Category: Two Wheels Good

Table of Contents

• Preliminary
  • Endless Article
  • Scope
• 7. Lubricating Fluids
  • Motor Oil
  • Drip lubes
    • Examples and History
    • Prices
    • Efficiencies and Wear
    • Manufacturing and Marketing
    • Additives
• 8. People and Projects
  • Introduction
  • Testing Materials
  • BTI Site and Writers
  • Journalists, Cycling Publications
  • Jason Smith, Friction Facts, Ceramic Speed
  • John Thompson & Molten Speed Wax
  • Adam Kerin, Zero Friction Cycling
  • Josh Poertner, Silca Velo
  • Lennard Zinn
• 9. Efficiency Tests (Friction Facts)
• 10. Chain Wear testing (ZFC)
  • ZFC Method
  • Adam’s Analysis
  • Factory Grease; Cleaning; Waxing
  • Chain Durability
  • Chain strength
• 11. Innovation
  • MSW, Ceramic Speed UFO
  • Silca
    • Immersive Wax, and Chain Coating Fluid
    • Synergetic drip lube
    • Marketing
  • More Innovation
  • Prepared chains
• 12. Choices

Preliminary

Endless Article

This is Part 4 of a series of 9 posts organized as a single work,
collectively “endless”. There are 8 parts, individually published as
posts on this blog, and a table of contents of the series in the 9th post. The series is organized into sections, numbered for reference, in the series table of contents and in the table of contents for each post. From March to August 2024 I reorganized and revised the article. This post has been most recently updated August 20, 2024.

Scope

This part discusses:

• fluid lubricants, including motor oil:
• bicycle “drip lube” lubricants, with notes on pricing;
• in sections:
  • people and projects,
  • testing chains and lubricants for efficiency and wear, and
  • innovations in lubricants.

This part mentions products that will be discussed in Part 7:

• paraffin wax applied by immersion of a chain in melted paraffin wax, and
• wax based chain coating fluid products applied to a chain wet, that dry to wax-like states.

Some sections of this part refer to subjects and persons discussed in Part 2 in this series, on Roller Chain, and Part 6 on durability.

7. Lubricating Fluids

Motor Oil

Motor oil, the lubricating oil refined/processed and sold for use in 4 stroke internal combustion engines, was sold in quart containers for most of the 20th century. For decades the containers were cardboard cylinders with metal end caps. Automotive service centers (garages) issued workers spouts that could both puncture a metal end cap, and pour oil into the filler tube of an automobile engine. By the end of 1990s

• motor oil was sold in plastic bottles by the quart or gallon;
• most motor oil is formulated with “detergent” additives to chemically affect the productions of combustion left in the cylinders of internal combustion engines.

Some motor oils made for automobiles have been tested for efficiency (power lost to friction; see below) as bicycle chain lubricants, and have done reasonably well. Motor oil has tradeoffs:

1. Viscous friction – it takes slightly more energy to move a chain lubricated with a viscous oil than a “thinner” oil
2. Additives – modern additives have changed the lubrication properties of motor oil. There are
3. Adhesion – dirt sticks to motor oil, and oil sticks to clothing and skin when the rider contacts the chain or the chain flings lube. Motor oil can only be removed from a chain with detergents or mineral spirits. Cleaning an oily chain can involve removing the chain from the bike frame.

Additives in motor oil can be avoided by purchasing additive-free oils if available; some bike lube manufacturers use high quality motor oil as a base stock for bike lube. For instance Silca Velo uses a synthetic motor oil, without “detergent”. Other disadvantages of purchasing from the automotive section of the market:

• having to buy a whole quart (or litre, if that is the standard container), and store it for years,
• disposing of waste material in an environmentally sound and legal way.

A quart (946 ml.) of high quality Mobil 1 synthetic motor oil cost about $15 (Canadian) at Canadian Tire and other retail outlets in British Columbia in February 2022. Half a cup, valued at about 50 cents per ounce, would be worth $2. Canadian Tire sells other automotive motor oils in 5 liter (one gallon) sizes. It sells its house brand MotoMaster (distilled by Shell) non detergent engine oil in a 1 quart size for about $6. It sells MotoMaster motorcycle 4 stroke engine oil at $11 per quart. Conversions:

US size	US conversion	Liters	Milliliters
1 gallon	4 quarts	3.79	3785
1 quart	4 cups/32 oz.	.946	946
1 cup	8 oz.		236.6
1/2 cup	4 oz.		118.3
1/4 cup	2 oz.		59.1
1 fluid ounce	2 tablespoons		29.6

I have not checked the prices of gear oils.

Drip lubes

Examples and History

Lubricant manufacturers and bike shops began to sell bicycle chain lubrication fluids, often labeled “wet” or “dry”, in small applicator bottles in the 1970s and 80s. Other lubrication products are sold in applicator bottles.

The online magazine Road Bike Rider made a list of manufacturers or brands of drip lubes in 2019, updated in 2021. It includes:

• Dupont, a brand mow held by the successor of Dupont DeMours and Dow, both chemical manufacturers,
• the automotive lubricant brand Dumonde Tech,
• the solvent and household lubricant brand WD-40 (which owns the venerable brand and intellectual propery (“IP”) of 3-in-One), and
• several bike drip chain lubes sold in bicycle shops and online including:
  • Ceramic Speed,
  • Finish Line,
  • MSpeedwax (Molten Speed Wax),
  • Muc-Off,
  • Park Tool,
  • Pro-Gold,
  • Pedros,
  • Rock and Roll,
  • Squirt, and
  • Tri-Flow.

The list does not include manufacturers new to bike lubricant market since 2019, including Silca Velo, Tru-Tension, Rex. None of the drip lubes in the list above did well in Friction Facts efficiency testing or Zero Friction testing for chain durability.

The article, like most printed and online magazine articles, does not discuss the ingredients, the manufacturing processes or the way the lubricants are supposed to work – are they oils, or delivery vehicles for polymers believed to reduce friction in the moving parts of the chain? No manufacturers or vendors disclose it, and few journalists, mechanics and riders know.

Prices

None of the independent bike shops in Victoria post lube prices online (as of early 2022). Chain stores in Victoria BC with web sites include:

• Trek store;
• Mountain Equipment Coop (a Canadian retail chain selling “outdoor” products);
• Canadian Tire (a Canadian retail chain selling “outdoor” products);
• Walmart (retail chain selling “outdoor” products) has a confusing and overheated online market.

Prices in 2022 ($ Canadian except $US in US stores noted) for a 118 or 120 ml. (4 oz.) bottle of common bike lubes. I have not updated prices after inflation in the period 2022-24:

	Trek Store	MEC	Cdn. Tire
ProGold Prolink		14.95
ProGold Extreme		18.95
Muc-Off Wet or Dry		14.95
Muc-Off C3 Ceramic Wet or Dry		23.95
Squirt Long Lasting Dry		19.95
Squirt Low Temperature		23.95
Bontrager (Trek store house brand)	11.99 9.50 (US)
Park Tool CL-1	13.99
White Lightning Clean Ride Dry	8.99 (US)
White Lightning Wet Ride	8.99 (US)
White Lightning Epic Ride	9.99 (US)
Finish Line, Wet or Dry	9.99 (US)
WD-40 Bike Chain Lubricant Wet or Dry	12.99 (US)		9.99

Silca Velo’s oil based wet lubes: Synergetic and Synerg-e (e-bike lube) are available from Silca by mail order. The price of Synergetic, as of April 2022, was $33.95 ($US) for a 59 ml. (2 oz.) drip bottle. Shipping is free on orders over $99 ($US). Synergetic is available in some bike shops in Victoria – e.g. Fort Street – I have not checked prices.

Drip lubes are more expensive than motor oil. Drip lube prices do not seems to be based on the cost of base stocks. The cost of making, filling and handling dozens of bottles for each quart of product may be a factor. Prices are set by manufacturers and vendors based on supply and demand, and the perceived marginal utility of the product. Cycling lube is often a small product line for chemical processing enterprises or conglomerate enterprises, although a profitable revenue stream.

Efficiencies and Wear

Among the drip lubes tested for chain wear by Zero Friction Cycling (“ZFC”), there were bad results for

• several Muc-Off products,
• White Lightning products,
• some Finish Line products and
• several other wet and dry drip lubes.

Finish Line Dry with Teflon, a favourite with online reviewers, was assessed by ZFC in 2023 as “not terrible”.

ZFC found that Silca Velo’s Synergetic, a wet oil-based lube, was reasonably good when applied while the chain was run under low contamination conditions, and under moderate contamination for a reasonable time.

Manufacturing and Marketing

The cycling lubricant field is influenced by the engineering and manufacturing practices of the automotive lubricant industry. Drip lubes are made with base fluids, carrier fluids and additives. Manufacturers acquire fluids distilled from petroleum – solvents or oils (respectively, mineral spirits or mineral oils), mix them with additives, package the product in small plastic drip/squeeze bottles or aerosol or spray vessels, sell to bike shops and department stores, and market. The bottles do not have:

• detailed ingredient lists,
• use instructions, or
• warnings about the product’s durability.

“Dry” drip lubes made of volatile carrier fluids are popular. One selling point of dry drip lubes is avoiding entanglement of clothing in or contact with the dirty, oily chain, and avoiding the fling or spray of oil droplets from the chain without using devices (e.g. pant clips) to restrain clothing, metal or plastic chain covers or chain guards.

Pedro’s Ice Wax, marketed as an “advanced natural dry lube” was a drip lubricant. Pedro’s describes its history as a lubricant maker:

In 1989, roommates Bruce Fina and Andrew Herrick founded the Pedro’s brand around a revolutionary chain lube called Syn Lube developed by Bruce’s tribologist brother. Friends of Bruce and Andrew were living and racing mountain bikes in the Pacific Northwest and couldn’t find a lube that would last an entire race in the muddy conditions. The other Teflon-based chain lubes couldn’t handle the mud. Formulated with extreme pressure additives, corrosion inhibitors, and tackifiers to provide incredible wear protection, lubrication, and staying power in extreme wet and muddy conditions, Syn Lube quickly became the lube of choice. Once mountain bikers tried Syn Lube and experienced its performance, word spread, demand skyrocketed, and the Pedro’s brand was officially off to the races!

About Pedro’s (North America)

The wax is/was probably paraffin. The original formulation of Pedro’s Ice Wax, as tested by Friction Facts in 2013 (below) was relatively inefficient. Pedro’s introduced Ice Wax 2.0 and “Slack Lube” later. There are several other drip lubes with wax. It is useful to distinguish drip lubes marketed as wax from wax emulsions. Wax emulsions are fluids, and applied with drippers but differ from most drip lubes.

Bicycle lube manufacturers often claim that drip lubes clean while lubricating. These claims are never supported by evidence or test results. Few manufacturers even venture to explain how a lubricant can contain or coexist with detergents and solvents. Riders can hear an unlubed chain, a dry chain, or a corroded chain and may notice dirt sticking to a chain or caking on the chainwheels, cassette cogs or derailleur pulleys. Riders may apply large amount of lube to “flush” out dirt. Lube can work on a chain that has dried out after being exposed to large volumes or flows of water (water can break down oils. The chain flings off water but lacks lubricant and behaves poorly after drying). Fresh lube may help to dissolve surface corrosion on a lightly oxidized chain. Flushing out dirt contamination “in” the chain with lube is a theoretical possibility but has not been demonstrated.

Lube manufacturers claim that their products are superior. A few make explicit efficiency claims based on proprietary/confidential test reports. Such behavior by established brands tends to conceal or discredit claims that these are inferior lubricants.

Consumers know, as matter of principle, we can not rely on and should not trust marketing claims. The law in most of the industrialized world – and particularly in the UK and USA makes it hard for consumers to hold manufacturers liable for misleading claims of quality. The leading legal principle is caveat emptor (buyer beware). Courts traditionally brush marketing claims off as puffery. While most consumers think they can detect bullshit, most are overconfident about their capability. Consumers rely on misleading indicators of quality – e.g. brand, packaging, price? Often consumers buy because they need something, and will accept whatever they can find.

Additives

The article Bicycle Chain Lubricants Explained at the BikeGremlin site canvasses most of the additives in use in products in 2021.

Teflon – Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) – has been a drip lube additive. Rock ‘n Roll and other drip lubes with Teflon did well in Friction Facts efficiency tests (below). Finish Line USA markets itself as a firm specializing in cycling, and markets its Finish Line dry lube for coating chain parts with Teflon. Teflon is a Dupont brand and trademark, and the common name for PTFE. Finish Line USA is the manufacturer of the Dupont brand of bike lube. Finish Line USA states in its marketing that it was founded by an engineer who had worked for Mobil, the automotive lubricant distiller/manufacturer. PTFE is a fluorocarbon. Some lubricant manufacturers, in the 21st century, disparage competitors for using fluorocarbons, which are greenhouse gases.

Some additives promoted by manufacturers have not been proved to decease wear:

• “ceramic” additives;
• carbon tubes or particles or nano additives;
• micro-sized tungsten spheres.

The marketing-driven model that microscopic particles act like bearings is theoretically flawed. Indeed the empirical evidence suggests that such particles, like dust and grit, contaminate the oil and contribute to chain wear.

8. People and Projects

Introduction

This section touches on scientific and industrial testing of materials. Mainly, it discusses sources that have been mentioned in this series, and this post. The inventions are cleaning and lubrication products. While useful products have come to market, maintenance and cleaning of drive trains is not well known.

The inventions, plans and goals had economic factors. I mention the economic factors to understanding how manufactured items operate, and which ones were sold and distributed. Some of the people challenged the consensus narratives of the lubrication industries and bicycle component manufacturing and sales industries by

• testing bicycle chains and lubricants;
• publishing the results of testing in journals, magazines, web pages and social media, and
• developing, producing and marketing durable chains and lubricants that provable reduced chain wear.

The persons discussed had a combination of curiosity and economic interests or hopes. Many of the projects and publications discuss new products that mechanics and rider might use. My interest was how they increased knowledge and awareness of chain maintenance and effected changes in the bicycle markets.

Testing Materials

Standards for materials and testing materials and testing devices to measure the properties of materials were developed by individuals and by industrial entities, often by commercial entities.

The Rockwell scales of hardness, typically used in engineering and metallurgy, were named for its inventors, the Rockwell brothers who worked for a company that made ball bearings.

The testing and standards body known (as of 2021-2024) as ASTM International was founded in 1898. ASTM standard G77, “Standard Test Method for Ranking Resistance of Materials to Sliding Wear Using Block-on-Ring Wear Test” (revised 2022) is used to test materials. The desciption of standard G77 by ASTM:

1.1 This test method covers laboratory procedures for determining the
resistance of materials to sliding wear. The test utilizes a block-on-ring friction and wear testing machine to rank pairs of materials according to their sliding wear characteristics under various conditions.
1.2 An important attribute of this test is that it is very flexible. Any
material that can be fabricated into, or applied to, blocks and rings can be tested. Thus, the potential materials combinations are endless. However, the interlaboratory testing has been limited to metals. In addition, the test can be run with various lubricants, liquids, or gaseous atmospheres, as desired, to simulate service conditions. Rotational speed and load can also be varied to better correspond to service requirements.
1.3 The values stated in SI units are to be regarded as standard. The
values given in parentheses are for information only. Wear test results are reported as the volume loss in cubic millimetres for both the block and ring. Materials of higher wear resistance will have lower volume loss.
1.4 This standard does not purport to address all of the safety concerns, if any, associated with its use. It is the responsibility of the user of this standard to establish appropriate safety, health, and environmental practices and determine the applicability of regulatory limitations prior to use.
1.5 This international standard was developed in accordance with internationally recognized principles on standardization established in the Decision on Principles for the Development of International Standards, Guides and Recommendations issued by the World Trade Organization Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) Committee.

The ASTM G77 standard is used in machines like the ones use by Josh Poertner of Silca Velo, discussed below. In those videos a metal sample “pin” or block (not a pin from a chain) is held against the ring of the device.

BTI Site and Writers

The Bicycle Technical Information pages written and published by Sheldon Brown were noted in Part 1 in this series. The pages on that site were written by Sheldon Brown and other authors including John S. Allen. I cited papers by the late Jobst Brandt on lubrication and cleaning. Brandt is the author of a published and well regarded book on bicycle wheels, and was involved in many ventures including the Avocet cycling computer, one of the first cycling computers.

Journalists, Cycling Publications

VeloNews was a printed magazine about cycling, and at of 2024 is an online publication. It covered technical issues seriously at one time. In 2018 it was folded into the Outside magazine brand which treats cycling as a consumer lifestyle choice.

CyclingTips was an online cycling publication that was folded into the Outside magazine brand in 2022 and effectively closed by the new owners of the company.

Notable writers:

• Caley Fretz, once a technical writer and editor at VeloNews became an editor in chief at CyclingTips, and later at Escape Collective;
• James Huang, once a technical writer, was an editor at CyclingTips, and later at Escape Collective until May 2024;
• Dave Rome, once a technical writer, became an editor at CyclingTips, and later at Escape Collective;
• Brad Copeland, a mechanic who has worked for mountain bike racing teams (Specialized, Scott-SRAM) and worked with broadcast media joined Escape Collective in June 2024

Jason Smith, Friction Facts, Ceramic Speed

Jason Smith, an engineer in Boulder, Colorado, USA ran Friction Facts (“FF”) from 2012 to 2015. I have not read material that explains the business model for FF. FF followed up on the idea of testing the efficiency of bicycle chains lubricated with various products, that emerged from academic engineering theory. Jason Smith became an expert of testing methods and drive train friction. He disposed of FF 2016. A search engine may direct a reader to a site in a domain called Friction Facts. That domain, as of 2022, contained puff reviews of cycling products. It may have been acquired by a cybersquatter.

Jason Smith became an associated with the lubrication and cycling accessory firm Ceramic Speed, which manufactures and sells bearings, drive train products, the UFO brand of bicycle lubricants and several automotive products.

While Jason Smith was running FF, some of the test results were published. The main FF test results can be accessed on a Ceramic Speed web page. Ceramic Speed continued to test lubricants, and components for chain efficiency, but does not publish them. It has shared some results, and some results have become available.

Ceramic Speed launched a wax emulsion fluid chain lubricant product, UFO Drip, in 2017. It was and is made with emulsified paraffin or similar compounds that are applied to chains on the bike, like drip lubes, and left to dry before the chain is properly lubricated and ready for riding.

John Thompson & Molten Speed Wax

John Thompson is a businessman in St. Paul, Minnesota USA. He established Molten Speed Wax to manufacture a commercial paraffin wax blend that could be applied to a bike chain, off the bike, immersed in molten wax. Molten Speed Wax’s story:

The hot wax technique has likely been around since “Mile-A-Minute Murphy’s” era [about 1899?], so why did we wait until 2013 to try it?

Our family’s history racing bicycles dates back to the early 70’s when waxing was somewhat common; we certainly were aware of the technique. To add insult to injury, we’ve sold cross-country ski wax in our winter business for over a decade. We know wax like the back of our hands, including all the eclectic additives and myriad application techniques. You’d think we could put two and two together.It took a clever engineer named Jason Smith to put us on the right path. Jason figured out that a waxed chain rivals the efficiency of a perpetual motion machine. He added a little PTFE (the non-stick coating on your frying pan) and molybdenum disulfide / MoS₂ (dry lube that’s hard to pronounce) to paraffin and published the info for everyone to see. Before we knew it we were “cooking chains” in our basement and experimenting with our own additives and techniques. Now our wax is made in large batches with high tech industrial machines the size of small cars.

