Lubing

johnboy183 wrote:

Afternoon all. Never thought about this before because I’ve never been involved as pit crew during a race. When your rider swaps bikes because conditions are muddy awful, like we’ve seen this weekend, after washing bike down, do you lube the chain and spray gt85 etc all over it?

Until this season I've always used Finish Line wet lube, and equipped my pit crew with an aerosol of the same lube to spray on the chain if there's time. I also do the same post-race, which seems to stop any issues with the chain corroding on the way home.

This year I'm experimenting with dry lube; seems good in dry conditions, but I haven't raced enough in the wet to comment on how well it works. The plan with that is to relube when I clean the bike (at the venue) after racing; I only have one or possibly two races this year where a pit crew is a possibility, so I'm not going to worry about those (and by that stage I may have decided to switch back to wet lube anyway).

I wouldn't spray anything on the bike without checking with the owner (for instance when pitting ad-hoc for clubmates); if they're using a dry lube and you spray it with something else, they might have to degrease it afterwards.

Based on having used water as an emergency chain lube on my road bike (surprisingly effective if there's no other option) I'd say that without lube the chain of a CX bike isn't going to come to much harm during a 40-60 min race if it stays wet, though you'll want to spray *something* on it afterwards to stop it corroding on the way home.