Juice Lubes Dirt Juice Hero

Juice Lubes' Dirt Juice Hero is in fact a drivetrain degreaser – the "ultimate" – and one it reckons is the fastest going. Spray on, rinse any residual gloop and kaboom!!! Your drivetrain is gleaming...

Other than telling us that it's a super-flammable cocktail that is toxic to fish, mustn't be used near sources of ignition and stored in cool dry places, the exact ingredients are a mystery. However, it seems based around butane propellant and petrochemical rather than organic solvents. Common sense suggests minimising contact with rubberised components and unsealed finishes.

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Its arrival coincided with several new chain lubes, the sort that spit the dummy unless recipients are surgically clean. My Holdsworth TT bike had been fed a fairly bog standard Teflon/mineral oil formula for several months, my Univega a highly sophisticated ceramic.

Given the blurb, I was literally expecting to blast one minute and be introducing new lube the next. While organic debris literally fell away, even the more basic 10w/40 and PTFE-based preps needed three applications and stiff brush coaxing in between.

Clipping on the chain bath and squirting inside while turning the cranks certainly helped. By contrast a store brand degreaser virtually licked both variants clean on contact and promptly evaporated.

While marketed as a drivetrain cleaner, I couldn't resist testing its prowess on other oily, greasy stuff.

>> How to clean and lube your bike chain 

Having stripped my fixed-gear winter bike/trainer ready for the frameset's powder coat makeover, I bundled chain, sprocket, crank bolts and headset races into an old 5kg chocolate punnet and blasted them with the Hero.

Credit where due, it certainly loosened the PTFE and lithium pastes pretty convincingly, but subsequent squirts and more stiff brush action were needed before the surfaces were satisfactorily clean. Two liberal helpings, followed by enthused scrubbing, had the stainless steel chain gleaming.

Overall performance isn't bad, the blurb just promises more than it can actually deliver. Even allowing for the fact that lubes are increasingly resilient and anything too potent has implications for seals and other rubberised components in the longer term, several cheaper competitors do a much better job.

Verdict

Reasonable anti-lube but distinctly average when pitted against other brands