Everyone has a Eureka moment in life. For us, it was realizing that we could virtually end chainring tattoos on cyclists’ calves. Seriously, we saw an opportunity to help DIY folks by premixing the ingredients into an easy to use, packaged product. Waxing for top performance is simple if you don’t have to source and mix your own PTFE and MoS₂. We also created in-depth, step-by-step directions with helpful tips so it’s nearly impossible to mess up. If you can make instant pudding, waxing a chain is child’s play. 

Molten Speed Wax (web site), About page (quote taken 2023-10-08)

The history of paraffin as a bicycle chain lubricant musthave been recorded in newspapers, magazines, journals, fanzines, letters and correspondence and other sources but little such material is available in a internet/web search program.

Adam Kerin, Zero Friction Cycling

Adam Kerin was and is a cyclist interested in road riding, cyclo-cross, and mountain bikes racing. At one point in his life he was a law enforcement officer.

He started Zero Friction Cycling (“ZFC”), a firm in the bicycle maintenance business in Adelaide, Australia, in 2017/18. It specializes in maintaining and selling bike chains and lubricants. He developed test devices and methods to run different chains with different lubricants for thousands of kilometers with electric motors in his test machines. In 2021, ZFC launched a YouTube channel which is a tool and platform for Adam Kerin to report on his research and explain his ideas. Adam Kerin was and is an advocate of paraffin lubrication. He also presents his finding in reports and other documents published on the ZFC web pages. His style is discursive.

Adam Kerin was interviewed by the Australian mechanic and cycling tech writer Dave Rome for CyclingTips in March 2018. The new owners of CyclingTips repackaged ontent within other Outside magazine branded cycling content. The interview has disappeared.

ZFC tests chains and lubricants. Adam Kerin makes an argument about for the economic advantages of using quality chain and lubricants, and investing time and effort in chain cleaning and maintenance. He has compared the marketing of most drip lubes, wet and dry, to the marketing of “snake oil” in 19th century patent medicines, but has not claimed the marketing is illegal or fraudulent. ¹American law banned false medical claims about drugs in 1906. There is no effective consumer protection law against vague claims about automotive, household or bicycle lubricants.

Episode 11 of the Zero Friction Cycling (“ZFC”) YouTube series complains that some lube manufacturers market lubes with claims mainly based in efficiency testing done by those manufacturers or private labs. In some instances manufacturers imply that their product performs better, or that competing products performed poorly in the manufacturers’ tests. ZFC YouTube Episode 12 criticizes most cycling journalists for reporting on lubes based on short observations of whether a bike chain appears to run quietly and shift smoothly.

ZFC has identified the manufacturer of the Muc-Off products – which have not fared well in ZFC tests – as using its own efficiency tests to disparage competitors. ZFC’s post or page Muc-Off Files Part 1 (notes of its discussions with Muc-Off in March 2022) and ZFC YouTube channel Episode 16 and Muc-Off files Part 2 (Cycling Most Dishonest Marketing?), ZFC YouTube channel Episode 20 explains Adam Kerin’s doubts about Muc-Off’s efficiency claims.

His videos mention his collection of bike tools, and his interest in maintaining his own bikes, including cleaning and repacking the bearings on his bikes! He has views on maintenance, cleaning and lubrication.

Josh Poertner, Silca Velo

Josh Poertner is an American engineer and cycling consultant. He was employed by the component manufacturer Zipp (it made wheels; it was acquired by SRAM and is now a SRAM subsidiary). His role was in part to supporting Zipp products in use by professional cycling teams. He set up a Aeromind LLC (Limited Liability Company) in Indiana which acquired the Italian Silca brand in 2013 after he left Zipp. Silca was known for pumps, tools and components. Silca Velo became a manufacturing, wholesale and retail business in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. Silca has improved the pumps and tools under Josh Poertner’s leadership and started new product lines. For instance it fabricates titanium parts – shoe cleats, bottle cages, a computer mounts.

Much of the material published by Silca is informative about cycling and technology. Silca sponsors the Marginal Gains Podcast, and publishes the Silca Velo YouTube channel. Jason Smith, James Huang and Adam Kerin have been guests on the Marginal Gains Podcast. Marginal Gains has done several episodes on chain lubrication (and The Pipeline Problem in June 2021 on the supply chain/logistics backlogs in cycling parts and supplies).

As a guest or host of a technical or industry podcast, including Marginal Gains, Josh Poertner can be well informed, engaged, focused on issues, and often avoids promoting Silca’s products. In that mode, he is nerdy, well-informed about science, engineering and manufacturing, keen, sincere and helpful In that persona, he has also published many useful videos about bicycle chains on the Silca Velo YouTube channel, including:

• June 2020: Chain Friction Explained;
• April 2024: Stop Wasting Your CHAIN LUBE! Know the BEST Way to Apply It, correcting an earlier video about the use of Silca’s Super Secret (wax compatible chain protection fluid lube), and showing how fluid moves into a bushingless chain in a segment about 8 minutes long, starting about 7 minutes after the beginning.
• July 2024: Microscopic Magic: Save Your Chain from Wearing Out! about chain wear and elongation.

Silca started to sell lubricants, including Silca NFS (the Silca branded and labelled version of the Nix Frix Shun drip lube, which was well regarded by ZFC in 2017-2018). Silca released several lubricants and cleaning products 2020-2024.

In broadcast audio and video Josh Poertner has said that the drip lubricant category is full of snake oil claims – by other manufacturers. I agree.

Josh Poertner told an anecdote about how a professional cycling team decided that red Zipp hubs were faster in the Marginal Gains podcast The Placebo Effect and Marginal Gains (Dec. 16, 2019). The placebo effect can also explain a way that a con man or a saleman sells a deal. His commercial comments can make him look and sound like a character like those played by the late Robert Preston in The Music Man and The Last Starfighter, or Ray Stohler (played by Paul Dooley), the father of the cycling-struck teen in the 1979 movie Breaking Away, a used car dealer.

Josh Poertner promotes Silca products, and makes a case for the value of those products. Silca sells high tech products or improved modern versions of cycling tools and accessories – usually high-priced stuff. Silca emphasizes that some products facilitate “marginal” gains in performance. Silva claims that its products are superior to other products. Silca justifies its prices based on its brand name, and selling the products to demanding cyclists.

When he talks about Silca chain lubrication products he finds it hard not to promote Silca. Silca behaves like other brands in talking about Silca products that it has tested without disclosing how the tests were done.

Lennard Zinn

Lennard Zinn is a mechanic and journalist who has been writing on cycling tech and repair for decades, for print and online publications including VeloNews. He has written books (old fashioned printed books) on maintenance and repair.

Lennard Zinn published an article “We went to Germany to test the most popular bicycle chains” in VeloNews in January 2020 about a visit to the Wippermann/Connex chain factory in Hagen, Germany, a chain breakage test and the company’s continuous chain-durability tests. The tests ran chains until chains were elongated 13.6 mm, which is 1% of the average chain length (calculated as 108 links on a road bike with 50/34 chainrings and an 11-29 cassette, at 12.7mm per link = 1371.6 mm. Removing the master link, 107 links x 12.7 = 1358.9 mm).

9. Efficiency Tests (Friction Facts)

Most chain and lubricant testing was private. Chain lubricant testing was rarely mentioned in academic or professional literature before Professor Spicer’s (Johns Hopkins University) paper in 2001, discussed in the Bike Chains, Part 3, (section 5 of the endless article).

Friction Facts (“FF”), began to test lubricants for efficiency in or before 2012. Friction Facts used test machines, to measure friction losses in a chain moving under load, by the methods of Professor Spicer’s team, with a lower range of error.

An overview of FF testing:

• the chains were new, cleaned with warm mineral spirits in an ultrasonic cleaner for 5 minutes, and dried,
• lubed by dripping fluid (i.e. drip) lubes,
• tested on a machine that
  • puts out 250 watts at the chain wheel for a test interval of 5 minutes,
  • measures the power at the chain wheel
  • measures the power at the cog on the drive hub;
• The loss of power, due to friction in the chain parts, is reported as watts.

For more, at the Ceramic Speed site, follow the link “Why Ceramic Speed” to Test Data Reports/Chain Lube Efficiency Reports.

FF’s testing did not confirm the idea that lubrication did not contribute to chain efficiency. Efficiency testing did not generate information on which lubricants extended the durability of chains. FF did not test, directly or indirectly, the “factory grease” that chain manufacturers apply to bike chains.

The FF chain testing protocol was addressed a post published by Ceramic Speed called Chain Efficiency Testing. Also, Adam Kerin of Zero Friction Cycling (“ZFC”, below) summarized the Friction Facts methods:

Full Tension Test … has a chain ring, a cog, a weight pulling back cog to tension chain equivalent to 250w “load”. There is a drive motor and a braking motor. A $6k usd torque sensor is mounted on shaft driving chain ring and braking the cog.

This test method is extremely precise if you have the right equipment (ie the quality of the motors, the power supplies, the torque sensors – the calibration protocol that has all components up to temp and stable, and all tests are conducted at same ambient temp and humidity).

… the measure is taken between two extremely precise torque sensors mounted on the shaft driving the chain ring and the cog. The difference between what goes in and what comes out – that’s your loss from the chain. If you are using the same calibrated control chain, then you have the loss figure for your lubricant efficiency.

… Friction Facts found that many lubricants exhibited a sudden and very high jump in loss if kept running for long periods on an FTT machine as both the top and bottom span of chain are under tension (due to tension being by way of a weight pulling cog to introduce tension).

As such for longer test runs (ie to see how lubricant performs over hundreds of kms. Possibly with contamination introduced etc at certain points) the chain – after a short (few mins) efficiency test on FTT machine would be moved to Full Load Test Machine (basically just set up as a bicycle drivetrain to allow slackening time through bottom span of drive train for lubricant to re align and reset).  Long run intervals done on Full load test, then moved back to FTT for periodic outright efficiency measure.

ZFC “Latest News” No. 27

Several FF tests were reported by Caley Fretz in VeloNews in March 2013 and February 2014. The VeloNews articles have pictures of the test machines and many details. VeloNews reported that FF:

• compared lubricants on viscosity by letting some lube run along an inclined metal surface;
• commented on “longevity” which meant how quickly lubricant wore off or dried up. FF said that some lubricants wore off fast. The methodology of measurement is not clear.

The VeloNews articles appear to be the only accessible reports of the efficiency tests. The articles and test results can be tracked down:

• VeloNews – in print; Web copy of the relevant issues were paywalled after VeloNews was acquired by Outside;
• In versions of the VeloNews articles republished
  • by the manufacturer of Molten Speed Wax;
  • by Ceramic Speed with Ceramic Speed’s proprietary test results on its UFO Drip v1 by Ceramic Speed. Ceramic Speed published the VeloNews/FF bar graphs of the 2014 FF results interpolating Ceramic Speed’s wax emulsion UFO Drip Chain lubes as the most efficient lubricant.
  • by CyclingTips in its March 2018 introduction to ZFC and survey of “fast” (efficient) lubes, and
  • by Ceramic Speed with Ceramic Speed’s proprietary test results on its UFO Drip v2, used by CyclingTips in its November 2020 review of UFO Drip v2.
• Lubricant manufacturers make claims about efficiency to market their products . Some have interpolated their products into copies of the 2013/14 FF/VeloNews bar graphs.

Ceramic Speed published the VeloNews articles with additional results for Ceramic Speed’s new wax emulsion drip lube, UFO Drip (original; v1); see also the Ceramic Speed paper with the VeloNew articles in pdf.

The best lubricants in the FF/VeloNews articles are those that show the lowest “watts expended”. A lube that tests as losing 4.5 of 250 watts is 98% efficient. According to some reports, some chains with some lubes lose may lose as little as 3 watts – i.e. are 99% efficient. These reports are anomalous, or reflect some improvements since 2014. FF tested, among others:

VeloNews 2014	immersive wax	Molten Speed Wax	≅ 4.6
VeloNews 2014	wax liquid	Squirt slack wax a byproduct of processing oil into paraffin	≅ 4.7
VeloNews 2014	Cooking (olive) oil	Del Papa extra virgin	≅ 5.1
VeloNews 2014	bicycle chain wet lube	NFS Nix Frix Shun ? in 2022 NFS Ultimate (not Silca NFS)	≅ 5.5
VeloNews 2014	motor oil	Mobil 1 (5W-20 weight)	≅ 5.6
VeloNews 2014	lubricant additive	zinc dialkyl dithio- phosphate (“ZDDP”)	≧ 6.4
VeloNews 2014	personal lubricant	Vaseline Petroleum Jelly	≅ 6.4
VeloNews 2014	bicycle chain dry lube	WD-40	≅ 6.4
VeloNews 2014	bicycle chain wet lube	ProGold Extreme	≧ 6.9
VeloNews 2014	bicycle chain dry lube	White Lightning Epic Ride	≧ 7.9

Ceramic Speed released some of its later efficiency test results to CyclingTips as above and in 2019:

Ceramic Speed was willing to share some of its recent and typically-secret data about which chains perform best with the UFO V2 race treatment process. The process for applying the secret-formula wax-based submersion lubricant (after a multi-stage cleaning process) is the same across all chain models, and so it provides a clear and precise indication of the most efficient chains.

CyclingTips, 2019, Finding the Best Bicycle Chain

CeramicSpeed also released some test results to ZFC,

10. Chain Wear testing (ZFC)

ZFC Method

ZFC began testing chains and lubricants for “longevity” or “durability” by testing for elongation wear in 2016. ZFC tested chains and lubricants with an industrial electric motor attached to a stationary bike trainer to measure the wear on chains run under standard conditions:

• on reference chains that have been cleaned and treated with tested lubricants, or
• on tested chains lubricated with a reference lubricant product.

ZFC produces data on tested lubricants in spreadsheets, reports and comparative charts. ZFC projects the cost of replacing chains into “cost to run” calculations for some chains and a couple dozen lubricants. ZFC has published a few dozen narrative reports about lubricant results as of June 2024. ZFC’s work on the effect of lubricants on longevity (wear) was featured in CyclingTips articles. The links here do not take you to the articles. The new owners of CyclingTips redirect sites to the Velo online magazine, which is on the brands held by the publishers of Outside Magazine. The articles:

• March 2018 “Seeking the Holy Grail, a Fast Chain Lube that Saves You Money“;
• August 2019 “How to check for chain wear: The easy way, the best way, and why“;
• December 2019 “Finding the best bicycle chain: What over 3,000 hours of testing revealed“.

The ZFC measurement methods for tests of chain and lubricant are explained in the CyclingTips article How to Check for Chain Wear and the ZFC Test Brief statement. ZFC measures chain elongation with a KMC digital caliper chain checker device that measures to .01 mm. Adam Kerin starts with a new, clean (factory grease removed with solvents), lubed chain and adds lube at intervals. The tests are run on reference test chains. These test run the chains in fixed intervals adding up to 5 x 1000 km test blocks, unless the chain fails before reaching the last blocks. The failure point is .5 mm elongation wear over an 8 link span, which is close to the standard .5% chain replacement recommended by chain and drive train component manufacturers and bike shops. The test machines and the way dirt and water are applied to chain are demonstrated in Episode 9 of the ZFC YouTube series:

Using an industrially motorised Tacx neo smart trainer to control interval load and distance, plus specific intervals that include either no added contamination, dry contamination, and wet contamination – lubricants can be properly assessed over thousands of km’s of controlled testing. Not only can we determine a lubricant’s overall performance – but we can get a break down as to how a lubricant handles different types of conditions, as well as how it stacks up vs the manufacturers claims.

Flat vs Hill Simulations – The chains will be run on a calibrated smart trainer (Tacx Flux) at alternating intervals to simulate flat riding and hill km’s. If just run on flat all the time the km’s clockup too quickly. Most riders ride up hills to some degree so having intervals where the chain is still subjected to 250w load but km’s clocking up slowly delivers an overall average speed for the test of around 29kmh (depending on what block test finishes). It also allows me to rotate through more cogs on cassette and between small and big chain rings for longer wear rates on test components. Flat sim intervals will be on cogs 4, 5 and 6 on large chain ring and be 400km long, Hill sim will be on cogs 1,2 and 3 on small chain ring and be 200 km long. The interval lengths are halved during contamination blocks to 200/100 km.

ZFC measures chain elongation after each test block:

		Purpose
1	Lube	lubricant penetration into spaces where metal bears on metal
2	Dirt	performance after chain has been contaminated
3		does lube abate dirt contamination effects
4	Water	effect of water on chain already contaminated by dirt
5		does lube abate contamination effects

ZFC adds lube at fixed intervals. Lube intervals:

Re lube intervals will be every 400 km on Flat simulation intervals, and 200 km on hill simulation intervals UNLESS this rate of re-lubrication would be detrimental according to manufacturer instructions with regards to if re lubing too frequently risks gathering too high a level of contamination. If an adjustment to re lube intervals vs base levels is made this will be noted accordingly in test.

During contamination blocks, the rate of re lubrication is doubled – every 200 km of flat simulation and 100 km hill simulation – as it would be normal behaviour that riders re lubricate more often if riding in harsh conditions, as well as giving lubricants more of chance to “clean as they lube” etc. Again this will be adjusted if manufacturer instructions are clear that this rate would be detrimental and noted accordingly.

ZFC also test lubricants for single application longevity by testing lubricants on reference chains without periodic relubrication.

Adam’s Analysis

Adam Kerin discussed:

• what features of a chain resist wear, and
• which lubricants resist wear.

and identified:

• lubricants that perform well in reducing chain wear, and
• some durable chains.

ZFC regards paraffin wax, applied immersively, to be the best lubricant for protecting bike chains from wear. ZFC also regards some liquids, “chain coating” fluids (mainly paraffin emulsions or fluid paraffin precursor petroleum distillate, to be effective. Adam Kerin supports paraffin lubrication as an efficient use of time and money to apply a lubricant that that blocks dirt and water, keeping the chain clean and avoiding the effects of using oil on modern chains.

In Episode 2 of the Zero Friction Cycling YouTube series (published June 2021) Adam Kerin categorized lubricants:

1. “Dry” drip lubes. These use “carrier” fluids which dissipate or evaporate leaving some kind of material on the chain. Most of these lubes test poorly in wear testing;
2. Oily “wet” lubes. All of them lose effectiveness because they trap dirt. All of them work for a while under wet conditions but lose effectiveness as they wash out in wet conditions. A few modern products are effective for a long time under adverse conditions;
3. Immersion (hot) waxes. These are applied when wax is heated to liquid and penetrates the load bearing spaces where it accumulates; the wax cools to the waxy semi-solid state. The wax fills the space, which protects against contamination. The wax is the lubricant. These lubricants work for hundreds of hours but need to be redone or refreshed. Applying these takes some tools (including a slow cooker or Instant Pot), knowledge and time.

ZFC has consistently reported immersive waxes – paraffin with additives – to be the best lubricants in protecting against chain wear. Video Episode 4, Wax Part 1 provides a narrative explanation. Adam Kerin suggests that plain paraffin, in blocks or in the form of manufactured products (melting down candles) is inferior due the low manufacturing standards. He recommended modern immersively applied paraffin wax products – MSW and Silca Secret Chain Blend (and a few others). However he tested some generic paraffin in 2023-24(there are many variants on paraffin, an product of refining and chemical engineering) Paraffin is discussed in Bike Chains Part 7 in this series.

ZFC also recorded good results with some modern fluid products which he describes as wax emulsions or chain coatings. Mr. Kerin initially differentiated between “traditional” “dry” drip wax lubes and some chain coating such as Squirt & Smoove. ZFC tests showed Squirt & Smoove work well, for a time. He had reservations about Squirt and Smoove – they may not penetrate depending on conditions, and can make it hard to clean or reset a contaminated chain. ZFC tested the wax based paraffin emulsion fluids Silca Super Secret Chain Coating and Ceramic Speed UFO (new formula)(March 2021).

