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TECH NEWS
Muc-Off Nanotube Chain6Team Ineos to use Muc-Off Nanotube Chain at the Tour de France derived from £6,000 Bradley Wiggins’ Hour Record chain
You’ll see all the stops pulled out for the Tour de France, and Team Ineos will utilise Muc-Off’s Nanotube Chain (NTC) based on the £6,000 chain first developed for Bradley Wiggins’ Hour Record ride back in 2015.
You don't hear the phrase marginal gains as much these days, but specially treated chains definitely fall into that camp. With one study finding a chain to be 98.6% and lube having no effect on that figure, we really are talking marginal gains. But in a race where even the smallest margins matter, could it be the difference between winning and losing?
- Muc-Off unveils “fastest chain in the world”
Since that original development, the British company has been offering an optimised chain for £109 which has been cleaned and treated with NanoTube Speed Film. “What makes the NTC so special is its ability to deliver wattage savings consistently over long periods of time and in all weathers. Other chains may claim to be ‘the fastest’ but what they don’t tell you is for how long and in what conditions.,” explains the company.
Much of that heady £6,000 cost for the Hour Record chain was the hundreds of hours of testing and building of testing equipment required to produce a chain that improved efficiency. Not only did Muc-Off develop a brand new lube, but it also created a special cleaning and coating process to ensure maximum efficiency, and a rig to test them on.
Team Ineos will ride Shimano Dura-Ace chains that have been through a nice step procedure involve first finding the most efficient chains in a batch by testing on its own dynamometer, before several rounds of sonic cleaning and drying, before the magic happens.
By hand, Muc-Off treats each chain with a proprietary nanotube formulation in a heated ultrasonic bath. This formulation includes graphene which helps to fill in the tiny gaps and rough edges in the surface of a chain at a microscopic level.
The chains are then run through the dynamometer again to “record the exact performance gains which are passed on to the team and recorded internally.” Muc-Off doesn’t reveal the exact figures for the chains supplied to Team Ineos,
Yes, Muc-Off also developed a machine to lab test the chains. The Chain Lubricant Optimisation Dynamometer measures the friction generated by the chain. Muc-Off claims its testing shows the NTC chain saves 10 watts against a rival coated chain from Ceramic Speed and lasts 400km per application.
It’s not the first time the team have used these chains, they rode them in the 2015 season with Vasil Kiryienka taking the men’s elite individual time trial world championships. The chains were also used by Team GB at the Rio Olympics in 2016.
Will it give Team Ineos the edge? We'll soon find out.
David worked on the road.cc tech team from 2012-2020. Previously he was editor of Bikemagic.com and before that staff writer at RCUK. He's a seasoned cyclist of all disciplines, from road to mountain biking, touring to cyclo-cross, he only wishes he had time to ride them all. He's mildly competitive, though he'll never admit it, and is a frequent road racer but is too lazy to do really well. He currently resides in the Cotswolds, and you can now find him over on his own YouTube channel David Arthur - Just Ride Bikes.
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19 comments
As suggested above, £6000 might get you a couple of weeks of someone's time to trial some different lubes and application methods.
Each chain won't be £6000 alone - any research costs would be split between however many chains. If that is 9 chains per rider, 8 riders.... The cost per chain really then isn't that much. More than an amateur might want to pay but it would be pretty hard each chain to cost more than a few hundred even surely??
So will they be using them for every stage? or will this be for TTs and big mountain stages?
If they're using them on every stage that's nearly 9 chains per rider throughout the tour, not including rest day usage, warm up/down riding back to the bus etc. Then again if any team is going to go to this effort it would be Ineos
"Team Ineos will ride Shimano Dura-Ace chains that have been through a nice step procedure...."
But no mention of the choreographer.
Six grand is not much for an engineering research project. That would get you a short bit of lab space with a grad student.
Does it make a difference? They claim it does, and I guess it is something that is reasonably measurable. I don’t have a test rig, so as some random on the internet I’m in no position to comment. Is it possible that a component with lots of tiny moving parts rubbing against each other creates friction? Yes. Does lubricant reduce that? Yes. Are some lubricants better than others, especially over time? Yes, Lurpak is not as good as Muc-off dry lube. How much better is it than Unicorn poop? No idea, but it useless to compare claims from different manufacturers under different test conditions. So a claim on the same rig has more merit.
I’m interested in the science. Will I buy one? No, I didn’t get selected for the tour this year.
Remind me not to come to your house for toast...
“Muc-Off claims its testing shows the NTC chain saves 10 watts against a rival coated chain from Ceramic Speed”
marketting billshit, a rock and roll gold lubed chain is 5w, so if they reduce the friction to 0w with this lube, that’s 5w saved, which is impossible.
They will be saying after 200km the lube on the other chain is gone so friction goes up to xW which we are 10w lower than, total fudgery billshit.
The argument that anyone who has benefited from today’s technological marvels cannot therefore wish for a better world to pass on to future generations is a completely spurious one.
I am certainly onboard with that, it's the obsession and the lack of awareness that is worrying. Do people really need to troll the internet to find things to be offended by? I mean the news that a cycling team has picked a new chain isn't particularly news and certainly not the forum for ecological debate or change. Much like travelling hundreds of miles to a festival, sleeping in plastic tents, watching huge stage productions and complaining about climate change!
if your struggling to keep up,with your mates or your mum while out riding this will make a huge difference as will the shape of you tubes or special socks or pillows or a nice car following you say like a jaguar or something . I would definitely not recommend hiring a DR who knows about PED,s such as DR Leinders and I would definitely not take any PED,s because they will make no difference whatsoever. It’s certainly not possible to turn a rider who never got into the top 30 of a GT and won nothing into a tour winning champion with PED’s only a clean chain can do that. . Only a clean chain like this exact one that is being sold to you now can achieve this . I remember Armstrong always saying it was his clean chain not the PED’s that won him 7 tours . Buy this chain now it will turn you into a great rider .
Any team sponsored by the petrochemical industry, including indirectly via a country with an oil-dominated economy, should be required to lube their chains with crude oil scraped off the back of sea bird.
Good one!
yawn ! I'm sure you don't use any hydrocarbon fuelled transport or any derivatives of the petro chemical industry, the plastics on your bike for example...
Oh yeah that's right in order to criticise an environmentally disastrous corporation you have to be the archangel Gabriel yourself. Bore off boot licker boy.
Whilst t would be nice to live in this utopia where we dont need hydrocarbons, the reality is for a long time yet we are utterly reliant on them. As far as companies go Ineos isn't that bad, there are far worse offenders out there. But you carry on with your opinions. No need to be the archangel Gabriel, just try be a little less hypocritical.
Yep, plenty of chinese companies killing the world and probably loads involved in the supply chain of bike parts.
Everyone on Road.cc will no doubt have bamboo frames, dock leaf bartape, seats made from a fallen oak and brakes blocks made from leftover sausages and black pudding, not drive cars, use a computer or phone or even actually live.
As for the chains. I think marginal gains needs to be re-titled fuck all gains.
Depends if you want to be a hypocrite or not, clearly you are happy to be one
That would be a marginal gannet
Superb!
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Six grand for a chain is hard to swallow.