Green Oil Wet Chain Lube 100ml

Green Oil's Wet Chain Lube is an exceptionally good barrier against water, dirt and corrosion, seriously reduces maintenance and won't turn the planet into an unliveable wasteland. The price is good and the applicator is well designed. There's really nothing not to like.

• Pros: Attracts minimal dirt, stays on even after washing, lasts ages
• Cons: The recycled bottle's a bit of an ugly colour...?

The most striking thing about Green Oil is the bold claim that one application lasts 125 miles, or even more. To be quite frank, I didn't believe it. Rural roads can be hell on drivetrains even during the summer, and none of the wet, dry, ceramic or wax lubes I've tried have ever come close to a mileage like that. Especially not in winter, where rides regularly end with a bike looking like it's been stolen from a cyclo-cross race.

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To test the claim, I cleaned the chain and applied lube as instructed – one spin round from quicklink to quicklink and it was done. A quick buzz through a rag took the excess off. I didn't add a drop more for 130 miles.

After almost every ride I hosed (not pressure washed) everything thoroughly with clean water, though I did avoid getting other cleaning products near the lube. I also wiped the chain by spinning it through a rag, both to dry it and remove blackened goop from the sideplates. Though I felt that was necessary, Green Oil is noticeably less sticky and grime-loving than many wet lubes, and the build-up was nowhere near as bad as some.

It has a slightly matt sheen and (after a while) an almost snotty, semi-dry consistency that really is tenacious, yet it's remarkably resistant to contaminating so badly you have to strip it all off and reapply it. A welcome knock-on effect is that you get through a lot less degreaser as well.

Even after 100 miles, I could leave the washed-down bike a couple of days, come back and spin the cranks backwards without problems. With many lubes you'd find the chain skipping and clacking as stiffened-up links struggled to bend, and you might well find rust spots too. No corrosion here.

All this makes Green Oil's Wet Lube particularly good for commuter bikes, gravel bikes, or road bikes on multi-hour rides through the worst conditions.

This impressive tenacity is said to be thanks to N-Toc, which sounds like a rapper but is in fact a refined plant extract with similar long-chain molecules to petrochemicals. Obviously, there are no petrochemicals, such as polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) – the stuff that makes Teflon, GT-85 and many chain lubes so slippery – in Green Oil at all.

The entire product is super-eco-friendly. It's totally biodegradable, packaged in recycled plastic, and your bottle can be refilled at a small (10-20p) discount by selected bike shop dealers. Even the ingredients are sustainably sourced, so Green Oil isn't simply passing the ecological impact up the supply chain.

To be clear, this test was harsh. Conditions were frequently awful, with heavy snow, road salt drying in spatters as high as the handlebars, drifts of grit from fresh potholes, and whole fields dragged from the hills by meltwater and dumped like murder victims in the road. You're unlikely to encounter worse.

Green Oil recommends really slathering the chain if there's snow about (to protect against the road salt), but I didn't like the blackened result of the excess, or the fine grit it presumably held. Keeping it thin by wiping (especially the side plates) did not cause any issues.

Outside of a test I'd clean and re-apply this lube more frequently, though that's down to my own (possibly excessive) mechanical sympathy rather than any sign it's necessary. I've suffered no untoward noises, shifting or drag problems with nothing more than a few crank spins through a dry rag.

Pedros Syn Lube does a similarly good job of staying stuck without gluing every passing shard of grit to your chain, but at £8.99 it's almost a third more expensive per 100ml. It also lacks Green Oil's eco credentials.

Verdict

Excellent long-lasting lube that keeps faff and mess to a minimum