In an interview with Dave Rome and James Huang of CyclingTips in the CyclingTips NerdAlert podcast released March 16, 2022 “Finding the best chain lube for your needs” Adam Kerin discussed his experience with modern liquid wax products including products by Ceramic Speed UFO, Silca and Rex Black Diamond, and updated his assessment of drip lubes. He suggested that traditional dry drip lubes had large amounts of carrier and too little lubricant material to coat the chain parts properly, while modern wax-compatible chain coating products coat the chain better. Some of the chain coating liquids dry into a solid wax or paste.

ZFC largely regarded most “traditional” drip lubes, wet or dry, including the wax drips, and most oily lubes, as inferior.

Factory Grease; Cleaning; Waxing

ZFC tested chains treated with Shimano “factory grease‘ by testing Shimano chains without removing the factory grease (see lubricant spreadsheet). ZFC favours removing factory grease before the chain has been contaminated with dirt and water before putting any lubricant on a chain. ZFC says it is worth cleaning a new chain to remove factory grease. His usual routine involves a chain that is not on a bike, and includes rinsing a chain by immersing it in “mineral terps” (mineral spirits) to dissolve the grease, and agitating (shaking). (In Canada, mineral spirits are sold as such, and also available in a more refined and less odorous formulation sold as paint thinner under the Varsol brand). Adam Kerin also does a further rinse in methylated spirits (denatured alcohol) to remove the residue of the mineral spirits. The rationale and method are discussed in Episode 6 “Chain Preparation FAQ” of the ZFC YouTube series from 2 minutes 15 seconds to 10 minutes.

It the spreadsheets, which are complex:

• ZFC calculates the of cost to run a lube, $ per 10,000 Km on assumptions about replacing chains and groupsets. ZFC refers to Shimano 11 speed road chains and components – Ultegra and Dura-Ace, as well as GRX. There are sheets for different conditions. I think the currency in the material from the ZFC site is $ Australian and the prices are in Australia;
• The wear refers the replacement standard of .5 mm. across 8 links. Wear in Blocks 2 and 5 is cumulative;
• Chain life is a calculation assuming the correct use and periodic reuse of the lubricant;
• Some “Immersive” lubricants – e.g. MSW were wax pellets; in 2022 MSW changed to selling cakes of wax; – the wax is melted and the chain is immersed in hot melted wax.

ZFC reviewed several “traditional” drip lubes in 2023, including Finish Line Dry (with Teflon), Finish Line Ceramic, PrestaCycle One, Wolf Tooth WT1. In 2023-24 ZFC reviewed a light generic (sewing) machine oil.

ZFC has published videos commenting on manufacturer/retail product claims and the quality of advice from the staff at bicycle shops.

Chain Durability

ZFC has measured chain wear on new chains to test the chains for durability. As of February 2022, 31 chains had been tested. These tests are similar to the lubricant durability tests. ZFC runs the test machine(s) on chains lubricated with White Lightning Epic Ride, a low viscosity dry-drip lube. The tests are explained:

• Chain longevity testing page;
• Test brief

ZFC graphed the results in bar graphs showing the Km before the wear reaches the accepted replacement point of .5%. The actual total wear, over the length of the chain will vary. An ANSI 40 pitch chain has links 1/2 inch (12.7 mm.) long. A chain will normally be more that 100 links long. A road chain may have 108 links or several more; a gravel or mountain bike chain could be longer. It depends on the length of the chain stays and the diameters of the largest chain rings and cogs. A chain of 108 links is 1371.6 mm long. The replacement elongation of .5% of that chain is a fraction more than 6.8 mm. Most drop-in chain checkers measure a span of 8 to 14 links. ZFC measures a span of 8 (half) links, with a precise KMC micrometer chain checker, at two points along the chain. ZFC defines or calculates the .5% replacement point based on wear on an 8 link span as .5 mm. ZFC reports elongation in a graph “km’s to 0.5% wear – Digital Chain Wear Checker (0.5mm across 8 links)”. The Km to .5% wear graph identified a few chains that last 3,000 Km. with the test lube. The average of the 11 speed chains was just over 2,000 Km. The KMC X11 SL (the semi-premium Super Light model) was above average at about 2,500 Km. [My factory chain had been an X11, but not the Super Light model]. The KMC X11 E-bike chain reached the replacement point at about 1,700 Km. [My new chain in spring 2021 was a SRAM 1170, which tested at about 2,700 Km to .5%.

In the test brief ZFC discusses chain material, surface hardening and surface coating. On the chain testing page ZFC says:

Budget chains … will be made of lower grade steel,  and will  likely have no surface hardening or low friction treatments or coatings applied (or limited parts receive treatment – i.e inner plates are treated but not pins or rollers.) Premium chains you can expect will be made of higher grade of steel, manufactured to tighter tolerances, and may have numerous treatments such as chromium carbide hardened pins and/or rollers, nickel plating or titanium nitride plating on inner/ outer plates, and again a variety of low friction coatings applied to some or all working parts of the chain.

It is expected that premium chains will be lower friction due to a number of factors (design, manufacturing, low friction coatings), and if have had surface hardening treatments, should be longer lasting.

Adam Kerin makes observations of chains during ZFC’s businesses of preparing chains, and testing – e.g. whether lube is expelled from the chain, and the sounds the chain makes as the test blocks proceed. Some observations are based on measurements. He consults with engineers in the cycling lubricant and the chain manufacturing businesses and mechanics and riders. He employs a model or idea of what happens in a moving chain. He says chain wear is not linear and does not proceed at a uniform pace – a chain has tipping points. He is concerned with whether a lubricant penetrates the spaces where lubricant is need, how well it is distributed, and with when and how contamination becomes distributed. The observations are in the narrative reports and web material, or in occasional cumulative “key learnings” papers (May 2019 paper; and updated v. 2.3a paper). His 2022 summary starts with these points:

1. Do not use wet lubricants if you ride off road.
2. Remove factory grease before installing or using a chain.
3. Immersive waxing is the lowest wear option
4. If you ride in wet weather, you must reset contamination in chain.
5. We now have some amazingly long lasting lubricants.
6. Do not underestimate the drivetrain cost to run difference between lubricants.

Adam Kerin recorded a YouTube Video Episode 18 Key Learnings from Lubricant Testing published on the ZFC channel May 8, 2022. It is nearly an hour long. He also consolidated his updates in update 2.3a, including notes on e-bike requirements.

Chain strength

ZFC uses a load cell device by LoadCell Supplies to test chains for tensile strength. As of February 2022 ZFC has published results on 16 chains. The machine broke down and the tests were paused.

The results and procedure:

• Tensile testing page;
• Tensile testing brief.

ZFC has done a tensile testing video on its YouTube channel, Episode 19 Chain Tensile Testing.

11. Innovation

MSW, Ceramic Speed UFO

For a few years, MSW was manufacturer of the principal paraffin bike chain lubrication product. Competitors innovated in engineering, manufacturing and marketing lubricants and chain cleaning products 2017-2023, inspiring innovation by MSW:

• Ceramic Speed launched its UFO fluid chain lubricant product in 2017;
• Silca Velo released a hot wax, a wax chain coating, and Synergetic, an oil based (wet) drip lubricant in 2020 and 2021;
• Ceramic Speed released an new version of UFO Drip in 2021;
• In 2021-22, Molten Speed Wax began to market and sell a new formula;
• In 2023 Silca released a new version of its hot wax;
• Rex released Black Diamond chain lubricant fluid and race powder in 2022;
• Other manufacturers launched other immersive wax products and appliances;
• Silca Velo and Ceramic Speed released chain cleaning fluid chemicals

Silca

Immersive Wax, and Chain Coating Fluid

Silca Velo’s immersive wax product, Silca Secret Chain Blend, became a top lubricant in ZFC lubricant wear tests. Its chain coating drip fluid wax Silca Super Secret Chain Coating, is superior. Its prices are higher than the prices of competing lubes but less expensive than several lubes sold as professional grade (racing) lubes.

Josh Poertner said in videos that Silca had been making paraffin wax pellets for a professional cycling team(s) for a few years, and that Silca put the product into production for retail sale as Silca Secret Chain Blend, released in June 2020. Hot Wax X was released in 2022. Silca followed up with advice videos and promotional videos. Silca did not claim, at first, advantages over other immersive waxes. The first mover in modern immersive wax production had been Molten Speed Wax. MSW and Silca Secret Blend paraffin wax products have to be melted. Each has some additives. Immersive wax was seen as a difficult way of lubricating chains when Silca brought its Secret Chain Blend to market. Silca’s entry to the market inspired MSW to improve its formula and change its presentation from pellets to solid pucks or disks. The sales of wax products have not been reported or published.

Silca Super Secret Chain chain coating fluid lube was announced in April 2020. In some ways, it competes with Ceramic Speed UFO Drip and with a few liquids made from paraffin precursor oils, or natural oils:

• Squirt,
• Smoove,
• Effetto Mariposa Flower Power.

Silca says its Super Secret Chain chain coating fluid lube uses the the same paraffin as its hot wax Secret Chain Blend, with water and alcohol to make the product a low viscosity fluid; the fluid it is supposed to dry out and remain in place as a lubricant wax. The marketing is that this is as good as hot wax, and easier to apply. The label on the containers advises the product should be use on an “ultra clean” chain, new or used. This means, after reviewing Silca’s videos and podcasts, a chain with factory grease and residues of old lubricant and dirt removed – deep cleaned with solvents with the chain off the bike. The reviewer at Road.cc noted this, and some problems with the application of this lube in a review posted in October 2020. It is runny – most of it runs off the chain at the moment of application. I found this to be true.

Silca Velo suggests Super Secret Chain Coating be left for 24 hours after application to let the lube penetrate and dry into a wax chain coating. Silca’s product release information about Super Secret Chain Coating did not discuss the conditions limiting the use of this product – although more information was published by Silca.

Josh Poertner answered questions comparing Silca Secret Chain Blend, Super Secret Chain coating and Synergetic in March 2021 in the Marginal Gains channel video “Choosing the Best Chain Lube“. He said that Super Secret Chain coating had to be left for 12 to 24 hours after application, before use. Mr. Poertner said that a user planning a long ride in dirty or wet conditions would choose, among the Silca products, the wet lube Synergetic. (Further discussion of using Super Secret Chain Coating as a wax-compatible drip lube to refresh or top up immersion wax on a chain in Bike Chains 7 in this series).

Josh Poertner has not, as of August 18, 2024, directly attacked the new Finish Line hot waxes with their microspheres, although his discussions of lubrication of circular surfaces seem to criticize the idea that such particles can do what the Finish Line marketing says they do.

However, in a video published August 16, 2024 promoting more Silca custom wax “chips” he claimed that Silca’s Super Secret (Hot) Wax was the best lubricant in a ZFC test when ZFC has not made that call.

Synergetic drip lube

Silca announced Synergetic wet lube in November 2020. Synergetic superceded Silca NFS, which had been on the market as Silca’s wet drip in 2018. (Silca NFS had been endorsed by Adam Kerin of Zero Friction Cycling in his discussions with Dave Rome of CyclingTips for the March 2018 Seeking the Holy Grail article). Mr. Poertner said that Silca Velo had been unable to obain some ingredients and decided to drop Silca NFS and offer a new product.

Silca’s Synergetic wet lube was discussed in the a 22 minute Silca Velo YouTube video November 17, 2020 Announcing Synergetic Web Lube. The video shows the use of an abrasion testing machine with Synergetic and with Silca’s previous web lube, NFS. Silca has done other videos with the device to claim the superiority of Synergetic to Pro-Gold drip lubes and the superiority of Silca’s Synerg-E (e-bike) wet lube. The development of Synergetic was discussed in the Silca Marginal Gains podcast Lubes & Chains & Marginal Gains, November 30, 2020. The dominant theory has been that there must be enough oil on/in the chain to form a durable liquid barrier film on the surfaces where metal bears on metal and can cause wear. The video shows the wear that occurs where the oil does does not adequately coat the metal. For bicycle chain and other roller chains, this is generally believed to be due to the failure of the lubricant to penetrate or the displacement or dissipation of the lubricant.

In the podcast, Mr. Poertner referred to:

• racing car motor oils, Polyalphaolefin (“PAO”) and other “synthetic” base stocks,
• high quality type 5 (100% PAO) – the original Mobil 1 synthetic lubricating oil,
• the invention of hydro-cracked synthetic oil,
• litigation between Mobil and Castrol and
• changes in the motor oil industry.

He mentions Silca’s testing and comparison of Mobil 1 with Silca’s NFS wet lube product and the new Synergetic wet lube. The podcast discusses the additives that Silca uses. Wear testing establishes that Silca wet lubes with zinc dialkyldithiophosphates and tungsten disulfide are better than other wet bike chain lubes. Mr. Poertner said that Synergetic is formulated with a high quality synthetic motor oil as a base oil. Silca contends this product coats the chain parts with lubricating tribofilm(s). The application of this product requires a film of oil to supply more additives to maintain the tribofilm, and as lubricant.

Silca initially used dripper bottles with pharmaceutical dripper tips to dispense small drops on rollers, for Synergetic. This is useful in aiming the drops at the edge of the rollers, and limiting the flow to a few drops,with little waste . Silca later dropped that feature and started to use conventional dripper bottles.

In November 2021 Silca released its Synerg-E e-bike lube which is like Synergetic, with an additional “tackifier” additive and/or calcium sulfate to enhance adhesion to the chain.

Marketing

Silca’s marketing has some features:

1. Silca, like Ceramic Speed, has used a bar graph that looks like the Friction Facts or VeloNews friction efficiency graphs, with its products interpolated;
2. The Marginal Gains episode on the Silca Secret Chain Blend immersive wax pellets show an Instant Pot, the Silca sous vide bag package, and a non-contact infrared thermometer. These will interest consumers with spare cash and a yen for conspicuous consumption.

Silca’s material about Synergetic emphasized the ease of use and minimizes the time and effort of cleaning chains lubed with the product. Josh Poertner, in the 22 minute Silca Velo channel (YouTube) video November 17, 2020 Announcing Synergetic Web Lube used a blue machine that he calles a Timken machine, an ASTM machine and an ASTM G77 machine. The manufacturer is not named; it may have been made by the American Timken Company.

The videos shows the use of the blue machine with Silca products and with some other drip lubes:

• E-Bike Lubricant Showdown Round 1 between Silca e-bike lube Synerg-E and Finish Line’s e-bike lube;
• Lubricant Showdown #2 between Silca Synergetic and ProGold Prolink and Xtreme lubes;
• Lubricant Showdown 3 between Silca Synergetic and White Lightning Clean Ride and Epic Ride .

The machine is not said to be used to test bike chain components on the ASTM G77 standard. The machine is used for product demonstrations to criticize other drip lubricants. Based on FF and ZFC tests, the drip lubricants were not efficient or efficatious to reduce chain wear:

• ProGold
  • FF had showed around 7 watts
  • ZFC does not show any testing of ProGold products;
• White Lightning
  • Clean Ride – FF had showed around 6 watts, and
  • Epic Ride – FF had showed 9 watts; it had failed ZFC testing.

The videos shows the wear that occurs where or when lubricant film does does not adequately coat. The amount of lubricant applied or “flung” is not measured; no time is allowed for distributing or settling the lubricant. The ring and pin arrangement is different than the interior spaces of bike chains. A surface area of the machine ring is much larger than the surface area of bike chain pin or the interior surface of roller. The discussion of lubricant being flung seems to be a distraction, given a ring powered by an electric motor at speed will fling any liquid on the surface.

The length of the wear marks are noted and in the videos is measured. The wear marks left by the machine on pins lubricated by Synergetic were small compared to the wear marks made by other products,. In the ProGold/Synergetic video, Mr. Poertner says that he surprized by how small the wear marks left on pin after the ProGold sessions are, implying he expected larger marks. In the White Lightning/Synergetic video, Mr. Poertner showed how rapidly and badly the sample wore when the ring and the sample pin were wetted with the White Lightning products.A failure of a lubricant to form a film on on the moving or load-bearing surfaces in a roller chain can be due to the failure of the lubricant to penetrate into the chain between the moving metal surfaces, or the displacement or dissipation of the lubricant. Some products – e.g. Silca Velo’s Synergetic- use an automotive motor oil base oil and additives that coat the chain parts with metal lubricating tribofilm(s). Mr. Poertner said that the lubricating ingredients in White Lightning and Finish Line products were diluted in a carrier fluid and did not lubricate effectively, which is are fair points for discussion and comment.

In the White Lightning video Mr. Poertner said the White Lighting products and some Finish Line products contained small amount of PFAS “forever chemical” additives. The environmental accusation apparently is that the products contain Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, and persistant organic pollutants. White Lightning markets Clean Ride as a wax lube, and Epic Ride as made of “non-petroleum based synthetic oils”. White Lightning does not use the Teflon™ or claim that its product contains Teflon. It does not appear that White Lightning says it contains PFTE.

When ZFC tested White Lightning products, the company did not respond to ZFC questions about its marketing claims for its products or about its testing processes.

I did not believe that the White Lightning and Finish Line products were good or good value before I saw these videos. In those videos, I saw the the marketing persona of Josh Poertner, more than his engineer persona.

More Innovation

Silca released”Ultimate Chain Stripper + Wax Prep.” in 2023, which competes with Ceramic Speed UFO Drivetrain Clean. Both are innovative, and different than mineral spirit solvents. Both are supposed to be biodegradaable, perhaps avoiding the enviromental and regulatory problems of disposing of used solvents and petroleum products. Both are expensive.

Other manufacturers entered the immersive paraffin wax market in 2022 & 2023:

• Rex wax lubes;
• CycloWax in Belgium introduced CycloWax, an immersive wax, and dedicated wax pot.

In early 2024 Silca released:

• an additive wax to mix with other hot waxes to strip factory grease on a new chain in a one-step process, and
• a dedicated wax pot with high temperature settings to melt the new additive wax and remove factory grease and wax a new chain in a single operation.

In August 2024 Silva began to market “chips” of waxes to alter the efficiency and durability of its hot melt wax products, and began to claim that its wax products had been the best tested by ZFC. ZFC had not published review of Hot Wax X, and listed the Silca immersive Waxes near the top of its tested and partially tested products but not at the top of the list.

There were announcements in early 2024 that major manufacturers in the drip lube industry were planning to release immersive waxes, chain coating fluids, and improved drip lubes. By July 2024 Finish Line had launched an immersive paraffin product called Halo. It was reported to have been failing in the first block of ZFC wear tests – to be as bad as Muc-Off and Finish Line drip lubes, relying on marketing and economic dominance of the relevant channels of distribution and sale of products.

Prepared chains

Shops including MSpeedwax, and ZFC sell and ship new chains, with factory grease removed, waxed with a branded immersion wax, ready for use. A buyer can test the riding a waxed chain. The chains will have to regularly reset by users by successive immersions. If the rider is not happy with the paraffin routine, the paraffin washes out and the user can dry the chain and use it with the user’s lube of choice.

Some vendors, e.g. Silca Velo, offered to provide a chain that has been prepared and polished. The theory is that a shop can polish or treat the metal on the inside of a chain that has been rivetted together by suspending diamond fragments in a lubricant to create a paste or slurry – which is removed by throrough cleaning before the chain is lubricated.

12. Choices

Many or most modern chains are not durable.

A few lubricants have been shown to help make chains last longer. The main options for a user or rider, involve recurring effort and costs:

1. Monitor chain wear and
   • replace the chain every few thousand Km., or
   • buy and use a better chain to replace the chain supplied by the manufacturer;
2. Keep the chain clean and lubricated; and
3. Use better lubricant.

