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review

Squirt Long Lasting Chain Lube

8
£12.99

VERDICT:

8
10
Durable wax lube that keeps your chain impressively clean and smooth
Long lasting
Resists dirt buildup
Easy to apply
Even new chains need to be degreased and cleaned before application
Weight: 
135g

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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.

No rain on chain again

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.

> Get your gears shifting sweetly: How to tune a rear derailleur

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.

Value

At £12.99 for 120ml it's not too bad per application: it's certainly cheaper than the Green Oil Dry Chain Wax at £14.99 for 100ml.

Matt was impressed with the Morgan Dry Blue Wax, especially in dry weather. That now costs £11.95 for 125ml.

Silca's Super Secret Chain Lube is much more expensive than most at £32 for 120ml. It is highly regarded for its performance, but according to Mike it doesn't last that long in typical UK conditions.

Overall

The Squirt Chain Lube is well balanced for price and durability. It is hardwearing in all sorts of conditions and, once you have done that initial deep chain clean, it is easy to keep topped up.

Verdict

Durable wax lube that keeps your chain impressively clean and smooth

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road.cc test report

Make and model: Squirt Long Lasting Chain Lube

Size tested: 120ml

Tell us what the product is for and who it's aimed at. What do the manufacturers say about it? How does that compare to your own feelings about it?

Squirt says, "Squirt is a unique chain lubricant – it contains waxes and water in emulsion form that stays clean, lasts long and extends drive train life. It is biodegradable and available in three sizes."

It's a durable wax that keeps your chain clean.

Tell us some more about the technical aspects of the product?

Ingredients:

Paraffin and Hydrocarbon Waxes

Water

Emulsifiers

Application: road bikes every 6hrs, MTBs every 4hrs

Rate the product for quality of construction:
 
8/10
Rate the product for performance:
 
8/10
Rate the product for durability:
 
8/10
Rate the product for value:
 
6/10

Tell us how the product performed overall when used for its designed purpose

Easy to apply and keeps dirt and dust off of the chain.

Tell us what you particularly liked about the product

Keeps your chain clean in all weathers.

Tell us what you particularly disliked about the product

Initial application takes a bit of work, but Squirt isn't alone in that.

How does the price compare to that of similar products in the market, including ones recently tested on road.cc?

It's in the same ballpark as the other wax lubes we've tested. The Silca option mentioned in the review offers arguably better performance when it comes to friction, but it isn't as durable and it's expensive.

Did you enjoy using the product? Yes

Would you consider buying the product? Yes

Would you recommend the product to a friend? Yes

Use this box to explain your overall score

This is a sensibly priced and a durable wax that cuts down on chain cleaning.

Overall rating: 8/10

About the tester

Age: 42  Height: 180cm  Weight: 76kg

I usually ride: This month's test bike  My best bike is: B'Twin Ultra CF draped in the latest bling test components

I've been riding for: Over 20 years  I ride: Every day  I would class myself as: Expert

I regularly do the following types of riding: time trialling, commuting, club rides, sportives, fixed/singlespeed,

As part of the Tech Hub here at F-At Digital, our senior product reviewer Stu uses the knowledge gained from putting well over a 1,000 products through their paces (including hundreds of bikes) to write in-depth reviews of a huge range of kit. After first throwing his leg over a race bike back in 2000, Stu's ridden more than 160,000 miles on road, time-trial, track, and gravel bikes, and while he's put his racing days behind him he still likes to smash the pedals rather than take things easy. Although, as he spends a fair bit of his time reviewing ebikes these days he's becoming an expert in letting the motor take the strain. He's also waiting for 23mm race tyres to make a comeback!

Add new comment

7 comments

Avatar
rileyrg | 8 months ago
1 like

Are you seriously telling us you need to relube every 6 to 7 hours? You've got to be kidding!🤣🤣🤣🤣

Avatar
Jimmy Ray Will | 1 year ago
0 likes

I've never been able to make this stuff work.

No matter how diligently I degreased the chain(s), I found that the wax fell off the chain like the rubber from an F1 tyre in no time at all. Everything apart from the chain was covered in little grey balls of wax. 

Too much lube they said, so I used less lube... the balls of wax still fell off, and I was then left with bare metal and a lot of noise.

I tried it on several chains and using several different degreasing methods, but always the same result. 

I blamed myself and sacked it all off... never regretted doing so. On reflection though, I might have just had a bad batch of lube.

Avatar
0-0 | 1 year ago
1 like

The article starts with "long lasting" and ends with "you need to keep topping it up" 😉

Avatar
ejocs replied to 0-0 | 1 year ago
0 likes
0-0 wrote:

The article starts with "long lasting" and ends with "you need to keep topping it up" 😉

If you look at the author's actual words rather than the words you made up and falsely attributed to him...

road.cc wrote:

once you have done that initial deep chain clean, it is easy to keep topped up

...you'd see he wasn't talking about the need to top up often but rather the ease of topping up--when needed--after the initial and somewhat laborious deep clean.
 

 

Avatar
mjc2669 | 1 year ago
1 like

Used for about 18 months and it was great, better than any oil lube. I've now gone fully into waxing chains with Crockpot... So far much, much cheaper than Squirt just using paraffin wax but needs to be re waxed a bit more often perhaps. Will keep a tube of Squirt around for emergencies.

Avatar
Secret_squirrel | 1 year ago
1 like

I've been using this stuff for about 2 years now and highly recommend it - my chains have never been so clean and silent.   I'm surprised about one thing didn't get mentioned and that's after a while you get tiny black balls of dirty wax building up on the chain, which makes a silver chain look a tad grey from a distance.   It's no big deal and unlike oil it barely leaves mark on your hands.   It's about a gazillion times better than oil based chain lube.   Love it. 

Avatar
Matt Page replied to Secret_squirrel | 1 year ago
2 likes
Secret_squirrel wrote:

I've been using this stuff for about 2 years now and highly recommend it - my chains have never been so clean and silent.   I'm surprised about one thing didn't get mentioned and that's after a while you get tiny black balls of dirty wax building up on the chain, which makes a silver chain look a tad grey from a distance.   It's no big deal and unlike oil it barely leaves mark on your hands.   It's about a gazillion times better than oil based chain lube.   Love it. 

The black build up is usually a factor if you use too much Squirt. Even using a low amount it will eventually build up, but a far easier clean than chain oil.

I used Squirt for LEL, total distance 1500km and topped up twice. Even then it was just in case, not because the chain was making too much noise.

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