CeramicSpeed UFO Drip Chain Coating – First Look

· by · in By Mike, Cycling, Drivetrain, First Look, Triathlon. ·

While we are a little late to the party on this one, we wanted to be sure we didn’t miss covering it. Back at the end of August, CeramicSpeed introduced their new UFO Drip Chain Coating, telling us that it provides:

  • 20% lower friction than the second fastest bottled lubricant in initial pre-ride friction
  • 83% lower than the second fastest bottled lubricant in post-ride friction
  • 46% decreased drivetrain wear vs wet lubes
  • Minimum of 200k between applications

The coating is a bottled product for chains that is applied in liquid form, and which hardens to a 100% dry chain coating. CeramicSpeed tells us that it generates less friction than any other chain lube on the market (being out-performed only by the factory-treated UFO Racing Chain). And as Friction Facts’ research (note Friction Facts is now a part of CeramicSpeed, as covered below) has so often concluded: every watt lost to friction is one less watt available to power the bike forwards.

Chief Technology Officer at CeramicSpeed, Jason Smith, the brain behind this product, explains:

“Other lubricants may claim to be “the fastest,” but data-driven testing – not to mention logic and semantics – suggests otherwise. There can only be one ‘fastest.’ And UFO Drip Chain Coating is it.”

Jason Smith is the founder of Friction Facts, the independent friction lab that was acquired by CeramicSpeed in 2016. Smith had already invented the renowned UFO Racing Chain treatment – UFO stands for ‘Ultra-Fast Optimization’ – a factory treatment process that delivers one of the fastest bicycle chain in
the world. What makes the UFO Racing Chain unique, is a factory-applied chain coating. However, CeramicSpeed had more radical ambitions – they wanted to liberate UFO-like speed from the bespoke factory process, somehow bottle it, and put it in the hands of the people.

After months of development, Smith came up with a formula consisting of 10 components; a blend of waxes, trace oils, and friction modifiers. It was a liquid product that was easy to apply to a bike chain, which hardened into a completely dry coating. CeramicSpeed tells us that “It tested very, very fast; out-performing by far the best available drip lubes in frictional loss benchmarking.”

UFO Drip Chain Coating will be available as a 180ml bottle retailing at $75/70 EUR and will start shipping beginning of October.

2 responses to “CeramicSpeed UFO Drip Chain Coating – First Look”

  2. Note that the press release copy paste above fails to mention how many watts better than the next best chain it is, only %s

    In Ceramicspeed’s own marketing they state that a UFO chain saves between 2 and 5 watts, and that this lube is not as good as the UFO chain, so actual saving may be between 1 and 4w. That’s nothing.

    Next question is how a product that saves a very small amount of power can be 83% better than the next best competitor. I don’t think the maths stacks up, and certainly doesn’t fit with friction facts chain tests which showed Squirt chain lube (under $10) to be close to a UFO chain.

    Some more critical thinking needed here aerogeeks please.

Leave a Reply