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review
Ceramicspeed UFO Drip Chain Coating£64.95
VERDICT:
An impressive coating for winter riding but super-pricey and the performance gains are hard to detect in the real world
Weight:
157g
Contact:
At road.cc every product is thoroughly tested for as long as it takes to get a proper insight into how well it works. Our reviewers are experienced cyclists that we trust to be objective. While we strive to ensure that opinions expressed are backed up by facts, reviews are by their nature an informed opinion, not a definitive verdict. We don't intentionally try to break anything (except locks) but we do try to look for weak points in any design. The overall score is not just an average of the other scores: it reflects both a product's function and value – with value determined by how a product compares with items of similar spec, quality, and price.
What the road.cc scores meanGood scores are more common than bad, because fortunately good products are more common than bad.
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CeramicSpeed makes some bold performance claims for its UFO Drip Chain Coating and while these are hard to quantify without a laboratory, it is an excellent product for keeping the chain clean and running smoothly with very little other maintenance required. You'll have to get your head around the price, though.
- Pros: After the first application there is next to no cleaning required
- Cons: Expensive; performance benefits hard to notice in the real world
CeramicSpeed acquired an independent friction lab back in 2016 which had developed the UFO Racing Chain, a chain pre-coated in the UFO coating, claimed to be the fastest bicycle chain in the world. The UFO Drip is basically that factory coating in a bottle.
> Find your nearest dealer here
CeramicSpeed calls it a coating rather than a lube as it is applied in liquid form which then hardens into a dry coating once it has dried, normally overnight for the best results.
First up, the application.
If you aren't applying the UFO to a brand new chain, you'll need to give your existing one a clean and degrease to remove all of the contaminants like old lube, dirt and grit. Once you've applied the UFO for the first time, the idea is that you don't ever need to clean the chain again because nothing should stick, before reapplying another coat, so it really is worth making sure you do a good job.
CeramicSpeed has a Youtube video showing the best way to apply the lube, sorry coating, and reckons the best way to do it is from above as the chain runs over the upper part of the cassette, allowing any excess to dribble onto the sprockets rather than the floor. At £361 per litre you aren't going to be wanting to waste any, after all!
This is worth bearing in mind, because when the bottle is new and full, if you don't get the angle just right the liquid can shoot out at quite a rate.
While rotating the cranks in reverse, you need to get a constant dribble of UFO over the chain until saturation point. CeramicSpeed says this is when the coating is about to start dripping off the bottom of the chain as it rotates.
It also says in the video that each application should require about 8-10ml, and while you have no real way of knowing this for sure, it is working out about right. I've applied about eight coatings to various chains so far, and I'm not quite halfway through the 180ml bottle.
Once applied, leave the liquid to soak into the chain parts before it then dries to a wax-like finish.
One thing CeramicSpeed doesn't mention but I found out is that you need to take the temperature of the UFO's surroundings into account before applying. I originally kept the bottle out in the workshop which was chilly – it was winter, after all. Dripping the UFO onto the chain, because of the chill some of it was already a wax, so you had these little clumps coming out.
From then on, I'd leave the bottle in the kitchen to bring it up to room temperature for half an hour before application.
The claims
The formula of UFO consists of 10 components: a blend of waxes, trace oils, and friction modifiers which CeramicSpeed claims gives 20% lower friction than the second fastest bottled lubricant in initial pre-ride friction, and a massive 83% lower in post-ride friction.
It also claims 46% decreased drivetrain wear vs wet lubes.
The first couple of quotes are hard to quantify in real world testing. I could detect absolutely no difference whatsoever when riding a test bike with a brand new chain and drivetrain for an hour before coming home, degreasing and cleaning it and doing the loop again with the UFO applied. A clean, new chain is hugely efficient anyway, and even with those percentages in actual watts the gains are tiny.
The latter, though, about drivetrain wear, I can go along with to a degree.
Applying the UFO to the chain of the Cube Nuroad I was testing, before heading off on a 100km ride across Salisbury Plain with at least 80km of those being on gravel, mud and chalk, I was very impressed to get home and find the chain pretty much spotless and running very smoothly – although the bike was barely recognisable.