Bicycle chain lubricants are chemically engineered petroleum products. Cleaning a chain involves other chemically engineered products, often solvents. Most lubricants and solvents are chemically engineered petroleum products. The main lubricant choices:

1. immersive paraffin waxes:
   • Manufactured pucks or blocks of processed paraffin and additives, including:
     • Molten Speed Wax,
     • Silca Secret Chain Blend,
     • other products developed by competing manufacturers – e.g. Rex, and
     • paraffin that some consumers have access to (blocks, candles etc.);
2. drip (including “wet” and “dry”) lubes,
   • Most are not very good:
     • expensive products from vendors that market widely and aggressively e.g. Muc-Off;
     • apprarently inexpensive products by brands including White Lightning, Finish Line, WD-40, Muc-Off, etc. ;
   • A few are effecive but fairly expensive e.g. Silca Synergetic;
3. chain coating or “wax-compatible” fluid waxes,
   • Ceramic Speed UFO;
   • Silca Super Secret Chain Coating;
   • Tru-Tension Tungsten All-Weather;
   • Smoove;
   • Squirt;
   • other innovators;
4. A few other fluid lubricants – e.g. Effeto Mariposa Flower Power.

Immersive waxing involves deep cleaning a chain to remove factory grease, and regular immersions in heated (“hot”) wax. Deep cleaning is discussed in Bike Chains 5. The repeated immersions involve a minor amount of time. The proprietary paraffin waxes are available from the manufacturers and from some bicycle supply companies:

• MSpeedwax in Shoreview (St. Paul) Minnesota ships its Molten Speed Wax (“MSW”). MSpeedwax also is the American distributor of YBN chains and master links. MSW has been available from online retailers in the USA, although online retailers had product shortages in 2022;
• Silca Velo in Indianapolis, Indiana in the USA, ships its Secret Chain Blend and other lubricants;
• As of April 2023, Rex Black Diamond immersive wax was on the market .

Zero Friction Cycling, in Adelaide Australia sells Molten Speed Wax, Silca Secret Chain Blend and other lubricants. ZFC encourages consumers outside Australia to order lubricants from the manufacturers or local vendors where feasible to avoid the shipping costs for orders that involve shipping product from Australia. MSW and ZFC sell chain, including YBN chains and some other merchandise.

Drip lubes are easy to apply. The chain has to be cleaned often, and the chain wears in spite of cleaning and lubrication.

Chain coating fluids are also applied by dripping but require extra effort and time:

• Some (Silca Super Secret Chain Coating, Ceramic Speed UFO Drip), perhaps all these fluids, require deep cleaning the chain to remove factory grease. The grease occupies the spaces that should be lubricated, and affects the operation of the lubricant.
• These fluids have to be refreshed, and the chains have to be cleaned.
• Chain coating fluid waxes require a a period of at least a few hours after application(the chain has to have time to dry).

Table of Contents

• Preliminary
  • Endless Post
  • Scope
• 18. Paraffin
  • Chemistry and History
  • Cycling Uses
  • Immersion
  • Waxing Knowledge
  • Prices
  • My start in waxing in 2022
  • Emulsions
  • Chain Coating Fluids
• 19. The Immersive Method
  • Removing the Chain
  • Factory Grease
  • Dirty Wax
  • Hot Wax Safety
  • Slow Cookers
  • Instant Pots™, Multicookers and other devices
  • Temperature and Agitation
  • Chain Spa
• 20. Wax-Compatible Fluids

Preliminary

Endless Post

This is Part 7 of a series of 9 posts organized as a single work,
collectively “endless”. There are 8 parts, individually published as
posts on this blog, and a table of contents of the series in the 9th post. The series is organized into sections, numbered for reference, in the series table of contents and in the toc for each post. From March to June 2024 I reorganized and revised the long article extensively. This post has been most recently updated June 11, 2024.

Scope

This post mainly discusses immersion in melted paraffin (hot wax) as chain lubrication. It will begin with a discussion of paraffin. It will address:

• some attempts to use paraffin in drip lubes,
• paraffiin chain coating emulsions and
• other chain coatings applied as fluids.

18. Paraffin

Chemistry and History

Paraffin is a wax, a dry solid. Paraffin wax is a refined petrolem product, a synthetic wax made of alkanes. Some of its properties depend on the refining. The melting point can be under 35 ºC, or over 50 or 60 ºC. A company that obtained the corporate name ParaffinCo and the domain name paraffinco.com refers to paraffin wax as “normal paraffin”, it says, on a web page about the industrial uses & applications:

Normal paraffin is a straight-chain alkane, typically derived from crude oil through the refining process. It consists of a linear arrangement of carbon atoms with hydrogen atoms attached, forming a saturated hydrocarbon chain. Normal paraffins vary in chain length, which influences their physical and chemical properties, making them suitable for different industrial applications.

The melting point of normal paraffin varies with the length of the carbon chain, providing flexibility in choosing the appropriate type for specific applications.

Due to its saturated hydrocarbon structure, normal paraffin has low chemical reactivity, making it safe and easy to handle in various industrial processes.

It exhibits excellent chemical stability, resisting oxidation and other chemical reactions. This stability ensures that normal paraffin maintains its properties over time, even under varying environmental conditions.

Normal paraffin is hydrophobic, meaning it repels water. This property is particularly useful in applications where moisture resistance is crucial, such as in coatings and sealants.

…

Normal paraffin is used as a base oil in the formulation of industrial
lubricants. Its stability, low reactivity, and lubricating properties
make it suitable for various applications.

In metalworking, normal paraffin-based lubricants reduce friction and wear on cutting tools, enhancing their lifespan and performance. The lubricants also help to dissipate heat generated during the machining process, preventing damage to both tools and workpieces.

…

Normal paraffin’s versatility makes it suitable for a wide range of applications across various industries. Its ability to adapt to different formulations and processes makes it a valuable ingredient in many products.

Normal paraffin is relatively cost-effective compared to other raw
materials, providing an economical solution for industrial applications
without compromising on quality and performance.

Normal Paraffin: Its Industrial Uses & Applications

The use of paraffin wax as a lubricant was discussed in a paper “The Friction of Lubricated Metals” published in by the Royal Society of London in 1940. Solid paraffin wax lubricates as a solid. The reasons paraffin wax lubricates have not been fully scientifically explained. The 19th century explanation for why ice (frozen water) is slippery when other cold solids are not is still debated – see the Vox article “Why is ice so slippery“.

The practical questions about paraffin as a bike chain lubricant are:

• Does it reduce friction?
• Since it is a solid
  • how is it applied to a roller chain?
  • as applied to open bearings (i.e. not sealed or otherwise protected), how can a user apply it?

Cycling Uses

The manufacturer of Molten Speed Wax says lubrication with paraffin was tried in the era of Mile a Minute Murphy, (i.e. before 1900 in the early days of safety bicycles). I have not explored this factual claim.

The bicycle chain lubrication industries attempted to deliver wax in suspension or solution in fluids, but did not find ways to apply solid paraffin wax to bicycle chains comparable to the practice of bike mechanics and cyclists – lubrication with oils and fluids.

Manufacturers experimented with putting paraffin or other wax in suspension in carrier fluids in dry wax lubricants in the 1980s and 1990s. The drip “wax” lubes originated in that era were not durable lubricants, but they were well marketed and competitively priced.

Immersion

For use as a bicycle chain lubricant, paraffin can be melted down into a low viscosity (thin) liquid, and a chain is immersed in the hot wax. The liquid fills the spaces around the pins and along the edges of the rollers. When the chain is removed from the liquid paraffin cools and solidifies. The paraffin wax is a microscopically thin barrier between the metal surfaces of the pin and the “sleeve” (bushing or half bushings, roller), and the overlapping areas of the link plates. The wax adheres to the metal and apparently sheers to slip, reducing friction. Paraffin may sheer, or form surface liquid films. Solid wax is more water repellent than liquid oils – it is not as easily “washed” out by contact with the stream(s) of water droplets striking and flowing into a moving chain.

As discussed in the post Bike Chains 4 in this series, Jason Smith of Friction (“FF) tested lubricants, including paraffin in 2012 or 2013. The FF test results were published in VeloNews in an article in 2013.

The idea of using a commonly available commodity attracted cyclists ready to experiment. Readers of the 2013 VeloNews article sent questions to the magazine about immersing chains in melted paraffin to get paraffin wax into bike chains. Questions were addressed by Lennard Zinn’s Technical FAQ column in VeloNews.

The positive results of the original article and a further VeloNew article in 2014 attracted attention. A few cyclists experimented with removing chains from bicycles and applying melted paraffin. This was discussed in cycling publications – inially printed periodicals (magazines, journals). As the internet expanded, the discussion moved online. The uses of paraffin (by riders, doing diy “garage mechanic” work melting wax in “coffee cans” in the 1970s or 80s) are mentioned in a few online resources including the CyclingTips Waxing Endless FAQ article by Dave Rome (another article published online at CyclingTips that the publishers of Outside and Velo have unpublished).

Immersive waxing did not work unless the user removed factory grease from the chain by repeated immersion in mineral spirits and agitation. If a clean chain is submerged in hot paraffin, the chain will warm to the temperature of the wax; the wax penetrates into the spaces around the pins, inside the rollers and at the end of overlapping link plates. If previously waxed chain has been properly cleansed of contaminants (washed off and chain dried), it can be treated as clean.

Removing factory grease also appears to be effective for increasing efficiency and reducing wear and noise with wax emulsions/fluids, dry-drip lubes with friction reducing additives, and oily wet lubes.

Lubricating with paraffin presented challenges:

• The chain had to be removed – which was not easy without master links;
• The chain had to be cleaned;
• Paraffin had to be melted;
• The chain had to immersed, moved and cooled. The wax had to penetrate the chain and stay in place;
• The wax will, as the chain makes its revolutions, break down and flake off. Small amounts of wax are expelled;
• The exposed wax at edges of the chain will be contaminated;
• While solid wax is more water repellent than liquid oils – it is not as easily “washed” out by contact with a stream of water droplets striking and flowing into a moving chain – waxin needs to be renewed – a chain must be cleaned and lubricated again.

Within a few years after the VeloNews article in 2013:

• other proprietary immersive waxes and wax emulsions with special features (additives, special packaging) came on the market;
• riders and mechanics began to publish articles and videos on immersive waxing using retail paraffin or proprietary products safely (melt the wax in a slow cooker or Instant Pot, not on a flame). Some described the process, in an ironical tone, as “Chain Spa”, etc.

Molten Speed Wax developed and marketed its proprietary paraffin product within a couple of years after the FF test results were published. Arguably, MSW did not exploit the so-called first mover advantage in the market for hard wax.

Adam Kerin of Zero Friction Cycling (“ZFC”) argues immersive waxing involves less effort and cost than using dry-drip and wet lubes, and provides benefits for cyclists/owners:

• It reduces chain wear, which reduces the costs of operating and maintaining a bike; and
• Paraffin wax can be applied by a cyclist for modest expense, with little effort.

The users of paraffin say several things about why waxing works, and some of the benefits:

• The lubricant penetrates the chain and occupies the spaces,
• A waxed chain is not oily. Dirt does not stick to a freshly waxed chain,
• Paraffin resists the movement of dust, dirt and abrasive material into the chain, and
• Solid wax is more water repellent than liquid oils – it is not as easily “washed” out by contact with a stream of water droplets striking and flowing into a moving chain.

The bike lubricant article at BikeGremlin notes drawbacks of wax as perceived by many engineers:

{A ] shortcoming of paraffin wax is that it isn’t mobile enough to replenish lubed surfaces after being displaced, while not being strong enough to resist being displaced after put under pedalling pressure. This is apparent after some water gets on a paraffin wax lubed chain – it quickly starts squeaking.

That is why paraffin wax lubed chains need to be re-lubed often. Also, chain needs to be completely clean and dry before lubing, so that paraffin wax can stick to it and prevent dirt from sticking to it.

Unless paraffin wax is bought, melted by heating, chain submerged in it, let to drip dry, excess rubbed off … then a “special” dry lube for chain needs to be bought, with a fluid solvent that dries off and a rather high price. Label usually says something along the lines of: “wax based chain lubricant”.

Some commercial paraffin wax based chain lubricants often have other dry lubricants added (usually PTFE), in order to improve characteristics. However, unless some oil is added as well (which beats the purpose of using a dry lubricant to prevent dirt from sticking to the chain), the problem of displacement from friction surfaces (and not flowing back) mostly remains!

BikeGremlin, 2016, updated 2021, Bike Lubricants Explained

Paraffin advocates accept:

• A chain needs to be cleaned deeply to remove factory grease before it waxed;
• Paraffin needs to be renewed or replenished after a few hundred kilometers of riding.

The wax moves as the stresses of pedalling stress the lubricant in the chain links. A waxed chain may creak if the wax is thin or weak in one place within one link. This may happen if the wax has not fully coated the chain, which happens if the chain is not clean or the wax has become contaminated.

The wax begins to break down within a couple of hundred kilometers of riding. Small amounts of wax are expelled; some of the exposed wax at edges of the chain will be contaminated. Paraffin protects a chain from dirt and water for a limited time and distance. Therefore the chain should be relubricated at short intervals. If a chain is dry and free of contaminants on the visible surfaces, it can be redipped in the same wax. The simplest method of cleaning a waxed chain used in reasonably dry and clean conditions is to put the chain on the unmelted wax and heat the wax and chain until the wax melts. The wax can be melted repeatedly. A half pound of wax will last, according to MSpeedwax, for about 8 lubrications of training chains.

Adam Kerin of Zero Friction Cycling recommends a structured approach to cleaning and lubrication:

• Factory grease should be removed before a chain is installed. Removing factory grease is best done before the chain is on the bike, as it involves putting the chain in solvents. A chain that has been lubed with a fluid lubricant and used need additional preliminary cleaning. Adam Kerin and others have opinions about which bicycle or industrial cleaning products can remove dirt and contaminated chain lubricant;
• The rider should clean the chain according to the contaminants encountered – dirt, water or both – after every ride;
• The best practice is to renew paraffin every 300 or 400 Km. – or at shorter intervals.

A fairly small amount of wax can be melted and used repeatedly, until the wax in the pot is too contaminated.

The critics of immersive waxing view it reservations relating to:

• Power Efficiency – some drip lubes may be more efficient in converting the rider’s effort to forward motion (distance, speed);
• Economic efficiency – the time and cost of regular waxing;
• The difficulties of relubrication during long rides or competitive events – the necessity of taking a break to install another waxed chain

Waxing Knowledge

CyclingTips had the “endless FAQ” article How to Wax a Chain, now unpublished, and a YouTube video (still available in 2024) A Beginner’s Guide. The paraffin pioneer Molten Speed Wax LLC (“Mspeedwax”) has an article Waxing Your Chain, and a YouTube video How to Wax aTraining Chain. YouTube also brings up a a video on the Bike & Blades channel, called Molten Speed Wax: The Epic Guide.

Zero Friction Cycling has articles on its side and videos on its YouTube channel:

• May 2022 Chain preparation/cleaning instructions – concise (flow chart);
• May 2022 Chain preparation/cleaning FAQ Guide V.2;
• August 2022 Chain maintenace guide;
• Waxing Instructions – Brief;
• Waxing Zen Master Guide;
• Immersive Waxing FAQ;
• Video, ZFC YouTube Channel Episode 17, Immersive Waxing, the Concise Version;
• Video, ZFC YouTube Channel Episode 21, Lubricant Choice Guide;
• Video, ZFC YouTube Channel, Episode 4, Part 2, Immersive Waxing How-To.

Adam Kerin suggested practices that a rider can follow after recreational and training rides or commuting in wet conditions in his paper Wet Weather/Winter and waxing guide. A wet chain should be wiped down to remove any water clinging to it. A rider can use alternative chains in succession, and set aside the used chain(s) for re-waxing. Adam Kerin cautions against putting a conventional “dry” or “wet” lube on a waxed chain. It is a temporary measure which will contaminate the chain. Serious contamination can lead to a full deep cleaning with solvents. Adam Kerin suggests only using wax-compatible fluid lubricant on a waxed chain.

Silca Velo has a YouTube Marginal Gains TV channel video made September 2020, How to Hot Melt Wax your Chain.

The manufacturers and vendors of the brand name bicycle chain waxes, and many chain wax advisers:

1. suggest waxing with a brand name bike chain wax, and
2. warn against substitutions such as candle wax, canning wax, hobby/craft wax, and industrial paraffins.

However, when ZFC tested a no name paraffin sold as candle wax, it did not do badly,

The brand name chain waxes have been used by thousands of users, and the working methods are known. Users may not know what is in a substitute paraffin or a particular batch, particularly with industrial lubricants.

Prices

The leading brand name bicycle chain immersive waxes were sold as bags of pellets. Silca Velo still sells pellets; MSpeedwax shifted to selling 250 g. (half pound) discs (cakes, pucks?) of Molten Speed Wax in 2022. 250 g. of paraffin pellets, or caked paraffin, can be melted in a small container or device – e.g. a slow cooker – in one session. The chain will not take up more than a fraction of the wax. The unused paraffin can be cooled, and melted again several times. The used chain will surrender some contaminants into the wax. The wax in the pot wax will become contaminated. The prices, per bag, as of the end of April 2022:

• Mspeedwax sold Molten Speed Wax in 1 lb. (453 g,) bags for about $25 (U.S.). It changed to 500 g. bags in late 2021 and to pucks in early 2022;
• Silca Velo sells Silca Secret Chain Blend in 500 g. sous vide pouches for about $53 (U.S.). Shipping charges apply, but are waived/discounted for orders over $100.

There are other manufacturers and sources of paraffin. Several immersive wax products have been developed in the post was first written. Adam Kerin of Zero Friction Cycling mentions a couple in his news update June 3, 2022, and has reviewed or discussed other.

My start in waxing in 2022

When I began to look seriously at paraffin in February 2022, Mspeedwax was not shipping wax in March and April 2022; MSpeedwax was taking orders for new formula “available 4/30”, hoping to be able to ship product by May. MSpeedwax sold and shipped pre-waxed YBN chains. I bought and received 2 chains.

Among online retail distributors of Molten Speed Wax, some – e.g. Modern Bikes – said that they had no stock in March. Others – e.g. Universal Cycles – said they had stock, but applied high shipping costs to orders and claimed that delivery problems in Canada were attributable to the US Postal Service, the Canadian Border Service agency (clearing Canada Customs), and the Canada Postal Corporation. “One pound” of Molten Speed Wax from Universal Cycle, ordered in March 2022, arrived May 4, 2022. It was a 500 g. bag of pellets. The bag had adhesive labels indicating the wax had Tungsten Disulfide. It was a bag of “new” MSW pellets.

As of mid-April 2022, Mspeedwax explained its supply chain issue, according to updates published by the Australian distributor, Zero Friction Cycling, as a problem with obtaining containers. By the end of April, I had two new prewaxed YBN chains. I scraped dirt and the residue of old lube off the chain wheels and the cassette. I did not scrub the component in solvent.

I put a few hundred Km on each new YBN chain, and notice the chains starting to creak. I did not have wax to re-wax the chains. I tried to refresh the wax with Silca Super Secret Chain Coating (Silca Velo’s wax-compatible drip lube). As the mileage accumulated, I installed a spare SRAM PC1170 chain. I cleaned it with solvents (removed factory grease), put it on the bike and lubed it with Silca Synergetic. I used that that chain to avoid risking wear of my better chains and wear of drive train components until some wax from one of the sources showed up. The use of wet lube on the SRAM PC1170 chain will have consequences. It adhered to the drive train components, and will contaminate waxes.

