PEATY’S HOLESHOT SEALANT & LINKLUBE PREMIUM LUBE REVIEW

ENTRUST THE SHEFFIELD STEEL’S PRODUCTS

Review by Robert Johnston

If Steve Peat (aka “Peaty”, or “Sheffield Steel”) isn’t a character you’re familiar with, we’d suggest you do some reading up. As three-time World Cup Downhill overall winner, 2009 Downhill World Champion, and Sheffield “Walk of Famer”; Peaty is an absolute legend of mountain biking. Peaty’s Products were co-founded by Peaty himself alongside Bryn Morgan, and they have set about developing a range of products to improve the performance and ease the maintenance of mountain bikes. We were supplied with their Holeshot Biofibre Tubeless Sealant and LinkLube Premium All Weather chain lubricant to put to the test in the UK, where Peaty’s hails from, and it’s safe to say the performance lived up to the Peaty name.

Holeshot BioFibre Tubeless Sealant

The Holeshot BioFibre Tubeless Sealant is Peaty’s latest sealant formulation, developed to improve the speed and strength of hole sealing when the tire is punctured. After testing 23 different formulations alongside the best mechanics and racers in the world, they were satisfied with their final product, which they claim to have solved the issues that many faced with the original Peaty’s Tubeless Sealant.

The Holeshot BioFibre sealant has biodegradable fibers added in addition to the sealing particles, which are designed to combine to add a solid layer over a hole in the tire and keep the air in. The biodegradable nature of these fibers and particles, and the lack of ammonia in the formula, ensures the Holeshot sealant won’t harm the environment when it finds its way into the soil. Fast-acting Latex is used to bind these fibers and particles together, sealing holes up to 6mm. They’ve made the Holeshot sealant thinner so it can travel around the tire to the site of a hole easier, and increased the concentration of sealing compounds to seal holes more effectively.

Peaty’s claims the Holeshot Biofibre tubeless sealant will work at pressures from 15 to 120 psi, temperatures from -20C to +50C, and is CO2 compatible. The sealant should last up to six months in the tire and is resistant to balling up. They offer the Holeshot tubeless sealant in a 5 liter workshop tub for £129.99/$170 or a 120ml trail pouch for £7.99/$12. In the UK, bottles of 500ml or 1 liter of sealant are available for £19.99 and £29.99 respectively.

LinkLube Premium All Weather Chain Lube

Peaty’s has had the LinkLube All Weather chain lubricant in their range for a while, and many have been impressed with its performance. However they found out they could boost the performance further with some higher quality materials, and so released the LinkLube Premium All Weather lube for those who demand the most from their chain lubricants. Peaty’s claims the Premium All Weather will last up to 30% longer than the standard LinkLube All Weather lube in the same conditions.

LinkLube Premium All Weather is designed to offer long lasting performance, with smooth and quiet running of the chain and self cleaning properties. The formula is designed to penetrate deep inside the chain links, driving out moisture and dirt and replacing it with a blend of oils, waxes and non-toxic nanoparticles to keep the chain running smooth whatever the weather. Peaty’s LinkLube Premium All Weather is available in 60ml or 120ml bottles, with retail prices of £11.99/$14 and £19.99/$21 respectively.

THE DIRT

I’ve been running the two Peaty’s products intermittently across my test bikes for the past half a year, giving a batch of the sealant a long-term test; and the lube exposure to the full spectrum of conditions from bone dry and dusty through to thick mud, and even some snow for good measure.

Beginning with the Holeshot BioFibre sealant, the immediate impression when mounting up the first tire was the reduced “goopiness” compared with the outgoing Peaty’s sealant. This had me much more confident in both its abilities to seal punctures fast enough to be useful, and in the ease of cleaning it up, which was a real nightmare with the old stuff. It turned out my initial impressions were not misplaced, and the Holeshot sealant proved to be not only more effective, but also nicer to work with. That said, as with most sealants, you want to be careful as it’ll still make a bit of a mess when spilt. In one set of Goodyear tires I spent a couple months of frequent riding with the occasional pop of the bead to monitor levels, and was pleased that there was little to no need to top up the sealant throughout this period, and no balls of sealant in sight.

The effectiveness of a sealant to seal a puncture can often feel like a lottery and is certainly influenced by the size and type of hole and remaining casing rigidity that follows. Peaty’s  Holeshot BioFIbre Tubeless sealant saved me from reaching for tire plugs a couple of times where I was expecting a plug to be necessary, and a look inside the tire following these incidents showed the effects of those fibers combining together to almost create a mini plug of their own from the inside. There were a couple times where these 3-5mm holes would temporarily reopen following a certain impact, but they’d subsequently seal up with minimal loss of pressure. It’s certainly as good at sealing holes in the tire as I’ve yet to use, and seems to do a solid job at preventing small amounts of air from leaking from the tire over time, too.

The LinkLube Premium All Weather lube proved to be similarly effective for rides outside of the most extreme dry or wet. When you apply it, you can see any dirt and grime that you didn’t manage to shift from the chain come off and turn the white color into a muddy brown. I’d often apply a small amount to the chain, turn the cranks a few times, wipe dry, then reapply a regular amount to let the Premium All-Weather lube do a second round of cleaning for me and ensure the best starting condition. For middling weather conditions, the smooth and clean operation was impressive, regularly sustaining rides without demanding a reapplication before the next one. I was especially impressed by its performance on muddy but not totally saturated rides, where the chain finished the rides notably cleaner and smoother than using a dedicated wet lube. On eMTB’s, where the extra torque sometimes feels to drive lube out of the chain and leave it feeling dry and rough quicker, the LinkLube Premium seemed to stay stuckfast and unphased.

In the ultra-dusty height of Summer, it would begin to pick up some more dirt than a dry lube, especially notable when reapplying lube and seeing the dirt that the clean lube pulls off of the chain. When there was excessive water involved it fell short of a wet lube in its ability to stay put, as you may expect. But for all the conditions in between, it seems like very good stuff. That said, I’ve been a fan of their standard All Weather LinkLube in the past, so if you’re unlikely to go for the long haul in between lube applications then the standard stuff may do the same job with a slightly reduced cost – it’s possible it wouldn’t stand up to eMTB abuse quite so well though.

The Wolf’s Last Word

The shaky rep of the original Peaty’s sealant has been left behind and replaced with a well performing and more pleasant to work with sealant, which I’m happy to entrust to keep the air in my tires out on the hills. The All Weather Premium lube performed well for the majority of trail conditions too, and I think Peaty’s can now safely be considered as some of the better products on the market from this small sample of their extensive range.

Price:
Holeshot Biofibre Tubeless Sealant – £29.99 (1 liter)
LinkLube Premium All Weather – £19.99/$21 (120ml)

Website: Peatys.co.uk