About 30 years ago at my college bike shop job we were all using Phil grease on our mountain bikes because it was waterproof. one day the Shop owner appeared with a Phil freewheel grease injector tool. So I did a product test on my Trek 850 and used it to grease my nearly new suntour freewheel.

it had the immediate effect of quieting the pawls in the freewheel ratcheting mechanism. I was worried I might have gone too far and waited for the day the pawls would skip on a power climb, but it never happened.

These days I Use whatever I have around to grease things up. Lately it’s a red bearing grease made by Lucasoil.

Mike

It's taken two more pages of postings to conclude, once again, that there are a LOT of greases that work fine in bicycle bearings.

Not to mention almost 9 months....

An entertaining read ! I have all kinds of greases. In headsets I use a Wurth black moly grease that comes in a tube, it's used in constant velocity joints. Really good stuff. For all other bike applications I use either Phil or this stuff (below) which is Teflon bearing - easy to find and not expensive. I've had very good results with it.

Yes, I do have a little tube of the Shimano freehub bearing grease - supposed to be the best ever. Don't know if I have the test to determine if that is true !

Mark Petry
Bainbridge Island, WA USA


https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...2d06f6edd3.jpg

As most things bicycle superstition and tradition beats science.

Keep the thread alive!
I bought a small container of Campy grease...... and when I got around to using it ..... had dried and caked up.
Terrible..... the worst.

Phils is like a light marine grease... I like it.
Have used the Super Lube Teflon shown in picture above... nothing wrong with it.

NLGI 2. Enough said.

With the sometime extreme pressures put on a head set, the best grease to use is the heaviest stickiest grease you can find.

Im betting its just old school white lithium grease and Hype. Greases used to do exactly like you said, but have improved A LOT over the years. Its been a long time since I last opened a bearing with completely dried out grease.

Could be, but the smell of Campy grease was different from that of any other grease I've encountered. I dimly remember being told back in the '70s that the ingredients included whale oil.

In the 1970's I was a certified Chevrolet mechanic, and whale oil was used as an additive for non-slip differentials to quieten chatter and help the differential clutches work better. When whaling was declared illegal, the industry scrambled to find a replacement, and currently they use a synthetic additive to stop the chatter. It works but not like the old school whale oil. Smiles, MH

As a retired heavy industry maintenance manager I have played with grease professionally and as a result used many products on many bikes over the years. Bike G is dead on in my dry climates experience, Southern AZ most of the year and Portland, OR and Bighorn Mountains only in the summer. Especially if one considers cost benefit and does practice reasonable preventative maintenance.

Obviously, if you clean and replace grease at regular intervals (say, one year), you may not notice much/any difference, but there is no data to support the idea that all greases are equally good because "contamination and washout is the real issue" as suggested above. Im sure contamination and water is the main offenders, but in not at all convinced all greases perform equally well on the long haul and especially in the presence of water and dirt.

Similarly motor oil are subjected to many different contaminations that degrade the oil, how ever some are much less affected and degraded than other and modern oil "last" many more miles than older formulations.

Supertech Marine/Boat Trailer Grease less than $4 at Walmart because I like blue grease.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...0d2d9e378.jpeg

I'd take whatever came in the most appropriate volume and appropriate/convenient package these days. I'm not going to move a huge tub of grease with a loose fitting lid across the Atlantic or the continental USA with my other stuff just because I got a good deal.

Hell, 250 grams in a plastic tube with a long, narrow nozzle would be great.

Racing Dan, you are totally correct. I worked in underground mines with drifts in the 3 -4,000 foot below the surface where we dewater constantly and blasted everyday at mid shift, maximum water and where rock fragmentation is our business, and in smelters with constant blistering temperatures. We spent a lot of money on preventative maintenance products. Companies like Lubrication Engineers make greases for the hard rock mining industry that seal much better to prevent the entry of contaminants and are extremely tacky to help with water washout, but $$$. Nothing close to that severity exists in cycling even with the daily commute my daughters do in Portland, OR or I see on our desert roads. I have long ago given up logging milage so am out on a limb but empirically my $$$ tubs of grease I have offer little if any advantage in my or my daughters cycling or to the typical cyclist in anything near a routine PM program. That said, yes a 4 oz. tube of Park grease at 12 times the price per oz of the above shown Walmart special in an abused and neglected hub I expect is far superior.

In the seventies we used to call it blueberry grease, saying it smelled like wild blueberries...