Muc-Off Shop Supplies: Quick Review

Muc-Off Shop Supplies: Quick Review – by Guitar Ted

With colder weather and the end of the gravel riding season dead ahead for many of us, we might be turning our eyes toward doing a bit of maintenance. Those chains and cassettes that are in desperate need of cleaning, the bike that hasn’t been wiped down since that event in August, or maybe you are just looking for some things to resupply your shelves in your bike room. Well, to those ends, Muc-Off has supplied us with several products from its range which we thought might be advantageous for the gravel rider who likes to do a bit of their own maintenance.

Selection of various Muc-Off products
From L-R: Bio-Chain Degreaser, C3 Ceramic Wet Lube, MO 94 spray, C3 ceramic Dry Lube, and Silicone Shine

What It Is: Muc-Off products break down into three main areas: Clean, Protect, and Lube. Muc-Off provides many products to use to achieve great results in each area of bicycle maintenance, but we were sent a few of the highlights from each “range”, if you will. From the “Clean” range we have the Muc-Off Bio-Chain Degreaser. From the Protect range we have the MO 94 Spray and Silicone Shine. Finally, and most obviously, we have the C3 Ceramic Wet and Dry lubricants. I’ll briefly break down each product here and give my take on how it works based upon my nearly 20 years as a bicycle mechanic.

Shot of Bio-Chain Degreaser in use.
This stuff did a great job on sticky grease.

Bio-Chain Degreaser: One of the most unpleasant jobs a home maintenance person can tackle is that of cleaning up greasy, gunky drive train bits. The Muc-Off Bio-Chain Degreaser seeks to take away some of that unpleasantness by making your job a bit easier.

It’s biodegradable and washes away with plain water. All good, but does it break down sticky, gooey grease? Well, I took a White Industries freewheel Grannygear had graciously downloaded to me and found out. This cog had years of built up gunk on it. The kind that is resistant to even scraping by a blade. The Bio-Chain Degreaser took off this aged build up in a few passes. What I found pleasant about this was that Muc-Off uses a neat, easy to modulate spray button. Many degreasing products blast their liquid in a blazing shower or they do nothing. Muc-Off Bio-Chain Degreaser’s spray button can go from a gentle mist to full blast, and anywhere inbetween, making for less mess and less wasted product. Plus it smells nice. Oh…..and it isn’t hard on your skin. And…….it actually works well. Not much to dislike here, and at $14.99USD, it isn’t a bad value either.

MO 94 Spray: Okay, this is a product with multiple uses and the best way I can describe it is to reference a well known product you should be familiar with that also has two letters and two numbers in its name and comes in a yellow and blue can. Know what I mean? Well, the MO 94 does the Water Displacement thing also, (see what I did there?), and it cleans, protects, and lubricates just like its competition. It does all of this well and at $9.99USD it isn’t a bad value. Plus you get the same easy to modulate spray button as the Bio-Chain Degreaser.

Silicone Shine: I love Silicone Shine because of its ability to not only clean and shine up your bike, but it leaves behind a film which dust and mud has a hard time adhering to. This makes subsequent clean ups a breeze. Plus, if you have any suspension bits, Muc-Off says this will help cut down on friction between the sliding parts. Nice! It’s $14.95USD, smells great, and the spray button is that easy to modulate one here also.

Muc-Off C3 Ceramic Dry Lube
The C3 Lube is impressive

C3 Ceramic Wet & Dry Lubes: Finally, after cleaning up and degreasing things, you should lube up that chain for the next ride. I’ve used a LOT of different chain lubrication products on gravel roads and the Ceramic Dry has risen to the top levels of what I look for in chain lubrication characteristics. It is long lasting, resists dry, dusty build up, remains slick, and it even resists washing off in the occasional mud puddle or rain shower.

I haven’t gotten a chance to run the Wet version of this lube, but I do expect to use it this Winter. The Dry version is recommended, and at $9.99USD it is priced fairly. You even get a UV light detector to determine if you have lube on the chain! A little bit of a novelty there, but the lube itself is definitely worthy.

At The Finish: I was pleasantly surprised by the Muc-Off products and the high functionality of the solutions for cleaning, protecting, and lubrication. There isn’t a clunker in the group here and the fact that Muc-Off does try to take consideration for the environment is impressive. I can recommend all the products here and especially the C3 lube which I found to work really well. Muc-Off products can be found at many local bike shops or purchased on-line.

To check out Muc-Off’s entire product line for bicycles see their website: Muc-Off Bicycle Products

Note: Muc-Off and Andy’s Bike Shop sent the products from the Muc-Off range to Riding Gravel at no charge for test and review. We were not paid, nor bribed, for this review and we always strive to give our honest thoughts and views throughout.

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Author: Guitar Ted

Guitar Ted hails from Iowa. Home of over 70,000 miles of gravel and back roads. An inaugural member of the Gravel Cycling Hall of Fame and Co-creator of Trans Iowa in late 2004- Guitar Ted has been at the forefront of the growth of gravel events and riding since then. Creator of Gravel Grinder News in 2008, he produced the premier calendar of gravel and back road events. GT joined forces with Riding Gravel in late 2014.

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1 thought on “Muc-Off Shop Supplies: Quick Review

  1. All good stuff. For cleaning, an ultrasonic cleaner works really well at cutting through grease on chains, sprockets, etc. And they are relatively inexpensive online. Just need to be careful, because the inexpensive ones are smaller and they may not fit some larger MTB size sprockets.

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