Latest new 43 – Muc-Off Files Part 1!

Good morning dear low friction peeps and welcome to the first latest news from this project week.

Recently I was finally able to have a call with Muc-Off R&D lab to hopefully do a deep dive discussion to understand a number of mysteries re M-O and their testing & marketing claims, as well as the discrepancy with their testing and ZFC test results.

The call ended up not quite going how I personally wanted it to go – I really was looking for the call to get to specific questions and concerns, and really drill down to get specific information, input and answers to such – however M-O directed the call more towards a bit of a show and tell style as they had some pretty fancy tribology test equipment they wished to take me through and how this is going to improve the direction of lubricant testing (I am reserved on that at this time).

I was able to get a bit of information from them on a couple of key questions, but the amount of information really just lead if anything to more questions.

Key concerns regarding previous testing results and marketing claims remain (and they are pretty big concerns), and so I have sent M-O quite the list of questions for which I, and by extension all cyclists interested in which manufacturers / products will genuinely deliver them an ultra low friction chain on race day, and / or a super long lasting drivetrain – will want to know the answers to these questions.

M-O also presented a case during the call re why they disagree with ZFC wear correlation testing being a strong link to a lubricant’s efficiency performance. Again, I really would have liked to have been able to dive deeper on this and have a better summary of both sides, but we were not able too, and so there is again a really fun list of questions put to Muc-Off regarding this which I think if you read you are likely to find very interesting.

I won’t preamble too much here like normal, as the M-O files document has its own preamble already which is important reading to understand the history and context of why ZFC has had some large and long-term concerns re M-O and their testing + marketing claims as well as their lubricants real world performance. It is worth remembering that all M-O lubricant tested to date (their 3 top lubricants) have recorded frankly astounding wear rates. I am not surprised they are presenting a case to de-link wear rates and friction – tricky – but I, and I hope by extension you, are going to need a bunch more information yet to change our understanding of basic physics.

I think it may be a while for a response, and I am giving this high odds of the response being corporate and not addressing the specifics we need addressing, but I live in hope that I am incorrect and M-O tackle the questions and concerns head on with specific detail that directly answers the specific questions.

Click here to continue on to the Muc-Off file – add more coffee as needed!