Road.cc
Squirt Long Lasting Chain Lube by Stu Kerton
Squirt Long Lasting Chain Lube keeps your chain running cleanly and smoothly regardless of the conditions, and it's quick and easy to apply. It's a decent price as well.
Squirt is a mixture of paraffin and hydrocarbon waxes, water and emulsifiers which – unlike oil-based lubes – dries after application. That means it can protect your chain from road spray and rain without encouraging abrasive particles of dirt and dust to stick.
As with any lube, ideally you want to be adding it to clean chain, and Squirt recommends degreasing whether your chain is old or brand new. This means that all of the cavities between the rollers, pins and plates are unblocked, allowing Squirt to fully penetrate. You must also make sure its dry before application. It can be a bit if a faff initially.
With the chain fitted and the bottle well and truly shaken, you apply the lube to inside of the rollers as you rotate the crank. You then leave it five minutes and do it again. If it's a road bike, Squirt says to finish off by cleaning the excess from the outsides of the chain; on a mountain bike, though, you just leave it.
I used this on two road bikes and two gravel bikes, and at the start of the test period the weather was changeable. I had a few wet rides before hitting a prolonged dry spell that because a drought.
On the road bikes, rain and spray would just glide off leaving the chain clean, and in the dry and dusty conditions that followed nothing stayed stuck to the surface to any noticeable degree.
Squirt says to reapply the lube after around six hours of riding on the road, which I did on one of the bikes, and left the other to get noisy. After six hours the wax covering still looked pretty complete, and the chain ran smoothly and quietly. After 10-12 hours it was starting to get a little dry, but it was still clean and wearing very little residue.
Obviously, this will all depend on the conditions you ride in, but I'd say it's one of the most durable lubes I've used.
Just dust if you must
On the gravel bikes things were pretty similar. Early muddy trails didn't cling to the chains and, as the gravel tracks dried up and became super dusty, this stuff kept that at bay too. Both chains were ready for a reapplication after about 6-7hrs of riding.
Squirt is available in a range of sizes, with this 120ml bottle being the most common. They also do 15ml bottles for carrying on the bike, and a workshop-ready 500ml bottle (I'd say each application probably uses around 5ml). There is also a Low-Temp version that I will be testing as we head into the winter months.
Read full article here!