In late April 2022 MSpeedwax’s “4/30” had become “5/20” and the price of MSW went from $22 to $25 per 500 g. By May 4, MSpeedwax’s goal became 6/10. By May 7, 2020 MSpeedwax announced MSW was being shipped in pucks, and changed product images on its web site. Dealers – e.g. ZFC – began to anticipate filling back orders by June 2022. I received my pucks on my February 2022 order on May 20, 2022. The pucks were wrapped in bubble wrap. I received the pucks on my March order in late July. The supply stabilized, and as of 2024 there are several immersive waxes marketed to cyclists.

Emulsions

Bicycle lubricant manufacturers may process paraffin wax to create their own proprietary emulsions. A refiner, a chemical company or a wholesale distributer may supply paraffin emulsions to manufacturers of bicycle products. ParaffinCo says:

Paraffin emulsion consists of finely divided paraffin wax particles suspended in water, typically with particle sizes ranging from nanometers to micrometers.

Paraffin emulsion appears as a milky-white liquid with a smooth texture. It is easily pourable and can be diluted with water to adjust the concentration

Paraffin emulsion is stabilized with emulsifiers to prevent the wax particles from agglomerating and settling out of solution, ensuring long-term stability and shelf life.

Normal Paraffin vs Paraffin Emulsion: Specifications & Uses

Chain Coating Fluids

I have mentioned drip lubes marketed as paraffin lubrications. In 2024, some of those drip lubes have been reformulated or kept on market.

ZFC use the term chain coating to refer to several fluid products that are applied as drip lubes, including paraffin emulsions. ZFC notes that some wax-compatible chain coatings can be applied to relubricate a chain that has been lubricated by immersion in melted normal paraffin. Two wax-compatible paraffin emulsions, tested by ZFC with good results:

• Ceramic Speed UFO Drip;
• Silca Super Secret Chain Coating.

Some chain coating fluids are made of refined petroleum products that have not been refined to the point of being paraffin which are not as wax-compatible as paraffin emulsions ZFC has reviewed the South African fluid lubes:

• Smoove;
• Squirt.

ZFC has reviewed some chain coating fluids including Effetto Mariposa FlowerPower that are effective, but not wax-compatible.

I will discuss the use of drip lubes, chain coating fluids and wax-compatible chain coatings on waxed chains in section 21.

19. The Immersive Method

Removing the Chain

Immersive waxing involves working with the chain off the bike frequentlly. The master link makes removing the chain much easier, and makes working with the chain off the bike regularly feasible. Master links are discussed in Bike Chains, Part 2 in this series.

Factory Grease

The point of removing the factory grease is to install paraffin on a truly clean chain to allow the paraffin to penetrate to the interior spaces and adhere to the metal. This also makes the initial immersion and subsequent lubrications with paraffin faster and simpler. Paraffin can be removed and replaced with a liquid lubricant – but time, effort and money will have been spent. The supporters of waxing say it is seldom necessary, after factory grease has been removed and a chain has been waxed, to do another deep cleaning with detergents and solvents.

Removing factory grease from a new chain is a time-consuming and demanding project. Removing factory grease requires solvents that will penetrate the chain and carry off the dissolved grease. The solvent recommended to cut grease is mineral spirits. It is also necessary to rinse the chain with a polar solvent that will carry off any water. Industrial ethyl alcohol (ethanol) is good. Cleaning a used chain is more demanding. Removing old lube and contamination requires a chain cleaning detergent before the use of the mineral spirits and methylated spirits.

Removing factory grease, or old lube, contamination and factory grease from a chain (or from drive train components) requires buying, storing and using chemicals that have strong odours or may irritate the respiratory organs, and which may need to be disposed of according to environmental regulations. A bike shop may perform the work, but will charge by the hour. This is hard-core DIY stuff.

Dirty Wax

A reasonably clean waxed chain can be waxed repeatedly, until the wax in the pot is too contaminated. Immersing the chain in melted wax will remove dirt. MSpeedwax suggests a half pound of its paraffin can be used 8 times for “training chains” if the chain is rewaxed at intervals and the contamination is simple dust. Contaminated wax will be discarded after a few uses, and replaced with clean fresh wax. A user will observe the wax during wax jobs and learn to judge contamination.

A waxed chain requires basic maintenance. This is mentioned by Dave Rome in the CyclingTips waxing FAQ and other material. The chain should be wiped to remove water if the chain has been used in wet conditions. Dirt on the outside will come off if the chain is wiped. Some substances that adhere to a chain, such as small amounts of old wet lube degrade the wax.

If a chain has been waxed with contaminated wax it should be reset by deep cleaning and fresh lubrication with clean wax.

Hot Wax Safety

The melting point of paraffin is approximately 37°C (99 °F)., but it varies. Some paraffin waxes melt at up to 67°C and congeal at 66.4°C. The melting point of the paraffin chain lubes is above 55℃, above the range of temperatures in the temperate and tropical parts of the world. Further notes on these waxes:

• MSpeedwax cautions on the wax package that MSW should not be heated above 220 ℉ (104 ℃). It recommends that the chain and solid wax be heated to 200 ℉ (93℃). The chain is placed on dry wax in the pot, and heated at the same time to the same temperature. It suggests measuring temperature with a candy thermometer. Adam Kerin of ZFC mentions in some of his articles that he thinks it is 60℃. The exact melting point is not easily measured in a slow cooker unless the user has an instant read thermometer. It is in the range of 55 to 60℃;
• Josh Poertner of Silca Velo did a YouTube Marginal Gains TV channel video in September 2020 How to Hot Melt Wax your Chain. He said that Silca Secret Chain Blend melts at 140 to 150 ℉ (60 to 65.6 ℃)

At the flash point volatile vapour enters the air, increasing the risk of fire and explosion. The flash point of paraffin varies, depending on the mixture. It may be 250 to 300° C. The boiling point of paraffin is above 370 °C (698 °F). The temperatures are not precise because paraffin is a blend of manufactured hydrocarbons, often mixed with other substances. The melting point(s) and boiling point(s) of paraffin are higher than the melting and boiling points of water. An appliance that generates enough heat to boil water can melt paraffin, but will probably not boil paraffin. The manufacturers of MSW and SSCB do not put product specifications, such as melting point or flash point of the wax on the Internet.

The bicycle chain waxes have additives. The additives do not seem to produce gases that can harm the user, and have minor environmental effects. Without disclosing amounts, the manufacturers list the lubricating additives:

• Molten Speed Wax: MoS₂ (Molybdenum disulfide), PTFE and WS₂ (Tungsten disulfide) ;
• Silca Secret Chain Blend: WS₂ (Tungsten disulfide),

Modern bicycle chain wax advisers discourage the methods said to have been used by the populist mechanic/riders in the 20th century: melting paraffin on a stove top, camp stove, or outdoor burner (e.g. a camp cooker that home brewers might use to brew beer or camp chefs would use to deep fry a turkey in oil). Even if you are careful, shit can happen in many ways – slip on the floor, step on lego, bitten by bug, distraction, inattention, pets, kids, zombie apocalypse. The wax can spill and catch fire from an open flame.

Waxing Nordic (cross country) skis was/is required with wooden skis. and wooden skis with laminated plastic bases. The Norwegian firm Swix made – and still makes a range of ski wax cylinders to rub on to skis to promote glide on the tips and tails and grip under the “kicker” section. (Swix has not brought abicycle chain wax product to market). Some ski waxes were melted by heating a waxing iron with a torch, melting the wax on the hot iron and dripping liquid wax on the ski bases, and smoothing/distributing it with the hot iron. When I was younger and confident, risk meant nothing … Waxing skis has changed too.

Slow Cookers

MSpeedwax and ZFC advise using an electric cooking device called a slow cooker (Crockpot™ is one slow cooker brand). Slow cookers are a mature electric appliance technology. Electric multi-cooker appliances such as the Instant Pot™ are electric pressure cooker devices with “smart” controls and slow cooker functions. Basic slow cookers with ceramic inserts (crocks), without timers or “smart” controls have 3 or 4 settings: Off, Low, High (or Off, Warm, Low, High). The heating element is in a belt in the metal case that surrounds the insert. The element is always on; the switch controls the watts of power that to the heating element. This kind of slow cooker may heat to about 100 ℃ (212 ℉) in spots at the outer edges. It takes over 30 minutes on high to warm a chain and a 225 g. (1/2 pound) of wax to about 65-70 ℃. The contents will get hotter as time passes, specially with lower amounts of contents. A small or medium slow cooker will hold a chain – even two or more chains, and melt enough wax to immerse the chain(s).

MSpeedwax advises to use a slow cooker on high, and set a timer. ZFC advises using the low setting. Low will melt the wax. It takes longer, but is safer and gives the user more time for other things. MSpeedwax suggests a slow cooker with a small crock (1.5 or 2 quarts), and discourages using 4 or 6 quart models. Adam Kerin of ZFC uses large oval slow cookers in videos – he has them in his shop and uses them to wax multiple chains in one session. Adam Kerin provides advice on the ZFC site on locating places that sell 1.5 and 2 quart slow cookers in New South Wales. He recommends staying with small or medium (3.5 quart) slow cooker devices. Basic slow cookers were and still are available in small (1.5 or 2 quart), medium (1.5 or 4 quart), and large ( 6, 6.5 or 7 quarts). Larger retailers still carry brand name small slow cookers with ceramic inserts. In March 2022, I located a 2 quart slow cooker at a Walmartstore in Victoria BC for under $30. Small used slow cookers are available. Buying a small slow cooker is an inexpensive way of getting a dedicated device. It isn’t an elegant device. It uses electricity. It is less efficient than other appliances, but it draws little current.

MSpeedwax advises that the chain should be in the slow cooker, and should heated with the wax. ZFC agrees. Adam Kerin adds that If the chain was left out, the chain should say in the hot wax at least 5-10 minutes.

Some advisers, e.g. the narrator in the Bikes and Blades channel video, suggest a device designed to melt waxes used in beauty spas. Small Rice cookers may be about the same size as small slow cooker. The automated heat controls of rice cookers are set up to bring water to boil quickly and then simmer. MSW has not discussed rice cookers. ZFC says rice cookers are not a good idea for heating bicycle chain wax.

MSpeedwax and ZFC use a swisher tool to manage handling the chain while the chain and wax are hot. A tool that sticks up out of the wax is necessary – it is not feasible to get the chain out of 70 to 100 ℃ liquid without a tool. MSpeedwax sells one ($15 US) but has posted an article “Making a Swisher Tool” with detailed dimensions to make one by cutting and bending a metal coat hanger. The dimensions are for a tool that will lay a chain in the bottom of a small or medium slow cooker. When the waxed chain is removed, the chain can be removed from the swisher (use gloves – hot) and hung over the pot (if the working space is ready) to catch hot melted wax that will drip from the chain until the chain cools and the wax congeals in place. The pot, if you do not plan to cook in it, can store the wax, which can be reused.

Instant Pots™, Multicookers and other devices

Silca Velo suggests using an Instant Pot™ (or a comparable multicooker). An Instant Pot can melt paraffin, safely, using the slow cooker program setting. Silca Velo executive Josh Poertner recommends, in the Silca Velo waxing video, using the multicooker slow cooker settings. . As Mr. Poertner demonstates, an Instant Pot is faster to reach the desired temperatures than a conventional slow cooker. Silca does not appear to be concerned about chemical effects of overheating the wax. Silca does not think the risk of heating above the flash point is serious. An Instant Pot™ should hit a burn warning and shut down before it heats the contents to the flash point of paraffin in any of its programs. The high energy programs that need the lid locked should not be used to melt bicycle chain wax.

Other videos on other sites (e.g. Russ Roca at Path Less Paddled) show users using the sauté program. The wax melts from the bottom. The user can break the cooler crust and stir the wax to distribute the heat. The user may have to tend the pot.

Instant Pots are electric pressure cookers, with powerful heating elements to heat fluids to temperatures above 100 ℃, and safety features to prevent burning or overcookingfood. An Instant Pot’s sensors and programs turn the power off and on to maintain the temperature. Josh Poertner said in the Marginal Gains video How to Hot Melt Wax Your Chain that an Instant Pot was better than a conventional slow cooker at melting paraffin. Mr. Poertner suggested putting the wax in the Instant Pot’s liner/insert/pot and melting it in the pot. He recommends buying a liner/insert/pot for wax, and keeping the wax liner in the garage or workshop. He would use a multicooker without the pressure lid, in a lower heat program.

Multicooker devices can be operated without the pressure lid in slow cooker and sauté programs. The medium slow cooker program setting puts out comparable heat to a conventional slow cooker on low; the high slow cooker program setting puts out comparable heat to a conventional slow cooker on high. Culinary publications – e.g. America’s Test Kitchen – warn that Instant Pots™ heat large amounts of water (4 quarts in a 6 or 8 quart pot) so slowly in the slow cooker program settings that the water will not reach temperature that the user expects. The low or medium sauté settings can melt wax or heat water faster than the device in slow cooker mode, but may cut out when the device hits the top of a range. The heating element of an Instant Pot heats the food at the bottom of the pot (nearest the heating element) to these temperatures, which are lower than the flash point of paraffin:

Setting	℃	℉
Slow cooker medium	88-93	190-200
Slow cooker high	93-99	200-210
Sauté low	135-150	275-302
Sauté medium	160-176	320-349

Silca Velo suggests a way to use an Instant Pot with Silca’s Secret Chain Blend Wax – putting the resealable waterproof plastic bag into hot water in the Instant Pot liner/insert/pot. Silca describes the bag as a sous vide bag; the point is that the bag can be placed in near boiling water and will not melt or degrade. The Instant Pot is used to heat water quickly to a temperature that will melt the wax, a temperature at or below the boiling point of water (212℉; 100℃). The pouch is put in the water; the wax is melted without melting or tearing the bag. In this method, the chain is waxed in the bag and the wax does not touch the pot.

In the Silca Velo video, Mr. Poertner builds a swisher with a used spoke, and uses it to lower the chain into hot wax rather than putting the chain in with the unmelted wax. He says that the liner/insert/pot can be removed to a place where the chain can be hung.

Silca endorsed using an Instant Pot™. This approach works if you have a device and use it safely. Buying a liner/insert/pot for wax may be more expensive than buying a dedicated slow cooker. You may be reluctant to operate an Instant Pot outside your kitchen, or reluctant to carry a pot of hot wax and a chain around.

Some users have tried to adapt tdevices used to melt wax for beauty industry uses (i.e. depillatory), but devices for that industry may not melt wax to the proper temperature.

Some specialized cycling industry products were in the markets in late 2023 or early 2024. Cyclowax sells a wax pot in Europe. Silca has a special hot that will handle paraffin and a special wax developed by Silca to strip factory grease and wax a chain in one step.

Temperature and Agitation

MSpeedwax recommends using a candy thermometer to check the temperature of the melting/melted wax. It said when the wax was heated to 200 ℉ (93℃), the user should agitate the chain for 45 second and take it out. In ZFC videos, Adam Kerin uses a digital thermometer and says the user should agitate the chain. ZFC does not have a recommendation on how long to leave the chain in the wax if the chain has been heated in the slow cooker.

Mr. Poertner of Silca Velo demonstrated the use of a non-contact infrared thermometer to check the heat of the wax, at the surface, as it heats and cools in an InstantPot. Russ Roca of the Path Less Pedalled site uses such a device in his November 2021 video “Watch This before you Wax your Bicycle Chain“, basically following the Silca method. Silca is looking for melted wax – above 140 to 150 ℉ (60 to 65.6 ℃). Silca agrees that a chain should be agitated when the wax is melted. Mr. Poertner recommended leaving it in the wax until the wax begins to congeal. If a user knows the congealing temperature, a user with any device that reads the temperature can leave the chain in the pot and take it out as the wax is congealing. This means, I think, less wax will drip off or out of a chain?

Chain Spa

The user needs to have or acquire devices, and set up a working space and routine to use wax.

20. Wax-Compatible Fluids

The solid wax on a waxed chain should block dripped fluid lube from penetrating the chain when the wax is fresh. After the chain has been used for a while, a dripped fluid may have some spaces that it can penetrate. The main direct consquences of using a fluid on a waxed chain:

• The fluid may lubricate places where the wax has been compressed, displaced or deteriorated;
• A fluid may trap contaminants or weaken the wax; and
• The user may need to reset the chain to get rid of contaminants including the residue of the fluid by deep cleaning before re-waxing.

ZFC’s advice was to not use most drip lubes on a waxed chain, including the traditional low reputation dry-drip lubes marketed as depositing a wax or waxy lubricant on the working parts of a chain. ZFC says that wax-compatible drip lubes can be used on an immersion waxed chain. The term seems to refer to a lubricant that will come out of a chain immersed in melted paraffin without contaminating the paraffin or interfering with the application of melted paraffin to the chain. Adam Kerin said, at one point:

Can I use a drip lube to supplement waxing? Sort of. I have tested Smoove with msw, and if a single application (as per my advanced [Smoove] application guide in instructions tab), and you run that application until it is starting to feel a bit dry, then re waxing straight over seems to go ok – just not you will be contaminating wax in pot somewhat. Same with UFO Drip. I have heard from a customer similar with Squirt (which is same type of lubricant as Smoove). If you add any other drip lube on top, then you will need to fully strip clean and prep chain again prior to waxing following Waxing Zen Master guide – with the addition of boiling water rinses first to melt off majority of wax before moving to solvents. Remember for chains the wax needs to bond to clean film free chain metal, if you put drip lube on top and then just rewax – expect wax will not bond to chain metal, and it may contaminate wax in the pot such that all future waxing’s wont go too well either. Smoove / squirt is often used for long extreme events like 24hr mtb racing or mtb stage races over top of msw as that works brilliantly, but cleaning prior to re waxing after is required to keep wax in pot clean and ensure good wax bonding to chain metal.

Zero Friction Cycling, Wet Weather Guide (June 2019)

Immersion suits my schedule.

Silca Velo promotes Silca Super Secret Chain Coating drip fluid as almost chemically identical to Silca Secret Chain Blend immersive wax, and requires users to “ultra clean” a new chain, to remove factory grease. Silca Velo sells it as the cold equivalent of hot wax in a drip bottle. It is low viscosity (very runny) drip. It must be left to dry. If factory grease is not removed, or if it is not dried, it will not lubricate as well as advertised – or as reported by ZFC. Applying this stuff makes a mess; a lot of fluid is wasted dripping off the chain. Super Secret Chain Coating was intially sold in 4 ounce and 8 ounce dripper bottles. Silca later released the product in 12 oz. quantity in a 16 oz plastic jar, for immersing a chain in the product. There is no video for the use of this jar. ZFC has not done a report on this method of application. A user posted a video April 1, 2022 of using a chain cleaner cassette tool to apply the product.

Josh Poertner of Silca Velo addressed topping up an immersively waxed chain in the March 2021 Marginal Gains TV video “Choosing the Best Chain Lube“. When a hot immersion is not possible. and Silca Super Secret chain coating drip is not practical (the user has to give the fluid coating 24 hours to penetrate and dry), his solution, within the Silca products, is to use the oil based Silca Synergetic wet lube for the event or ride. For a rider who rides waxed chains, this means changing chains before the event or, resetting (deep cleaning and hot waxing) the chain before (and after) the event/ride.

Silca recommends “topping up” a chain waxed with Secret Chain Blend by dripping Super Secret Chain Coating on the waxed chain, as demonstated in the Silca Velo YouTube channel “Ask the Expert” video episode 7 “Chain Maintenance“. Josh Poertner presented this advice again May 11, 2022 in the Silca Velo YouTube “how to” episode How to Extend the Life of your Hot Wax Treatment. In the “how to” video Josh Poertner:

• gives a reason for using a wax-compatible fluid lube. He says that the original wax is compressed and displaced, leaving spaces that a fluid will penetrate, providing addtional lubricant;
• suggests that the chain should be cleaned by running it through a microfiber cleaning cloth before dripping a wax compatible fluid on the chain.

