[Tech Corner] How To Use Muc-Off Hydrodynamic Lube

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Applying chain lubricant is probably one of the simplest things one could ever do on their bicycle. Well think again – Muc-Off, in their pursuit of high performance lubrication have a specific method for applying chain lubrication that requires a bit of care and attention.

We have had some of this lubrication on test, at almost €40 a bottle we thought it was interesting to show how to use it and what it looks like applied.

Tools: Hydrodynamic Lube, UV light.

This is the hydrodynamic lubrication Muc-Off sell, expensive at €40, so how do we make sure we apply it correctly?

In the pack of lubrication comes this UV light. In daylight you cant really see it.

However in the dark it becomes obvious.

Muc-Off in their wisdom have created a very high performance lubrication, but to get the best performance it needs to be applied evenly, looking here the colour is blue, but hard to see on a chain despite the colour.

Shine a bright UV light and the lubrication starts to glow revealing where it is.

Start to apply the lubrication as you would normally do on to the bicycle chain.

Looks pretty obvious at first where is covered.

But after a few spins of the pedals the lubrication disperses and it is hard to know where it is.

Put the bike in a low light situation, shine the UV light and hey presto! You can see the coverage of the lubrication.

Here coverage is poor, only a few parts of the chain are covered so we need to run the chain a bit more and apply more lube.

A few more turns and a bit more lube and the chain starts to glow purple where the lubrication has touched, note the roller parts are important to be covered evenly, here each roller has enough so job done! (Note focus was hard to achieve for the camera in UV, but to the naked eye it was clear where the lube was.)

Overall, a simple technique that we thought we would share, although lubrication should be a no nonsense job, Muc-Off have applied the highest tech to the process. In reality the improvements of this lube are hard to measure by riders, only very sensitive devices can be used to see percentage improvements which Muc-Off showed us a while back.

Their numbers though are one of the reason top road (Team Sky) and off road teams (Santa Cruz Syndicate) use their lubricants. We thought the method though is interesting and the fact that we have used this method for a while also led to our lubrication bottle lasting a bit longer than normal, which was a pleasant surprise, as we can actually see where we put it and not over apply. It worked well and stayed good for one ride and kept us shifting smoothly.

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