptane that act as transport carriers — PFAS chemicals being classified as health-hazardous and on regulatory ban paths in California and parts of Europe.
Source: Josh Poertner, CEO of Silca, citing chemical composition of Finish Line and White Lightning products
The Friction Facts independent chain efficiency testing facility was acquired by Ceramic Speed approximately five to six years ago, ending its function as an unbiased third-party testing source for the cycling industry.
Source: Josh Poertner industry observation
Silca's wax-based chain treatment uses pure wax with a solid additive designed to fully penetrate the chain — Poertner describes it as the first lab-developed product they have shipped where field results fully matched testing predictions.
Source: Silca product development data
Industry-internal lube testing produces brand-favourable results systematically because each company designs its lube to perform on its own test machine — not necessarily to be the fastest in real-world conditions or on competitors' equipment.
Source: Josh Poertner on industry testing methodology
Drivetrain efficiency improvements offer disproportionately high power-savings return on investment compared to frame upgrades — the gap between an entry-level 1500-euro bike and a 15,000-euro bike is narrower at the drivetrain than amateurs typically assume.
Source: Josh Poertner on Roadman Cycling Podcast
“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”
“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”
“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”
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