That was after riding through floods on the road and deep chalky puddles following the track tanks, with the water covering the bottom bracket plenty of times.
Leaving it to dry overnight, there were a few bits of rusty water marks on the chain surface in the morning but none that I could see in and around the pins.
I reapplied the UFO over the top as CeramicSpeed recommends, and the chain cleaned up and continued running smoothly. Obviously, if you are riding regularly in these conditions the bottle won't last long.
Value
It ain't cheap, that's for sure!
If you get the quoted 18-20 applications out of the bottle at best, it is going to be costing you £3.25 every time you douse your chain.
Squirt Lube, which Dave tested back in 2010, came second in CeramicSpeed's friction testing I mentioned earlier, and now costs around £11.99 for 120ml – compared to the £64.95 for 180ml of the UFO.
Dave said in rough winter conditions he was having to reapply the Squirt about every 50 miles or so, so you will be using more of it, but it still works out a lot cheaper.
Conclusion
For the majority of us, the performance claims mean very little, to be honest, so it all really comes down to maintenance. If you are a fastidious bike-cleaner then you are going to be better off using something like the Pedros Syn Lube (£9.99/100ml) and giving your chain a good scrub beforehand.
If you are lazy (like me), then I can see the possible benefits of the UFO Drip through the winter, but I'd still struggle to swallow the price.
Verdict
An impressive coating for winter riding but super-pricey and the performance gains are hard to detect in the real world
road.cc test report
Make and model: Ceramicspeed UFO Drip
Size tested: 180ml
Tell us what the product is for and who it's aimed at. What do the manufacturers say about it? How does that compare to your own feelings about it?
CeramicSpeed says, "UFO Drip Chain Coating is a bottled product for chains that is applied in liquid form, but which hardens to a 100% dry chain coating. It generates less friction than any other chain lube on the market (being out-performed only by the factory-treated UFO Racing Chain).
"The genius of UFO Drip Chain Coating is that it combines the convenience of a drip application with the friction-beating performance of a completely dry chain coating. So, not only does UFO Drip test faster than every other chain lubricant, it's properties actually rank it in a brand-new category: the liquid-applied but ultimately 100% dry chain coating.
"Another benefit of UFO Drip Chain Coating is the fact that the coating closes around the chain in a way that prevents all kinds of contamination your chain is exposed to when riding, from sticking to the chain. Therefore, make sure to clean your chain properly before applying UFO Drip, and it will then remain clean as long as you continously apply UFO Drip every 200 km as recommended."
It does a good job but it is unbelievably expensive.
Tell us some more about the technical aspects of the product?
From CeramicSpeed:
UFO Drip Chain Coating is the world's fastest bottled product for chains. After months of development, Chief Technology Officer at CeramicSpeed, Jason Smith, has come up with a formula consisting of 10 components; a blend of waxes, trace oils, and friction modifiers.
The UFO Drip Chain Coating data prove:
* The world's fastest bottled product for chains
* 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
Rate the product for performance:
8/10
Rate the product for durability:
8/10
Rate the product for value:
3/10
Tell us how the product performed overall when used for its designed purpose
It's impressive for a dry lube in the winter months, and keeps your chain running smooth and silent.
Tell us what you particularly liked about the product
I was impressed with how well it shed dirt and grit in the winter.
Tell us what you particularly disliked about the product
Its price is truly mental.
How does the price compare to that of similar products in the market, including ones recently tested on road.cc?
All lubes are pretty pricey when you think about it, but the UFO is in a league of its own. The Squirt Lube is very good and costs roughly £10 per/l compared to £361 per/l for the UFO.
Did you enjoy using the product? Yes
Would you consider buying the product? No
Would you recommend the product to a friend? If money was no object...
Use this box to explain your overall score
Take the price out of the equation and this is a really good lube. I was certainly impressed with how it could deal with tough winter conditions – if you are an elite racer looking for every little minimal gain then maybe the performance claims are worth it. As a mere mortal I just couldn't justify the price.
