HerrKaLeun

That may not be optimal for moving parts.

I use marine grease for all grease applications. Pro-tip, use a light gray or other light color. That way you see when it gets dirty.

The only special grease I bought is the Shimano friction clutch grease since I feared generic grease not working perfectly under all temperatures.

MarcusT

At this point I have more types of lube than I know what to do with. I have wet lube, dry lube, wax based lube, spray lube, bio-lube, graphite, silicone, but I have only one grease: PTFE, picked it up at the hardware store.

SClaraPokeman

I grease threads on everything I assemble--such as a squat rack for my back from college son a couple weeks back.. A habit from bicycle maintenance--I figure it can't hurt.

vane171

Yes, forget the plumbing grease. It just came me since I was using it recently to install new faucet cartridge.

Friction clutch... isn't that what you put on seatpost where aluminium meets aluminium or carbon fiber and it helps holding your seat tube in place? I checked the seat tube on the bike I just bought secondhand and it has this 'rough' grease on it. That further confirmed my guess that the previous owner had the bike serviced in a bike shop. Wonder if it could still be the original grease from 2007 when the bike was new.

It left a smell on my hands which was rather pleasant. Maybe scented grease?

Camilo

I plan to leave my tub, which is already at least 10 years old, to my heirs. And I hope to live another 20 years.

San Rensho 

Agreed. I learned that when I was a wrench at a bike shop doing new assembly. When I got trained, the owner/bosses mantra was "every threaded fastener get lubricated." Grease, oil, he didn't care. A lubricated fastener and a light touch on the wrench, not too much torque, and the fastebe would never come undone, until years later when you were taking the part off, it came out easily.

RichSPK

On the other hand, when I had a '73 Suzuki GT380 2-stroke motorcycle, I learned to use Loc-Tite on (nearly) every fastener. That bike was very good at vibrating the fasteners loose.

Moe Zhoost

I have a tub of marine bearing grease, a tube of Parks, and I've used Phil's in the past. I can't tell any difference between them. If there is any, I suspect that it's just the packaging.

San Rensho 

Yeah, those ring-ringers would even rattle your teeth loose. But they were fun. The power to displacement was fantastic But you had to be careful. the power band was very narrow and very high up on the rpm range. Below the band, 2 strokes were absolute dogs, but once you hit the power band, watch out. If you weren't paying attention, you could easily wheelie over backwards.

zacster

I bought a tube of Phil grease in 1980. I'm still using it and it is only grease I've ever used on a bike. The more surprising thing is I've kept track of it over these years.

Mista Sparkle

You have to be careful here, Grease changes the coefficient of friction on the fastener and therefore can have a sever impact on the torque-tension relationship. Lubricated fasteners reduce required torque by 30-50%, so you could be over-tightening them by ~50-100%, Which in some cases could be catastrophic.

Anti-seize may or may not count as a lubricant depending on formulation, but they often provide torque modification guidelines.

Sy Reene

Or.. by not greasing you could be under-tightening your fasteners. This is the conundrum -- ie. good luck whether every bolt/clamp on your bike has an associated manufacturer instruction manual that defines whether torque value is based on wet or dry. IMO if a bolt should be or is greased in normal practice, then the torque value provided should be based on such.

Mista Sparkle

Also true, however conditions should be provided. As not a bike mechanic, it appears that convention is to use grease on threads on bikes.

As someone that occasionally specifies fastener torque, people that apply rules such as "grease all fasteners" raises a red flag. The answer is "It depends..."

I just wanted to bring up that blindly applying lubricant to fasteners is a bad idea. Most things it probably doesn't matter but some times your are out a broken fastener, a couple million dollars, or worse...

MadKaw

All greases are not the same:
while not directly applicable to our use-case, it is a clue that quality grease makes a difference.

MadKaw

Or this one:
We spend gazillions of dollars to shave grams or watts... why use cheap, untested grease?

Racing Dan

Sure, greases are vastly different, but the usual generic sales blurbs leaves you none the wiser as to what product to choose and why. Even Park fails miserably at explaining the difference between HPG-1 and PPL-1 and distinguishing when to use what product, in the above video. Also lots of "bike specific" lubricants are garbage formulated or selected to carve out a niche in the market, rather than provide proper performance. Then again, if you get a tin of wheel bearing grease from some reputable company, you be fine. Its not the grease that destroys your bike. Its the LACK of grease, ie lack of maintenance or "over maintaining" with harsh degreasers and the like.

tyrion

I had a Yamaha RD400 when I was a teenager. 44 horsepower for $500 (used) = teenager's dream.

Lakerat

That sounds like a good description of the time a guy let me ride his Kawasaki 750 three cylinder two stroke. Below a certain RPM, just kind of choked. Hit the powerband, front wheel in air. I did wheelies easily and controllable for 15 minutes. Not a 15 minute wheelie, a 15 minute wheelie session.