20 February 2012 - 8:47Gnar Tales of the Unicorn

I recently received a care package from a new chainlube company called Gnar Lube. In the package, I got a sample of their wet and dry lubes, a pile of stickers, buttons and temporary tattoos. This small San Diego company is currently blowing up on Facebook, partially due to the fact that they use scantily clad women as their spokes models. It gets your attention. The marketing is tongue in cheek, but it is pretty effective tactic. Especially since once you get past the unicorns and dayglow colors and try the lube itself, you come away pleasantly surprised.

I decided to test out the Wet lube out on Kermit. He was pretty dirty from the last ride I went on, the roads here are in full mud mode, and the grit infused slush had made my chain a filthy crunchy mess. I removed it and gave is a good cleaning with some degreaser, scrubbing the individual links, making the sure the chain was as clean as possible.

With a chain almost clean enough to eat off of, I applied the lube, making sure to get each link and roller. The wet lube is blue, and smells like coconut, which is a bit different than the traditional smelly chemical smell of lube. In fact, it’s quite powerful, and reminds me of how strippers/bad girls smell. The dry lube smells even more like that, with a hint of vanilla, and my shop has not smelled the same since I opened the package. It’s the sort of smell that once you get it on you, it stays on you. The only thing that they could have done to make the lives of married men even more difficult, is to somehow put glitter in it. But I digress…



With the new lube applied, it was time for a ride. The drivetrain was dead silent. My ride took me over a little bit of everything, and it was mostly wet. Slushy snowmelt puddles, crusty gravel roads, and mud. Oh boy.



Parts of the ride were so soft, I was almost sucked into the road at one point, but I will say that this made for conditions that were gnar enough to see how well this lube worked. My drivetrain was silent throughout the entire ride. I’ll be getting a few more rides in this week, so stay tuned to find out how long it lasts. My initial impression is that this product works well. If you can get past the smell, it should serve as a quality chain lube choice. It even comes in bears.