I used Silca Super Secret Chain Coating to top up MSW waxed chains in April 2022. It worked when I gave the chain coating fluid time to set.

Adam Kerin does not address the time requirements for low viscosity liquids to dry or set. Using a fluid that needs time to set is not feasible when the lube is applied during a ride when a rider on a long or extreme ride on a waxed chain needs to relube during the event.

Adam Kerin of ZFC addressed the use of wax compatible chain coatings in the ZFC YouTube video Episode 18 Key Learnings from Lubricant Testing May 8, 2022. He suggests (at about 6:30 in the video), for a rider who uses a wet lubricant for a long ride, using the “least wet” product. His advice for best option for a multi-day event or a bike packing trip (at about 40:15 in the video) depends on conditions. He suggests wax compatible drip lubes can be used to top up a waxed chain if on a ride under dry condition, when a rider is making a long stop – such as stopping overnight on a long ride. He favours owning and using a second waxed chain and carrying and changing to the replacement chain on a long ride under wet and very dirty conditions, or using a “dedicated race chain”. Eventually his advice involves compromises; there is no free lunch with chain lubrication.

In the CyclingTips NerdAlert podcast March 16, 2022 “Finding the best chain lube for your needs” Adam Kerin expanded on using fluid chain coatings with a waxed chain. He mentioned Ceramic Speed UFO Drip, Silca Super Secret. He mentioned, in passing, Rex Black Diamond which is a wet lube. (The Finnish ski wax firm Rex released two bicycle chain fluid, 2015-2022.) ZFC has tested and reported on UFO Drip, Silca Super Secret. There is no ZFC report on the Rex product. ZFC has not reported structured test reports of any of these products to “top up” an immersion wax. The site has notes that Rex Black Diamond was in the store and being tested. In the “Concise” waxing video, posted in April 2022, at the 10:55 point, Adam Kerin recommends 3 wax-compatible drip fluid lubricants for use to refresh the lubrication on a waxed chain:

• Silca Super Secret Chain Coating;
• Ceramic Speed UFO;
• TruTension Tungsten All Weather.

Adam Kerin recommends using these products, as needed, to keep the chain running smoothly, between immersive applications of melted paraffin. He suggests a few wax compatible products can be used 3 to 5 times between immersions; he still recommends immersions as the primary way of re-lubrication of a waxed chain. He followed up with a video in September 2022 – ZFC YouTube Channel Episode 21, Lubricant Choice Guide.

Table of Contents

• Tires
  • Pneumatic
  • Resources
• Tires
  • Tire beads
  • Casing, Sidewalls & Tread
  • Contact Patch, Deflection, Tire Drop, Rolling Resistance
  • Wider, Softer, Supple
• Road Bikes
  • Knobs & Cleats
  • Valves, Chucks, Gauges
  • Pressure – Warnings, Manufacturer Recommendations
  • Industry Testing
  • Consumer-led testing
  • Bicycle Quarterly
  • The Consultant’s View
• My Tires
• Pressure Calculators
  • Generally
  • Silca Velo
  • René Herse

Tires

Pneumatic

Modern tires allow cyclists to ride pavements, gravel, trails, dirt, mud, and other surfaces. Pneumatic tires, pneumatically inflated with compressed air, were invented and industrially produced before the end of the 19th century. Earlier, solid rubber was used to manufacture bicycle tires. It was better than other material. Getting a bouncy wheel that did not keep bouncing was one puzzle. Making the tire durable enough to survive contact with the road was another. Rubber proved to be elasic enough to bounce and deform and durable enough to roll for hundreds of miles.

The use of rubber for tires for automobiles and truck led to developments in material science and manufacturing, and to sophisiticated suspension systems. Suspension systems need to be damped to prevent the repetition of cycles of bouncing. Large industries rested on the discoveries that natural rubber was elastic, and could be used to manufacture devices that would contain compressed air. The development of pneumatic rubber tires for cars and trucks allowed bicycle manufacturers to acquire material and devise ways to mass produce tires. Tires have inspired the invention of tire materials, wheel rims, valves, pumps, tire levers, tools, patches, and adhesives. The newer tubeless bicycle tires have led to tire sealant, tire plugs, and tubeless repair kits.

Resources

Cyclists are interested in evaluating tires and learning which tires are efficient and economical. Tire manufacturers will happily say that they manufacture a product, and that their product is superior to other competing products. Scientific material that explains how tires work is more scarce.

Bicycle Tires and Tubes by Sheldon Brown and John Allen at Bicycle Technical Information (the Sheldon Brown site) is a well constructed page with links to terms and topics covering materials and construction. It discusses tire sizes and dimensions. BikeGremlin also explains Bicycle tyre sizing and dimension standards and other technical issues.

BTI is not a resource for information about mountain bikes. BTI published Jobst Brandt’s 1998 “A Brief History of the Mountain Bike ” which said: “The first successful high quality fat-tire bicycle was built in Marin County, California by Joe Breeze”. BTI has “suspension” in its glossary, but does not explain mountain bike suspension systems. Internet seach engines can find pages about bicycle suspension systems – for instance the Wikipedia entry Bicycle suspension but search engines do not respond fulsomely to queries about losses of energy operating bicycles on rough and irregular terrain due to vibration. There is a section on vibration in the Wikipedia entry Bicycle and motorcycle dynamics and a Wikipedia entry on vibration.

Current and historical Information on tires, rubber, and manufacturing tires available in Wikipedia, including pertinent articles explaining:

• natural rubber, and latex rubber;
• the inventor John Dunlop and the pneumatic tire;
• synthetic rubber
• butyl rubber
• vulcanizing (curing or hardening) tires;
• tire tread;
• rolling resistance.

There do not appear to be standards for how to describe the quality of tires. In a rational world, a manufacturer would have goals in developing new tires and test experimental prototypes and production models. Wikipedia has not found that many industries have adopted methods and standards. Wikipedia, as of June 2022, has pages about

• test methods,
• Quality Management systems, and
• consumer-oriented product testing.

Engineer and blogger Tom Anhalt wrote about tires, tube and pressure at the online triathlon magazine Slowtwitch.com, some listed here, and wrote articles on his own Blogspot blog Blather ’bout Bikes:

• July 2007 Tires and wheels for timed cycling events;
• August 2009 What’s in a Tire;
• September 2009 What’s in a Tube

Derek Lakin writes at site called TreadBikely. It seems to be a commercial site. The site has illustrated articles that discuss tire manufacturing:

• How Bike Tires Work: Your Quick-Reference Visual Guide;
• What Are Bicycle Tires Made Of? A Step-by-Step Exploration of the Manufacturing Process.

Tires

Tire beads

A bicycle tire is a strip of durable and stretchy materials laid out in a circle, with edges pulled up to shape the tire in a U-shape. Most tires have beads, a structural part that is durable but not stretchy:

Conventional tires used on 99% of all bicycles are “clincher”type … They consist of an outer tire with a U-shaped cross section, and a separate inner tube. The edges of the tire hook over the edges of the rim, and air pressure holds everything in place.

….

The “bead” is the edge of the tire. On most tires, the beads consist of hoops of strong steel cable. The beads hold the tire onto the rim, and are, in a sense, the “backbones” of a tire. While most beads are steel, some tires use Kevlar ® cord instead.

Sheldon Brown, John Allen, Bicycle Technical Information, Bicycle Tires and Tubes

Wire beads are less common than they were in the 1980s. Modern bicycle tire manufacturers use synthetic compounds to manufacture tire beads. Synthetic aromatic polyamids (Aramid) are popular. The rim of a clincher wheel is machined to turn inward to hold the bead in a “bead” hook. Clincher tires use an inner tube, which is airtight and inflated. The butyl rubber inner tube is the ordinary tube; latex tubes for clincher tires are available.

Tubeless tires are clincher tires without inner tubes. They have to be airtight to be inflated without inner tubes. The wheel rim is sealed with a airtight rim tape. The valve is sealed to the rim (and not to inner tube, passed through and opening. A tubeless ready tire is a clincher tire with an inner tube. A tubeless ready wheel rim may have tubeless rim tape, but a tubeless ready system has an inflatable inner tube – the valve is attached to the tube. Tires have been securely clinched to the wheel and sealed airtight by matching the bead with a bead hook structure or bead channel in the wheel rim.

Tubeless tires need liquid sealant in the tire to seal the tire to the rim. The liquid sealant is also supposed to block small leaks and punctures, as well as sealing the bead. A rider can carry tools to plug a small puncture and reinflate it if the sealant has remained in the tire and still functions. As of 2022, manufacturers of wheel rims are building and promoting rims without bead hooks for tubeless tires. There are cost savings in manufacturing wheel rims, and time and cost savings in changing tires, at the risk of tires coming off the rim.

A “tubular” tire, not to be confused with a clincher, also uses an inner tube. Tubular tires are explained at BTI. Tubulars are uncommon and mainly found on racing bikes.

Casing, Sidewalls & Tread

The body of the tire, technically called the carcass, commonly referred to as the casing, is made of “threads”, coated with plastic and rubber compounds:

Cloth fabric is woven between the two beads to form the body or “carcass” of the tire. This is the heart of the tire, the part that determines its shape. The vast majority of tires use nylon cord, though some use other polyamides. … The fabric threads don’t interweave with crossing threads as with normal cloth, but are arranged in layers or “plies” of parallel threads. Each layer runs perpendicular to the next layer(s).

Some tires use thick thread, some use thin thread for the fabric. With thin thread, there are more threads per inch (“TPI”) and this number is often considered an important indication of tire performance. The higher the TPI number, the thinner and more flexible the tire fabric is. Thin-wall (high TPI) tires tend to be lighter and have lower rolling resistance, but they’re more easily damaged by road hazards.

Bicycle tires have the threads of the fabric running diagonally, (“bias”) from bead to bead. Modern car tires have the main threads running straight over from one bead to the other, known as “radial” construction. Radial tires will also have a “belt” of plies running all the way around the circumference of the tire, crossing the radial plies.

Sheldon Brown, John Allen, Bicycle Technical Information, Bicycle Tires and Tubes

In automobile and truck tires, the threads are called cords and may be made of metal. The term cords is also used to refer to bicycle tire threads. Few modern bicycle tire threads are not made of natural plant fibers (e.g. flax, hemp, cotton). Most are filaments of petroleum synthetic (i.e. plastic), often nylon, spun into threads. The threads are not woven into a cloth or fabric. Thread count is a (vague) measure of the texture of woven fabrics – particularly cotton bed sheets. Thread count is not generally a selling point for modern bicycle tires, except that high thread count was used by some manufacturers to mean that that a casing is strong and “supple”.

The threads cross each other in a grid, and are coated in an elastomer – a plastic compound. Some machines produce ribbons of the specified width; some machines produce sheets that are cut to ribbons of the required width. The ribbons are folded over the beads and welded. The threads reach from bead to bead, on the bias (diagonally). Layers of rubber or synthetic rubber compound are applied to the ribbon to form the sidewalls and the tread. The tires are pressed into moulds, shaped, and laminated. In some tires groups of threads (belts), are laid down with the bands crossing each other.

The tread is the part of the tire that contacts the road:

… This area usually has thicker rubber than the “sidewalls” of the tire, mainly for wear resistance. Most tires have some sort of 3-dimensional pattern molded into the tread, which may or may not enhance traction.

Manufacturers mix different additives with the rubber to achieve desired traction/wear characteristics. Generally, a softer formulation will give better traction, but at the expense of more rapid wear. Rubber is normally a sort of tan color, but most tires are black. This is the result of adding carbon black to the mix. Carbon black considerably improves the durability and traction of the rubber in the tread area.

Sheldon Brown, John Allen, Bicycle Technical Information, Bicycle Tires and Tubes

A tread pattern of grooves in a thicker tread is common for automobiles. It was common for bicycle tires through the greater part of the 20th century, except for some special purpose tires. Tread patterns on bicycles do not displace water. Hydroplaning on a bicycle on concrete or asphalt is not a risk . BTI addressed this in a general article and in a 1997 article by Jobst Brandt, “Tires with Smooth Tread. A writer at CyclingTips addressed treads in 2014 in Rubber side down: the function of road tyre tread patterns:

A road tyre is already very effective at displacing the water thanks to its round profile so Jobst Brandt has argued that a patterned tread is unnecessary. A broader survey of current thinking amongst tyre manufacturers supports this view, though some see room for marginal gains through a tread-pattern design.

Slicks or near slicks have become a popular choices for “road” bikes. Some favour a file tread pattern (thin shallow closely spaced ribs at an angle to the path of travel; like the cutting edge of a file – the tool). Jan Heine, the editor of Bicycle Quarterly, and principal of René Herse Cycles addressed this:

… we are examining myths in cycling – things that we (and most others) used to believe, but which we have found to be not true. Today, let’s look at tire tread: Tread patterns matter – they can make a difference – even on the road. “Bicycles don’t hydroplane,” declared some experts many years ago. “Hence, tire tread patterns don’t matter on the road.” The first part is true – even wide bicycle tires are too narrow to lose traction due to hydroplaning – but tire tread doesn’t only serve to evacuate water from the tire/road interface.

In fact, the tread of bicycle tires has other purposes. I once cycled on the polished stone that surrounded a college library, and I was surprised by the lack of grip: I crashed. Even though I was unhurt, I learned the hard way that the coefficient of friction between our tires and the rocks that make up the road surface isn’t very high. Yet we don’t crash on roads made from the same rocks, but in the form of rougher aggregate in pavement. What happens is that tire and road interlock to create grip.

If our grip came only from pure friction, the size of the contact patch wouldn’t matter. Physics tells us that if you double a tire’s width, it will be pushed into the road surface with half as much force – the two cancel each other. Yet race cars run ultra-wide tires because they provide more grip. What is going on?

Tires interlock with the road surface. Imagine each little surface irregularity like a spike that pushes into the tire. The wider the tire, the more surface irregularities it touches; hence it has more grip. A softer tire also has more grip because the road surfaces pushes deeper into the tire. That is why the tires of race cars use very soft rubber, and why wider bicycle tires at lower pressures offer more grip than narrow ‘racing’ rubber at higher pressures.

There is another way to increase the interlocking between tire and road: provide edges on the tire that ‘hook up’ with the road surface irregularities. Each edge provides a point where a road irregularity can hook up. The more edges you have, the better the tire hooks up.

Jan Heine, February 22, 2018 (updated 2020) René Herse Cycle Journal, Myth Debunked: Tread Patterns Matter, even on the Road

Contact Patch, Deflection, Tire Drop, Rolling Resistance

The weight of the bicycle rests on the contact patches of the tires, the area where each tire deforms from the circular shape of the tire in cross section to the (flat) shape of the surface as the bike rolls forward.

… the role of air pressure in the tire is to hold the fabric under tension — in all but one place, the contact patch with the road surface.

Air pressure can’t add tension at the contact patch, because the contact patch is flattened against the road. Air pressure can only push directly outward, and so here, it pushes directly downward. The downward force of the air must equal the weight load, and so the area of the contact patch approximately equals the weight load divided by the air pressure. (Edge effects and skewing of the weave of the fabric may result in some difference.) For example, if the air pressure is 50 PSI and the load is 100 pounds, the contact patch will be about two square inches.

The threads of the tire fabric can transmit loads only lengthwise and in tension. How then, do they transfer the load from the contact patch to the rim?

Because the contact patch is flat against the road, the curvature of the sidewalls next to it is increased, decreasing their tension, and the angle at which they approach the contact patch becomes shallower. These effects produce the bulge seen at the bottom of a tire under load and transfer the load from the contact patch to the tire sidewalls. The threads of the fabric are pulling downward less and outward more. The load is similarly transferred from the sidewalls to the rim. The sideways forces at the right and left side of the tire are equal and opposite, and cancel out.

Sheldon Brown, John Allen, Bicycle Technical Information, Bicycle Tires and Tubes (see How a Tire Supports its Load)

The rubber at the contact patch bends and rebounds like a spring. The rubber is under tension. The air everywhere in the tire is under pressure but the the tire bulges at the contact patch. The tension of the tire supports the bike.

Because the contact patch is flat against the road, the curvature of the sidewalls next to it is increased, decreasing their tension, and the angle at which they approach the contact patch becomes shallower. These effects produce the bulge seen at the bottom of a tire under load and transfer the load from the contact patch to the tire sidewalls. The threads of the fabric are pulling downward less and outward more. The load is similarly transferred from the sidewalls to the rim. The sideways forces at the right and left side of the tire are equal and opposite, and cancel out.

….

A tire, then, supports its load by reduction of downward pull, very much the same way that spoking of the wheel supports its load. The tension-spoked wheel and the pneumatic tire are two examples of what are called preloaded tensile structures, brilliant, counterintuitive designs working together remarkably to support as much as 100 times their own weight.

Brown and Allen, Bicycle Technical Information, “How a Tire Supports its Load“

The rolling resistance of a tire is an example of elastic hysteresis. The deformity also causes the steering tire to experience pneumatic trail.

Frank Berto (deceased December 2019) was the technical editor of Bicycling magazine, before it became a travel and lifestyle publication. He wrote a book on derailleurs, The Dancing Chain – the 2016 5th edition is still on the market. Frank Berto wrote notable articles on “tire drop” – the change in the height of tire when it bulges under load. Some appeared in Bicycling and other print publication, but were not digitized. He rewrote and updated an article called All About Tire Inflation in 2006. Berto wrote or contributed to an article for Jan Heine’s Bicycles Quarterly published in Issue 19 (V. 5, No. 3, Spring 2007). Steve Vigneau has a pdf copy of “All about Tire Inflation” at his site: https://nuxx.net/files/bicycle/various/Frank_Berto-All_About_Tire_Inflation.pdf. Perhaps other copies and other articles can be located on the Web. Frank Berto explained why road bike tires should be inflated to endure tires stayed on the rim under the forces of cornering, and to avoid “pinching” and deflating an inner tube. For road bikes on pavement, he suggested the pressure should be high enough that tire drop was about 15%. He thought that road riders were overinflating their tires. He thought that mountain bike rides should ride softer, but needed guidance to know the minimum pressure to avoid damage to tires and rims.

Frank Berto largely agreed that road bike tire pressures could be lower than the manufacturers’ marked safety warning. He thought that bike tires need pressure to support the bike and rider and to handle properly. He suggested that the pressure should be enough to keep tire drop around 15% for the bike, rider and load. Tire drop is hard to measure. Like rolling resistance and durability, it is dependent on pressure and the thickness and composition of the tire casing

The deformity causes rolling resistance:

“Rolling resistance” is the mechanical friction generated as the tire rolls. As a segment of the tire tread rolls into contact with the road, it deforms from its normal curved shape into a flat shape against the road, then back to the curve as the tire rolls onward. The deformation of the rubber in this process is what causes the friction. A bias-ply tire has some additional friction because of the “Chinese finger puzzle” effect of the bias plies. The edges of the contact patch scrub against the road as a segment of the tread becomes shorter and wider where it flattens out, then longer and narrower as it becomes round again.

Brown and Allen, Bicycle Technical Information, Bicycle Tires and Tubes: Rolling Resistance

Wider, Softer, Supple

Road Bikes

Manufacturers and consumers used wider tires for some bikes and some kinds of riding for a long time. Mountain bikes had and have wider tires. Gravel bikes have wider tires. Cyclo-cross bikes have wider tires than road bikes. Wider tires hold larger volumes of air at lower pressure than narrower tires:

Tire width and pressure are inextricably linked. It is a serious mistake to consider one independently of the other. Generally, wider tires call for lower pressures, narrower tires call for higher pressures.