About the tester
Age: 41
I usually ride: This month's test bike My best bike is: B'Twin Ultra CF draped in the latest bling test components
I've been riding for: Over 20 years I ride: Every day I would class myself as: Expert
I regularly do the following types of riding: time trialling, commuting, club rides, sportives, fixed/singlespeed
Since writing his first bike review for road.cc back in early 2009 senior product reviewer Stu has tested more than a thousand pieces of kit, and hundreds of bikes.
With an HND in mechanical engineering and previous roles as a CNC programmer/machinist, draughtsman and development engineer (working in new product design) Stu understands what it takes to bring a product to market. A mix of that knowledge combined with his love of road and gravel cycling puts him in the ideal position to put the latest kit through its paces.
He first made the switch to road cycling in 1999, primarily for fitness, but it didn’t take long for his competitive side to take over which led to around ten years as a time triallist and some pretty decent results. These days though riding is more about escapism, keeping the weight off and just enjoying the fact that he gets to ride the latest technology as part of his day job.
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23 comments
How chuffing much? You gotta be kidding me. Just another ploy to get cyclists to part with their hard earned readies and make them think that their gaining an advantage......... Ridiculous!
How can you be sure your chain isn't lasting longer purely because you're spending hours mucking about with slow cookers and not actually riding your bike
Because I don't spend hours mucking about with slow cookers, you tool.
Oooooh! Handbags!!
Wonderful, science deep dive from Cycling Tips on all kinds of chain lube. One for the nerds.
https://cyclingtips.com/2018/03/fast-chain-lube-that-saves-you-money/
TLDR. UFO lube was the fastest on test. If you make the scientifically proved fastest chain lube on earth you can probably charge £65 a pop.
I tried the wax procedure as described above. It worked ok but was a lot of faff and still needed to be refreshed relatively frequently. There's a very thin line to walk in order to get the viscosity exactly right and I found that what worked in summer didn't work in winter (presumably again due to temperature related viscosity issues).
But it's clean, no argument there.
On average, after how many km do you need to reapply?
Ditto, I've been running Squirt for a couple of years now and moved to waxing with Molten Speed wax. Yes it keeps the drive train very clean, no idea whether it's any faster than Squirt (if it was I didn't notice) but it was a fair bit of faff.
Maybe the ceramic speed wax gives you an extra watt over squirt but that's a fairly hefty pound per watt cost.
Yea, I did realise after the first year that 2 mixtures were necessary, 1 for summer and winter. The slow cooker I bought had a couple of removable pots, so one has a "summer" mix, one has a "winter" mix.
I don't find I have to apply it that often...I rinse off the chain with boiling water once a month when I clean the bike, and strip/re-dip if it looks a bit dirty (which isn't every time), but I've gotten away with less frequently than that. I ride the bike 20km every weekday no matter the weather (it's my main/only mode of transport for getting to work), as well as 60-100km on a typical Sunday ride. So that's...probably every 400-500km or so?
The main benefit is how much cleaner it keeps the rest of the bike. My winter bike just runs Tiagra 4700 so chains are cheap as chips, but the summer bike runs a more expensive chain, I figure I should look after that as best I can. I can see how it might seem like a lot of faff but after a short while it became just part of the routine, and in a lot of ways makes keeping the bike clean easier overall as chain filth doesn't spread everywhere as much.
Or, for less than half the price, buy yourself a slow cooker (£13.49 delivered), some paraffin oil (£12.15 delivered), and some paraffin wax (£6.65 delivered), and make what amounts to essentially the same thing (minus CeramicSpeed's patented Colonel's secret recipe of unicorn tears, reindeer blood, and essence of wood elves to make love to your chain as you ride- can't find this on Amazon but my independent testing shows this to be only worth only 2.4 femtowatts at 250 watts, which over an hour will only save you 6 zeptoseconds).
Heat some wax pellets, add some oil and stick something in it (preferably not something sensitive to heat). Pull it out, let it dry, if it's flaky and solid add some more oil until it's not flaky but still fairly solid. Stick your chain in and swish it around a bit, leave it in there for a while, swish it some more, leave it some more, take it out, wipe it down and let it dry. I don't know how many coatings this will be good for, but I haven't even gotten a quarter of the way through the wax and oil I bought after using it a good few years.
