Silca Bike Care Range

Bike care, like your own post shower care routine, can be a very personalised affair. But fear not, this is not a rehash of another Manscaping tutorial from your favourite YouTube starlet, but rather a deep dive into the intricacies of scrubbing, degreasing and lubing your prized new-fangled doohickie adorning your noble steed.

Silca, a brand synonymous with quality manufacturing and an unrivalled attention to detail, has a thing or two to say about looking after your two-wheeled companions.

And it starts with, like most things, getting into the nitty-gritty nooks and crannies of your mechanical wonder-mobile.

This is my bike. It is very dirty from literally minutes of sniffing the local trails and is in dire need of a scrub. Enter the Bio Degreaser and Gear Cleaner, a wonder formula with impressive sounding ingredients like Diethylhexyl Sodium Sulfosuccinate and water. It is the ultimate environmentally friendly degreaser, safe for your hands, the paint and the fish, but will nonetheless chew through grease, oils and the dreaded isotonic drink residue with reckless abandon. It won’t hurt seals, rubber, leather or other delicate surfaces and its citrus whiff makes it a perfect hand cleaner, in lieu of the sandalwood and jasmine hand soap my wife insists on buying!

So, the hose has rinsed off the last of the degreaser, now it’s onto the finer details, and this is where the Gear Wipes enter the fray.

These wipes are not to be mistaken for run-of-the-mill surface wipes, oh no, these dual texture wipes have a scrubbing and a polishing side to them. The eco-friendly, solvent free cleaning agent clears away any greases and oils left behind from your generous scrubbings and will turn tatty looking white bar tape, chains, shoes or saddles into the gleaming pieces of performance equipment they were at purchase. They will even change your Sidi shoes from dusty cream to polar-bear-in-a-snowstorm in 10 seconds flat!

This is where we divert. Are you looking to eke out the watts from every chain pin, link and pedal stroke? Is a motor adding Formula 1 torque to your already impressive leg-powered engine? Do you feel your chain needs a little something special that has literally been developed for IndyCar racing? Enter a myriad of waxes, lubes and oils that rivals only my collection of unused tonics, potions and lotions bequeathed to me each Christmas.

The Synergetic Drip Lube is for riders who want to experience the lowest of frictions, increased lifespan and eerie silence that this latest lubricant technology delivers, but without the hassle of deep cleaning, drying and waxing chains. The perfect “add now and forget for a bit” treatment. Look how it survives the eclectic UK weather!

Or how about sampling the Super Secret Chain Lube, which delivers the speed and silence of a hot-melt wax-dipped chain, despite being a simple-to-use, drip applied wax lubricant.

In the IndyCar racing arena, this combination of air-drying liquid wax and tungsten disulphide beat all currently available hot melt waxes in friction testing, while being much faster to apply. Additionally, for those who want to know, the nano platelets of WS2 (tungsten disulphide) in the Super Secret Chain lubes have less than a third of the dynamic coefficient friction of PTFE and a quarter that of molybdenum disulphide (MoS2). Doesn’t that make you feel warm and fuzzy inside and ready to win races? Drip it liberally on the inside of the chain, as seen below, and rub it in. Be thorough, really massage it in and let it dry for a bit, then you’re ready to roll!

But let us not forget that you may wish to bathe your chain in real wax for those TT assaults while you dominate at Kona. Consisting of highly refined laboratory grade paraffin and a high concentration of three sizes of tungsten disulphide, the Secret Chain Blend Hot Melt Wax not only acts as a lubricant but changes the service life of the chain. Who doesn’t want their chain lasting up to ten times longer?

Just drop your chain into the bag, pop it in a pan of water and boil. Maybe don’t do this at the same time as making dinner, my life lessons are for all. This process fills any crevices in the metal with the highly lubricious and wear-resistant tungsten disulphide. Handily, the Secret Chain Blend will get faster over time with repeated waxings.

Aside from regular bikes, consider the explosion of E-bikes in the world. A means for more people to enjoy the simple pleasure of utterly defeating your compatriots on the hardest of hill climbs or the gnarliest of descents and tearing their legs off in the flats! But how do you keep the chain running smoothly and increase its life expectancy, with all those watt bombs dropping at a near constant rate? Why, by using the Silca Synerg-E Lube, obviously, the ultimate wear reducing lubricant for E-Bikes!

E-Bike chains experience more than twice the internal pressures of a traditional bike chains and are more than capable of wearing out expensive drivetrain components, like chainrings and cassettes, at an insufferable rate. By increasing the viscosity of their Tungsten Tribofilm Technology and adding calcium sulphonate to the mix, Synerg-E gives up roughly one watt of pure efficiency to Synergetic Wet Lube, as mentioned above, whilst nearly doubling the oil film strength, to ensure the lowest rates of chain and drivetrain wear of any lubricant currently available. Just drip on, rub it in, let it dry and away you go, blasting your mates in relative comfort.

And here we end on the last chapter of your bicycle care adventure, tyre sealant. But not just any sealant, oh no. The Silca Ultimate Tubeless Sealant, which combines the power of carbon fibre with a long lasting and foaming natural latex formula to achieve sealing properties beyond that of any other special race day formulas. Thorn? What thorn? 6mm screwdriver? First off, where are you riding? And secondly, come on, make this a challenge!

Regularly namechecked for sealing obnoxiously large puncture holes, the Ultimate Tubeless Sealant holds recycled chopped carbon fibre stands in suspension within its foaming action latex solution. This mixture efficiently plugs holes of up to 7.5mm at gravel pressures and up to 5mm at the higher road pressures. When used in conjunction with the Silca Replenisher, it will allow you to run the same system all season without issue.

Just give it a shake and splash a generous three fluid ounces for a gravel setup into the tyre itself, since it’s so efficient that the carbon fibres will block your valve otherwise, then complete fitting the tyre before inflating. Simple stuff, really.

And there you have it. Your pride and joy is amply cared for. It is clean and quiet, it will roll fast, and it will be the envy of all your club mates. Show it off, be unabashed in your elitism, your bike is better than theirs because you have used Silca care products to look after your dynamic two wheeled masterpiece.