Consider, for example, a tire one inch across, at a pressure of 100 PSI (pounds per square inch). Air is pushing down against the bottom half of the tyre cross-section with a force of 100 pounds per inch of length. Each sidewall of the tire bears half that load, and so each inch of length of tire sidewall will be under a tension of 50 pounds. Now let’s consider a tire twice as wide, two inches across, at the same 100 PSI. Each inch of sidewall will be under a tension of 100 pounds. So, a wider a tire would ride harder, and need stronger fabric, if inflated to the same pressure,

The part of the tire that is actually touching the ground at any moment is called the “contact patch.” Generally, the area of the contact patch will be directly proportional to the weight load on the tire, and inversely proportional to the inflation pressure. For instance, if the rear tire of a bike is supporting a load of 100 pounds, and the tire is inflated to 100 PSI (pounds per square inch) the contact area of the tire will be roughly one square inch. If the pressure is reduced to 50 PSI, the tire will squish out until the contact patch has become 2 square inches (or until the rim bottoms out against the tire.)

A common debate among cyclists centers on the issue of whether a wider tire has more or less rolling resistance at the same pressure. The constant pressure is proposed because it appears more scientific to eliminate this as a variable, but this is not realistic in practice. The short answer to this question is that, yes, a wider tire of similar construction will have lower rolling resistance than a narrower one at the same pressure. This fact is, however, of no practical value. If you are comparing two tires of similar construction, with the same load, and the same pressure, either the wider tire is overinflated, or the narrower tire is underinflated!

A tire is supposed to deflect a bit under load. This deflection [is] the whole purpose of pneumatic tires. When you sit on your bike, your tires should visibly bulge out at least a bit under your weight. If they don’t, they’re overinflated.

Brown and Allen, Bicycle Technical Information, Bicycle Tires and Tubes: Width

Stiffness can come from thicker casing and rubber. Tire designers can make tires “supple” by making them with thinner casings and thinner rubber layers on the sidewalls and treads. A supple tire stetches and rebounds rapidly with little loss of energy. It rolls with little rolling resistance, and suspends the bike.

Supple tires have drawbacks:

There are four ways to reduce [rolling resistance], each subject to trade-offs:

[1.] The thinner and softer the rubber/fabric of the tire are, the more flexible they become. The trade-off with this is that the thinner the tire gets, the more fragile it is, and the sooner it will wear out.

….

Brown and Allen, Bicycle Technical Information, Bicycle Tires and Tubes: Rolling Resistance

If the casing and tread are thin, the tire is fragile. The entire contact line of a supple slick tire is exposed to contact with and penetration by small sharp debris. The tread and sidewalls can be gashed by impacts with sharp or pointed edges including broken glass, metal objects etc. on paved roads., and rocks, thorns on gravel and trails.

A patterned tread of hard rubber provided reasonable protection against punctures from small debris, although a pattern leaves an area of the tread with less rubber. The industry addesses puncture resistance with thicker or stronger tire casings and with protection belts. See Cycling Weekly’s Best puncture-proof tyres for cycling 2022.

Knobs & Cleats

Bike, wheel and tire manufacturers designed mountain bikes and gravel bikes with wider tires than road (and cyclo-cross) tires. Tires, with raised tread features – i.e, knobs, ridges or cleats were and are common on mountain bikes. Hybrid mountain bike tires are wider than “traditional” narrow road bike tires but narrower than mountain bike tires. Hybrid mountain bike tires, commuter bike tires and utility bike tires tend to have flat, patterned treads. Generally, gravel tires have knobs.

According to Jan Heine of René Herse Cycles, knobs and other tread patterns do not increase traction on loose aggregate surface materials (gravel). The tires ride on the aggregate material on the top.. The top aggregates slide or tumble on the lower loose material. Knobs do not increase grip on such a surface. Knobs can grip irregular firm surfaces and surfaces covered by thin layers of loose materials.

Some knobby tires can “squirm”:

Knobby treads actually give worse traction on hard surfaces! This is because the knobs can bend under side loads, while a smooth tread cannot. The bending of knobs can cause discontinuities in handling: the tire grips OK for mild cornering, but as cornering force exceeds some critical value, the knobs start to bend and the traction suddenly goes to Hell in a handbasket.

Brown and Allen, Bicycle Technical Information, Bicycle Tires and Tubes: Squirm

It depends on the size and shape of the knobs, the tread material, and the way the tire deforms and contacts the road. The tire streches and deforms around around knobs when the knobs are under the contact patch.

Thick knobs are less vulnerable to puncture than the thinner parts of the tread when the knobs are in the contact patch. The risk of puncture depends on the shape and size of the debris, the angle of impact, speed, and weight. I can’t find any discussion of the role of knobs in protecting the tire from puncture by small debris.

The knobby mountain bike tires made in the 1980s and ’90s were noisy. Tires with knobby tread were also generally thicker and stiffer. Knobby treaded tires were slower because the tires were stiff and slow. I switched from knobby tires to a patterned tread tires on my Giant hardtail mountain bike, and rode patterned tread tires on my hybrids and my old road bike for years. I was quieter and I thought I was faster. I don’t really know.

Manufacturers have modified tread patterns with knobs and cleats to reduce noise. Modern raised tread patterns are more likely to hum rather than buzz or roar, but can still be noisy.

Valves, Chucks, Gauges

The Schader valve used on automobile tires was used on bicycles in North America. Presta valves were once found mainly on the narrow tires and tubes of road bikes. Presta valves have become common on gravel bikes. mountain bikes and hybrid bikes. Bicycle Technical Information lists Schrader, Presta and Dunlop and illustrates these valves. Wikipedia’s valve stem entry has a 4th type.

A valve stem is a self-contained valve. Cyclists refer to the exterior shell, which is often threaded, as the stem. Some small bike pumps can be attached to the stem. Most pumps attach to the stem with a hose fiting on the pump hose called a chuck.

The Schrader valve allowed cyclists to use air pumps at automobile service stations. The pumps had chucks to fit on Schrader valves, and worked on Presta valves if the user had an adapter. These pumps were useful for cyclists if a service station was near (before service stations began to put coin meters on air pumps) if the user could limit or control the volume and pressure. Some industrial pumps could blow out a bike tire, delivering large volumes at high pressure.

In the 1950s and 60s young cyclists learned to test pressure by grasping the wheel rim and pressing the tread to see if the tire would deform under that pressure. It was not a measurement and it depended on strength and effort. Modern riders have access to analog and digital gauges to test pressure, cycling computers to record speed, location and elevation and power meters.

Pressure – Warnings, Manufacturer Recommendations

Many riders expect the manufacturer to specificy an optimal recommended operating pressure. The value stamped or marked by the manufacturer on the sidewall is not the an optimal value or the optimal value:

Most tires have a “maximum” pressure, or a recommended pressure range marked on the side of the tire. These pressure ratings are established by the tire manufacturers after consultation with the legal and marketing departments. The lawyers want the number kept conservatively low, in case the tire gets mounted on a defective or otherwise loose-fitting rim. They commonly shoot for half of the real blow-off pressure. The marketing department wants the number high, because many tire purchasers make the (unreliable) assumption that the higher the pressure rating, the better the quality of the tire. Newbies often take these arbitrary ratings as if they had some scientific basis. While you’ll rarely get in trouble with this rote approach, you will usually not be getting the best possible performance. … Optimal pressure for any given tire will depend on the load it is being asked to support. Thus, a heavier rider needs a higher pressure than a lighter rider, for identical tires.

….

Rough surfaces generally call for a reduction in pressure to improve ride comfort and traction, but there is a risk of pinch flats if you go too far. Even at the lower appropriate pressure, wider tires, because they also are deeper, are more immune to pinch flats.

Brown and Allen, Bicycle Technical Information, “Pressure & Pressure Recommendations“

Industry Testing

Testing of tires for automobiles and aircraft (landing gear) for safety was established by governments, regulatory agencies and regulatory bodies. The performance of materials and components in the various situations became a testing point, and testing would have been necessary to sell those products.

Bicycles have been athletic, recreational and entertainment products, and a means of transportation, and even toys. Tire testing, unless required by consumer protection law or the rules of competition, was unusual. The test data for bicycle tires, if any, may be found in the papers of the inventors and manufacturers.

Josh Poertner, the principal of Silca Velo suggested (to Tom Anhalt in an interview (link below), that manufacturers of bicyle tires had no data about tire operation or performance because they were not testing, and that no one knew how to test bicycle tire performance until the early decades of the 21st century. Poertner said that manufacturers relied on their own reputations and industry practice when they made claims that tires were “fast”, efficient, grippy, puncture-resistant, comfortable etc. In a few of the earliest Silca Velo podcasts Josh Poertner discussed tires and inteviewed engineers who had started bicycle tire performance testing:

• Hysteresis
  • Podcast November 4, 2019- Hysteresis in Marginal Gains;
  • YouTube Video (February 26, 2020);
• November 19, 2019, Podcast – A Conversation with Robert Chung;
• July 9, 2020 Podcast – Tire Pressure Pioneer: Tom Anhalt.

Cyclists started to demand, unsuccessfully, that when manufacturers claim that competive road casing tires are efficient or fast, they should disclose data. Manufacturers can feasibly test protypes and production samples on testing devices that put pressure on tires as tires are rotated against rollers and drums. Manufacturers prefer to rely on brand reputation and price to persuade riders that a tire is fast, light or high quality.

It is not likely that manufacturers will ever voluntarily disclose research on materials and products under development.

Consumer-led testing

For several decades, from the 1960s, riders, mechanics, bike shops and tire manufacturers shared a common belief and maintained that road bike tires should be narrow and inflated to high pressures. Several sectors of the cycling industry were vested in narrow tires by the 1990s. Road bike frame and fork designs accomodated narrow tires. Wheel manufacturers manufactured wheel rims for narrow tires. Tire manufacturers made narrow tires and tubes.

Cycling magazines seldom pay journalists to test products or challenge the practices of manufacturers who pay magazines to advertise products and publicize cycling. There was some industry reseach on rolling resistance in bicycle tires, but the methods and results are obscure. In an article on the triathlon site Slowtwitch.com:

I’ve heard, though I haven’t seen, reports of rolling resistance studies Continental performed that included an analysis of tire width. … it seems intuitive to me, that there is not much if any measurable difference in the rolling resistance of a 20mm tire versus a 24mm tire, all other things equal. Thinner tires require more attention, though, in that they’re more susceptible to increased rolling resistance if they’re not inflated to a sufficient pressure.

….

After you’ve satisfied yourself (or if you’re willing to take my word for it) that a 23mm or 24mm tire will roll as efficiently as a 9mm or 20mm tire, you can move to the next two issues, which are aerodynamics and resistance to flats.

Dan Empfield, Slowtwitch.com, September 2002, Rolling Resistance

Cycling computers and tire pressure gauges allow riders to check their real speed, tire pressure and other parameters. This allowed riders to compare tires and tire pressures.

Independent researchers including Robert Chung, Al Morrison, Tom Anhalt and Jan Heine started research into road bike tires at or after the end of the 20th century. They recorded data with gauges, cycling computers and power meters available to them. They communicated with each other, sometimes, on Usenet or in other internet services, or by telephone.

Tom Anhalt’s equations to convert Crr (Coefficient of rolling resistance) on rollers to flat surface were written in 2006 (published in 2013 on his blog Blather ’bout Bikes) Tire Crr testing on Rollers – The Math. His charts comparing narrow triathlon road racing tires were published in 2013 on his blog Blather ’bout Bikes, Tire Crr Testing on Rollers – The Chart … and a “how to”. Tom Anhalt’s 2009 article on inner tubes formulated the theory of the breakpoint, at which increasing tire pressure increases rolling resistance:

When thinking about tire pressure and what is “fast”, it helps to think of it in terms of a “resistance to forward motion” rather than just thinking about the rolling resistance of the tire itself. As we’ve seen above, increasing pressure inside the tire decreases the rolling resistance of the tire itself, and this fact has been observed in tests of rolling resistance vs. tire pressure on smooth rollers. With increasing pressure, the rolling resistance drops at a decreasing rate until at very high pressures it’s basically a flat line. So, does that mean that increasing pressure in a tire lowers the rolling resistance of the tire on a rougher surface as well? The answer is: “Yes…but..” The rolling resistance of the tire continues to decrease with increasing pressure on rough surfaces as well, BUT at some point the increasing pressure stiffens the “air spring” so much that the increase in transmitted energy loss overwhelms the decreasing rolling resistance of the tire, with the result being that the actual ” resistance to forward motion” starts increasing. The net result is that above a certain pressure (what I like to call the “breakpoint pressure”) higher inflation pressures make a rider slower for a given power input to the pedals. Adjacent is a simplified schematic representation of this effect. Very little data is commonly available that shows this effect. Mainly out of curiosity about whether or not this effect was measurable, and to what the magnitude of the effect was, this author undertook an experiment “on the road” armed with a PowerTap power meter and a method for determining the Crr (coefficient of rolling resistance – actually, in this case the “resistance to forward motion” proportional to velocity) illustrated here.

Tom Anhalt, Slowtwitch.com. September 21, 2009, What’s in a Tube

Robert Chung developed a power equation that considered Cda (drag area) as well as Crr. He wrote a paper “estimating CdA with a power meter” which has been distributed on the internet. Tom Anhalt discussed the March 2012 version of the paper in his Blather ’bout Bikes post August 4, 2013 “Aero Field Testing using the “Chung Method” – How sensitive can it be?“.

Lower pressure was an innovation when applied to road bicycle tires. Some professional road racing teams or their consultants began to experiment. Some experimenters tried to protect their data and insights to maintain advantages for racing teams, consultants, and tire manufacturers. Academics publish. Manufacturers and consultants hoard trade secrets.

Josh Poertner, before acquiring the Italian Silca Velo brand, had worked on wheels and tires as a manager in Zipp’s Speed Weaponry division, advising professional road racing teams. He was familiar with the literature, and was involved in testing. Josh Poertner/Silca Velo started to podcast or make videos in 2019. Josh Poertner sometimes suggests that the modern engineering of Anhalt has superceded the views of Frank Berto. Anhalt relied on some of Berto’s work in a post on gravel tires February 16, 2020 and his graphs on rolling resistance and pressure. The reasoning and the math is complicated. It seems that Anhalt did not overthrow Berto’s work.

Bicycle Quarterly

Bicycle Quarterly (“BQ”), is a printed publication founded by Jan Heine, the principal of Compass Cycling and René Herse Cycle of Seattle, Washington, USA. BQ was first published in 2002 as a publication about “vintage” bikes. Jan Heine favours drop bar bikes without mechanical/hyrdraulic suspensions: road bikes, endurance road bikes, and “all-road” bikes. His favoured off-road forms of riding include cyclo-cross. He rode Unbound Gravel in Kansas in 2022 on a vintage design René Herse 12 speed (2 x 6) all-road bike. He reviews bikes built by custom builders – frequently bikes built with steel frames. BQ has discussed the uses of bicycles on gravel roads, and self-supported distance riding (randonneuring). René Herse Cycles has a YouTube channel. Some of the videos are about rides in the Cascades and other parts of the US Northwest. Some illustrate bike design, handling, and maintenance:

• Myths Debunked: Trail Makes a Bike Stable
• Removing Tires Without Tools

Most of Jan Heine’s books were independently published by Bicycle Quarterly Publications and sold by René Herse Cycles, and by Amazon:

• The Competition Bicycle (2008, reprinted 2012),
• The Golden Age of Handbuilt Bicycles: Craftsmanship, Elegance, and Function (2009),
• René Herse: The Bikes • The Builder • The Riders (2012),
• The All-Road Bike Revolution (2020).

Several of Jan Heine’s books explore history and document the quality of 20th century bicycles. The 2020 book is a short manual for purchasers and riders, and discusses features of modern bikes. Jan Heine frequently observes that modern bikes originated in bicycle designs in the early and middle parts of the 20th century. He respects innovation, but has raised questions about innovations that fail to improve the owner/rider’s experience. He points out that a steel bike from a home builder or small manufacturer can be a better bike, and less expensive than most bikes produced by modern factories.

BQ discussed tire pressure, tire testing and tire design many times. Jan Heine and other riders and writers associated with BQ began testing and writing about rolling resistance and tire tests in BQ issue 17 (aka Volume 5, No. 1, Autumn 2006). Heine respects Frank Berto’s efforts to measure tire drop – he relied on it in developing the René Herse online pressure calculator tool, which became active in the spring of 2022, and cites Berto in journal entries such as “Tire Pressure Take Home” (March 2016).

BQ writers criticized the lack of testing by tire manufacturers, and the use of machines that tested tires on steel rollers or drums. They preferred to test tires by comparing performance on the same surface, without pedalling, by letting bikes roll down measured distances, downhill under low wind conditions – the “roll-down” test. It is a low-tech process that requires time, and measurements of distance, time, and speed. Jan Heine designed tires, manufactured (according to some sources by Panaracer) for Compass and René Herse in Japan, and brought the tires to market. He can be seen as :

• a fan of vintage bikes and
• promoting his brand of supple tires, and
• questioning some of the practices of bike and tire manufacturers.

Jan Heine maintains that hard narrow tires cause the bike to vibrate, even on smooth pavement, which riders perceive as an indication the bike is fast. He summarizes his reseach as supporting the view that an overinflated (hard) tire transmits vibration which slows a rider down – a hard tire is not an effective shock absorber. Jan Heine expressed his views to the readers of the Adventure Cyclist magazine of the Adventure Cycling Association in March 2009 in the article “PSI Rx“. The article discussed the way tires lose energy the rider put out to get the bike rolling forward:

Suspension losses – a bike that vibrates and bounces from one bump to the next is lifted up time and again. Lifting the bike requires energy. Part of this energy is absorbed inthe rider’s body and, on a touring bike, by the luggage. The rest is returned as the bike rolls off the bump. When you accidentally ride into the rumble stripsthat separate many U.S. highways from the shoulder … you also slow down immediately as energy is absorbed in your body. By smoothing out the bumps, pneumatic tires save energy.

Deformation losses – the downside of a soft and squishy tire is the deformation of the tire as the wheel rotates. Most of the energy necessary to bend the tire casing is returned as it springs back into shape at the rear of the contact patch, but some of it is lost to friction within the tire and is no longer available to drive the bicycle forward.

For the best performance and comfort, you need a tire that is neither too hard nor too soft. Instead of inflating your tires to the maximum pressure, run them at the optimal pressure, where they deflect enough to keep the bike from vibrating too much yet are not so soft that they slow down due to excessive deformation losses.

Tire drop measures how much the tire deflects under the load of rider and luggage (Figure 1). For example, if your tire is 30 mm tall without a load and 27 mm tall once you sit on the bike, your tire drop is 3 mm or 10 percent.

….

Properly inflated, wider tires provide much more comfort. When you hit a bump and your tire drop increases from 15 to 18 percent, the 23-mm tire will give you only 0.69 mm suspension, whereas the 37-mm tire deflects 1.11 mm. The added suspension of the wider tire makes it faster and more comfortable on rough roads.

But aren’t narrower tires faster? Not really. The key to a fast tire is a supple thin casing that requires less energy to deform than a sturdier thicker casing. For a variety of reasons, many wide tires use heavy-duty casings, which are indeed slow. Wide tires with high-performance casings can be very fast. In Bicycle Quarterly’s tests, the five fastest tires ranged in width from 24 to 37mm. … thin supple casing is faster because it absorbs less energy as it deforms.Thus, it will deform more for a given bump, making it more comfortable than a sturdier tire with a thicker casing (for the same tire width and pressure). The downside of a thin supple casing is reduced resistance to punctures.