My independent testing found it 4 million percent lower in friction than a competitor's chain after I glued it to his cranks, and a whopping 1.94 TRILLION percent lower if I used Gorilla Glue rather than a bit of PVA.
Wot, no micronised graphite?
Alternate procedure - get a small pan from a pound shop, put the chain into the pan and warm gently. Sprinkle some graphite onto the chain (don't breathe it in) and put paraffin wax pellets on top of the chain, so that they melt and carry the graphite into the chain links. Swish chain around a bit and remove from wax and leave to cool.
That procedure leaves you with a chain that looks dirty (because of the black graphite infused wax) but is actually clean. Top up every 100 miles or so with a wax based lube (e.g. Squirt) until you realise you could just be using the wax based lube instead.
That was yesterday, now we have carbon nanotubes dispersed in a molybdenum sulfide matrix.
(I should probably start cooking, then find a designer for some blitzy packaging).
Nanotubes are a bit pricey: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Multiwalled-Carbon-Nanotubes-CNTs-by-IENT-Inc-Research-Grade-10-grams/133291914868
They've got some embedded in carnauba wax for a more reasonable price: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Carbon-Nanotubes-BEST-Nanotubes-Car-Wax-on-the-market-SCANPRO-34-mL-24-OFF/392293383674
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Cooking up your own chain wax? Yeah, right...
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If I owned a bicycle which I cherished so much that I'd pay this ridiculous price for some chain lube...well it wouldn't be (and isn't) used in the winter conditions this product is apparently engineered for.
If anyone wants to take one for the team and pay up to try this then I'd be very curious to hear the results. I tried -much cheaper- dry waxes/ceramic formulas in the past and while they're extremely clean running they required a lot of preparation and also a lot of re-applications. In the wet essentially on a daily basis (commute), that's just not acceptable to me. The fact that rust spots were visible after one -heavy- ride with this formulation is not reassuring, not even if they disappeared later.
ceramicspeed seem to have built a brand focused entirely on magic pixie dust, impressive really.
The price is ludicrous.
But...
From what I have just read, that sounds as though they might have discovered the perfect lube, and I know that sounds ridiculous but what more do you want, the chain sayed clean through the filth of our winter. Somehow it repelled the dirt. Which sounds as though the rest of the drivetrain might be cleaner.
Was the rest of the drivetrain clean, Stu?
If the grinding paste isn't getting into the chain, it isn't going to wear, nowhere near as much anyway, and then far less destruction and repacement of the rest of the expensive drivetrain.
It's the mixture of filth and the wet lube that I need to get my chain through the awful conditions we've been having that contaminates my cassette, jockeys and chainset, and then necessitates a bit of a clean that I could do without.
The chainset on my good bike has sat without me fully rebuilding the xtr drivetrain for a couple of months because I just don't want to cover it in the grindy nastiness that even a short ride would cause. And lazyness.
Perhaps at half the prce, and then with some proper long term and muddy reviews.
If the "perfect lube" is acheivable, someone else might manage it too and hopefully, cheaper.
On the whole yes. The chainrings, jockey wheels and cogs of the cassette weren't covered in any build up of mud, grit or chalk from the gravel rides. You could see they'd taken a hammering from the conditions being left with a sort of 'dirty water' coating once things had dried but I didn't need to clean anything off before reapplying the UFO.
What difference will independent tests make, they'll sell it anyway. If you're buying grotesque oversized jockey wheels for 350 quid in the belief it'll make you faster, why will you worry about another 60 on your lube
Its not even funny. Unless there are comparable independent test results this
"claims gives 20% lower friction than the second fastest bottled lubricant in initial pre-ride friction, and a massive 83% lower in post-ride friction."
is just marketing wank.
People must actually buy ceramic speed stuff and it blows my mind
Hahahahahahahaha!
Go on, ceramicspeed, tell us another one!
You must think that I'm made of money if I'm going to buy that
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