Jan Heine, March 2009, Adventure Cyclist, PSI Rx

Jan Heine’s point is that a supple tire deforms and recovers faster, and absorbs road vibration that a stiff tire will not. Jan Heine acknowledges that the thin supple casing has disadvantages and risks, including reduced resistance to punctures. In the printed BQ articles about his attempts in 2021 to record the Fastest Known Time on the Oregon Outback route, he discusses the risks of gashing supple tires on sharp rocks on gravel surfaces.

Jan Heine and Josh Poertner were guests on CyclingTips Weekly Podcast Episode 9, August 21, 2016 “Rethinking road bike tire sizes and pressures“. Elden Nelson, the (former) blogger at Fat Cyclist was the podcast host. (Elden Nelson and Michal Hottner co-host a podcast about the Leadville Colorado mountain bike race, and the Silca Velo Marginal Gains podcast. He stopped blogging in 2022). James Huang, a CyclingTips technical writer, was a guest or co-host. It may be necessary to play the mp3 version – the 2016 episode is not available in the podcast search function in several podcatcher apps. It is over an hour long. Jan Heine and Josh Poertner agreed that lower pressures were faster. The discussion was summarized in an article in/on CyclingTips in 2017 “What is the optimal tyre pressure?“

The amount of energy that is wasted due to suspension losses increases significantly as the surface of the road gets rougher. Jan Heine measured huge losses when riding the rumble strips that border some roads while Josh Poertner found that even a small amount of over-inflation (10psi) could produce an obvious penalty.

….

Much of the data favours wide (25-28c), supple tyres at lower pressures (60-80psi/4-5.5bar), but every rider should feel free to experiment with tyre size and pressure until they are pleased with the performance of the bike.

They agreed that many riders would be better off with wider, softer and more supple tires, and that the optimal tire pressure is usually below the manufacturer’s safety warning. Each had reasons, and relied on particular data points. Poertner cited “supple” practices of professional road racing teams such as the use of latex inner tubes (as opposed to the more common butyl rubber tubes) and the use of thin casing supple tires in races. Poertner agreed that that overpressure beyond the breakpoint (see Tom Anhalt, above) can produce a penalty. They had some differences, but they did not discuss or debate them. The article in/on CyclingTips is imprecise on some points. As the breakpoint is dependent on weight and sensitive to surface, a rider may have to monitor pressure, use data based calculator programs, and test. Rolling resistance cannot be stated for a tire, without knowing other parameters.

The Consultant’s View

Josh Poertner is an engineer and entrepeneur:

• He views reducing tire pressure as a way of reducing rolling resistance as a marginal gain for competitive riders;
• He favours the idea that new ideas, methods and products are generally better;
• He is aware of the costs and constraints affecting the way tires are made – the cost of material, the costs of machines, transportation, energy and labour;
• He is aware of the way engineers in the automobile-related industries have addressed the constraints;
• He is responsive to the financial constraints of industry.

Like the Ferengi on Star Trek, manufacturers focused on the acquisition of profit as the highest goal can resist making performance the highest standard – it a customer wants high performance, like a professional cycling team manager, the customer needs lots of money.

By 2016, according to Josh Poertner, several road racing teams were using slightly wider tires, and pumping the tires to pressures determined by their procedures for the weight of the rider and bike, and road conditions. Poertner referried to chip seal and gravel as rough. Poertner says he is impressed by Chung, Anhalt and others who have worked with mathematical formulas and gather data with specific tools. Poertner accepts testing on rollers and rotating drums.

This kind of testing involves some machinery. When testing became feasible enough for riders to tinker and test, it also became more feasible for manufacturers and industry stakeholders to test. Testing on machines can be standardized and scaled – and is less costly for manufacturers:

It is relatively straightforward to measure rolling resistance under controlled conditions. A large rotating drum or a set of rollers can be used to reproducibly identify relatively minor differences in rolling resistance allowing different brands, models and sizes to be compared and ranked to identify the “fastest” tyres. The influence of other variables — including tyre pressure, different inner tube materials, and for tubular tyres, the method of gluing — has also been tested.

….

It was Tom Anhalt that first raised the possibility that there was more to rolling resistance than friction alone. By comparing his “lab” data with real-world data, Anhalt noticed an unexpected increase in rolling resistance when high tyre pressures were used on the road. Jan Heine and Josh Poertner subsequently confirmed these observations, ushering in a fresh view on rolling resistance and renewed appreciation for lower tyre pressures.

CyclingTips, May 2017, “What is the optimal tyre pressure?“

Poertner says he thinks roll-down testing is very limited. He appears to view Frank Berto’s work as out of date. Poertner is focussed on the marginal gains of improving aerodynamic performance. Poertner’s views are influencing cycling influeners – e.g. Lennard Zinn:

… if there is a question about whether a fatter tire is faster than a skinnier one on a rough road, where the bigger tire should have the advantage, then on a smooth road, the narrower tire will likely come out ahead. And even if there is little or no difference in rolling resistance, the advantage will go to the narrower tire overall, due to its lighter weight and lower aerodynamic drag. Contrary to that René Herse blog you sent me, bigger tires are slower aerodynamically, except when the rim is wider than the tire.

As for the René Herse tire rolling-resistance results … This is the methodology the author (Jan Heine) employed for those René Herse tire tests. I respect the enormous amount of work, time and effort that went into those tests. On the other hand, you can’t accurately quantify a small friction difference between tires, tire widths, or tire pressures when the main thing you’re actually measuring, namely aerodynamic drag, dwarfs those tiny differences.

…..

I’m still left with the fact that the main thing determining the riders’ speeds was wind resistance, since rolling resistance is so much smaller of an effect. That’s why, if we really wanted to be able to quantify what tire pressure, width, or model was faster than another, we needed to do it in a lab, and it couldn’t be just any lab, as I explain[ed][November 23, 2021, Technical FAQ]

Lennard Zinn, VeloNews, December 14, 2021, “Technical FAQ: Tire Rolling Resistance testing methodology“

“Unfortunately, the only way we can truly know the tire pressure breakpoint for a particular rider on a particular surface is to conduct virtual elevation testing (Chung Method testing), which is a methodology whereby we can use real-world data sets to back-out rider CdA and Crr to very high degrees of accuracy. Having done hundreds of these tests, what we find is that the ‘fastest tire’ in the field is the same one we find on the smooth or rough drum in the lab, but the breakpoint pressure depends greatly on rider size/weight/body composition, as that is what is ultimately driving the whole spring/mass/damper side of the equation.

“If you wanted to test that with a machine, you’d have to do some sort of shake rig testing (as we do with racecars) to determine the spring/mass/damping relationship at each tire contact patch and then model that into your bump drum to simulate that spring/mass/damper on top of the tire. Again, the fastest tire will still be the fastest tire, but you could then accurately predict breakpoint!

“This is what makes our tire pressure calculator so unique; it is a curve fit of thousands of real-world virtual elevation data points taken with pro athletes over a 6+ year period. No, the challenge with this data set is that the selection of tires used is extremely top tier. So, the breakpoint is likely a bit high for those running less extravagant tires, and secondly, our athletes are the fittest in the world, so the breakpoint is likely higher than for the average consumer, as these data were produced with athletes all having very low body fat percentage and therefore, lower hysteresis than most normal people!

….

” … roll-down testing, as you know, is a terrible tool for looking at Crr, and I would go as far as saying that it really just can’t/doesn’t work unless you are trying to parse very good from very bad tires.”

— Josh Poertner, Silca president

” … misinterpretation of smooth drum tests has led to misleading conclusions, and really mostly about pressures. Smooth roller tests on tires of equivalent construction, but varying widths, shows that at equivalent pressures, wider tires test faster on the smooth drums, and, with “appropriate” pressures in each, are basically equivalent. Yes, smooth roller tests, or rough roller tests without damping, don’t properly demonstrate breakpoint pressures. Now that this is understood, it’s also important to remember that below breakpoint pressures, roller testing is a very valuable tool for evaluating tire hysteresis losses.”

— Tom Anhalt

Lennard Zinn, VeloNews, January 4, 2022, “Technical FAQ: Tire Rolling Resistance testing methodology and verification“

Lennard Zinn did not explore or explain Tom Andhalt’s comment on the limitations on drum/roller tests at breakpoint pressure.

Poertner assisted journalists at the Hearst publication Bicycling with an article in the spring 2022 issue (Volume 63, No. 4 at p. 65-66, if one has access to this paywalled magazine. I had access through a public library access licence). A test rider was timed and power output was recorded riding a bike equipped with Pirelli P Zero Race TLR tires in three widths – 26, 28 and 30 mm. Each tire width was at three pressure combinations (F/R psi: 90/95, 70/75, 50/55) over two 2.5 mile courses – a smooth and flat (paved) bike path, and a rolling road with “mostly good quality pavement”. Poertner is cited for explaining Tom Anhalt’s breakpoint math, as saying that wider tires are not necessarily faster, and as a supporting the writer’s interpretation of the test results:

“There is the conventional wisdom that wider tires have lower rolling resistance, and if you took a given tire construction and just scaled it, you would probably find that to be true. But in the real world, because of the way tire makers make their tires, that is not always true. I know this can be hard to hear … but it really just depends.”

….

Its not surprising that a 30 mm tire pumped up to 90/95 was the fastest on … smooth flat road. At [20 mph] rolling resistance is not getting overwhelmed by the aerodynamic penalty of the larger tire.

….

The biggest variable that affects your ideal tire pressure (in terms of speed) will be the surface on which you ride.

Bike and tire manufacturers prefer to test on rollers and drums, and deprecate roll-down tests. there are no standards for the tests or the use of tests in manufacturing and marketing.

In road racing, slightly wider tires and lower pressures have become popular, but the adoption of wider tires in competitive road cycling has been limited. The use of wider tires affects frame design. Bicycle manufacturers are competing to produce lighter and faster bikes. Bike manufacturers are replacing metal with plastic composite. At present, carbon fiber is an expensive single-use plastic. Some bike companies greenwash their use of carbon fiber composite as dematerialization. This uses carbon fuels – the energy costs are significant. The road racing interests have tried to get aerobic gains by reshaping bikes and components and changing cycling apparel.

My Tires

My bike in the last half of 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 was a 2019 model Cannondale Topstone with WTB tubeless ready wheels to fit 700c tires on a 23 mm. (inner bead diameter) rim. I ran the wheels and tires as clinchers with normal basic butyl rubber inner tubes. The WTB Nano tires had knobs, shown in the photo below. The main tread shows as dusty grey; the raised knobs are black. The larger 4 sided knobs were about 4 mm. front to back x 5.7 mm. The thin knobs on the center line were 14.4 mm. fron to back x 3.75 mm. across, and spaced 5.1 mm. apart. An image of the tread pattern of knobs, arranged in chevrons pointing in the path of travel, seen from the front, is below. These were fairly small knobs, and pretty typical of the tread pattern of modern tires. They were quiet – nearly silent. WTB marked the range of inflation from minimum 35 psi/2.4 bars/240 K.Pa to maximum 55 psi/3.8 bars/380 K.Pa.

Those tires, at 700c x 40 mm., were slightly too big to allow me to put fenders on that bike.

I replaced the WTB Nanos with 700c x 38 mm Panaracer Gravel King SK tires. The actual diameter of this tire (distance from the widest point between the sidewalls) on the 23 mm. rim was about 41.5 mm. The tires were marked with tubed maximum pressure 75 psi/5.3 bars/ 525 kpa, tubeless max 60 psi/ 4.0 bars/ 400 K.Pa

These had, as shown in the image below, 3 rows of 3.5 mm. x. 3.5 mm. square knobs (2.5 or 3 mm high) on the center of the tread, 9 knobs per square centimeters, in a waffle pattern, and some slightly larger knobs on the shoulder between the centre of the tread line and the sidewalls (SK stands for small knob). The small knobs on the center line have the center line thick tread on the contact patch, and some grip on pavement. The knobs were soft enough to give with side pressure.

Tom Anhalt included Panaracer GravelKing (SK) at 32 mm. in his post on gravel tires February 16, 2020.

The Panaracer GravelKing (SK) tires rode smoothly, but seemed to me to squirm on worn asphalt, where bitumen showed on the road surface (Wallace Road, in Central Saanich).

From spring 2021 to May 2022, I rode René Herse Barlow Pass 700c x 38 mm. René Herse has this tire in its “all-road”road line of tires. It is basically a road tire. At 38 mm. itis wider than normal for road bikes. The tread pattern is a faint rib to indicate wear, with a fine file tread on the shoulder. René Herse describes/promotes the tires:

For paved roads and smooth gravel, our all-road tread with its fine ribs is the best choice. It combines excellent performance and grip on pavement with surprising traction on loose surfaces – the supple casing allows the tire to grip the surface much better than a stiffer tire.

René Herse advises that the diameter of its Barlow Pass tires should be within .5 mm of 38 mm. The actual diameter of this tire (distance from the widest point between the sidewalls) on the 23 mm. rim was about 41.5 mm with the Extra Light tire and about 42 mm. with the Endurance tire. The height of the inflated tire was about 710 mm. This is little larger than the manufacturer said I could expect. The maximum pressure specified (tubed) is 75 psi/5.2 bars/515 K.Pa.

I picked up some scattered metal debris, which eventually pushed through the tread and casing and caused a number of small punctures of the tube(s). Some caused rapid deflation. Others caused slow leaks. I may have taken some pinch flats. Supple tires are fragile – as many have said.

I installed René Herse Steilacoom 700c x 38 mm. tires in May 2022. This tire was introduced in 2018. It was the first, and at the time the only René Herse (Compass) knobby tire. Tom Anhalt included this tire in his chart of his test and equations of gravel tires in February 2020. René Herse describes this tire as the ultimate cyclocross tire. It has “dual-purpose knobby tread” which René Herse describes this way:

Our dual-purpose knobbies offer supreme traction on dirt, mud and even snow. They are also a great choice for riders who prefer a more aggressive tread on loose surfaces. On pavement, our knobbies will surprise you with their low rolling resistance and excellent cornering grip. They’re the perfect tire for adventures where you don’t know what lies ahead.

The diameter of the tire (distance from the widest point between the sidewalls) was about 38.5 mm., and the height (inclusive of the knobs) is 710 mm. The maximum pressure specified (tubed) is 75 psi/5.2 bars/515 K.Pa. 38 mm. tires can be run at 40 psi, or less, depending on the weight of rider, bike and gear according to online tire calculators including Silca Velo and René Herse .

The knobs are arranged three rows of overlapping alternating knobs (wider models have 5 rows). The knobs overlapping the center line on the 38 mm. tire are 6.8 mm. x. 6.8 mm. Those knobs are engaged steadily, within the contact patch, when the bike is riding straight. The knobs in the outer rows on the shoulders are 7.7 mm. x 7.7 mm. The larger outer knobs closest to the center row line up with every second gap between the knobs on the center line. Some of the outer knobs seem to be in the contact patch and to bear some load in straight line riding. More of the outer knobs will be engaged when the bike is leaned to turn, or rocked.

René Herse has brought out other wider tires with the same knobs. In 2021-22 René Herse has been promoting the tread design by listing the riders who have used René Herse knobby tires in gravel races and endurance events.

These tires work with my fenders. On my first rides on these tires, I thought the tires lived up to claim that dual purpose knobby tiress were as fast as René Herse’s slick 38 mm. road tires. The hummed a bit. They ran smoothly on fresh asphalt pavement, worn pavement, and packed gravel. The knobby tread does not pick up water from a wet pavement. It does pick up bits of gravel and throw them into my fenders, as other tires do.

Pressure Calculators

Generally

Riders can use online calculators to assist in the determination of optimal pressure. These depend on data sets, and several parameters. The calculators are generally in the cloud – on a commercial site. Some require registration. Few remember a user or previous data. All want the user to state/enter weight, wheel diameter, tire width. Getting the weight of rider + bike + load can involve standing on a scale holding the bike, weighing some gear separately, and adding up the weights.

The calculators depend on the rider’s use of a gauge. A rider needs, of course, a pump. Many tire gauges appear to read the nearest bar and the nearest psi. My gauge can read the nearest psi but only reads the nearest .1 bars. Tire gauges, like hoses, have to connect to tire valves. Some air bleeds off. Gauges are vulnerable to wear and tear, and can deliver inconsistent readings.

Some calculators want the use to classify the riding surface. On any given ride, I may encounter a few hundred meters of new pavement, a lot of worn pavement, some chipseal and some gravel. This parameter cannot even be predicted some days. A rider will live with the pressure in the tires, unless the rider want to deflate or pump tires en route.

Silca Velo

The Silca Pro Tire Pressure Calculator is free – it does not charge a fee for registration or use. It no longer asks me to register or log in, but perhaps has tracked me and identified me. It requires 7 parameters – some are drop-down choices. It asks for weight of rider + bike + load, as other calculators do. It asks me to enter, from drop-down menus:

• wheel diameter;
• tire width to the nearest mm. – actual measured width, not manufacturer’s stated width (this is possible with a caliper);
• “Tire type”;
• average speed. The 6 options start at Recreational and include “Pro Tour”;
• Weight distribution – a front/rear % split:
  • Time trial or triathlon 50/50;
  • Road 48/52;
  • Gravel 47/53;
  • Mountain bike 46.5/53.5;
• Surface condition

Surface condition parameter has 10 choices (as of June 2022) from “Track (Indoor wood)” to “Category 4 Gravel”. There is a visual guide. The difference in optimal pressure between smooth pavement and chipseal can be about .4 bars (nearly 6 psi). I use worn pavement or Cat. 1 gravel (not “poor” pavement) as the closest estimatse of local conditions.

This calculator will state calculated optimal pressures to the nearest psi or .05 bar. (1 bar = 14.5 psi. At two decimal places, the bar number also give the pressure in K.Pa; 1 bar = 100 K.Pa). The optimal value for a recreational speed on poor pavement, bad gravel or a dirt trail, is almost a minimum pressure. It is worth checking pressure almost weekly and making time to pump tires up in case they have lost .2 or .3 bars.

René Herse

The René Herse Tire Pressure calculator does not calculatedifferent pressures for front and rear tires. It requires only two parameters: weight and tire width. It provides two optimal settings a “soft” setting and “hard setting”. It is based on Frank Berto’s tests and his theory that tire drop was the best signal or symptom of optimal pressure.

The soft setting is close to the Silca setting for Cat. 1 gravel. The hard setting is close to the Silca setting for tires of the same width, for worn pavement.

This is Part 9 of a series of 9 posts organized as a single work,
collectively “endless”. From March-August 2024 I reorganized and revised the long article extensively. There are 8 parts, individually published as
posts on this blog. This is the table of contents of the series, the 9th post. This post has been most recently updated August 26, 2024.

The series is organized into sections, numbered for reference, in this
series table and in the table pf contents for each post.

Part	Link	S.	Topics
1	Chain Wear		My discovery of wear Issues
		1	Internet search, Bike knowledge sources
		2	Safety Bicycles — Variety — Manufactured Industrially — Bike Brands — Shops or Stores — Mechanics
		3	Bike Chains
2	Roller Chain	4	Chain Drive
3	Lubrication	5	Lubrication Theory
		6	Petroleum
4			Lubricants
		7	Fluids — Motor Oil — Drip Lubes — Engineered — Wet and Dry marketing — Additives
		8	People and Projects
		9	Efficiency Tests
		10	Wear tests – chains & lubricants
		11	Innovation 2022-24
		12	Consumers’ options
5	Cleaning	13	Cleaning
		14	Deep Cleaning with Solvents
		15	New Products
6	Durability	16	Modern Chains
		17	Durable Chain
7	Paraffin	18	Paraffin Wax
		19	Method
		20	Wax-compatible Drip Lubes
8	Learnings for Make Benefit		Assortment of Notes