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Juice Lubes Dirt Juice Boss in a Can Chain Cleaner

6
£9.99

VERDICT:

6
10
Good degreaser that's handy for certain jobs, but expensive and wasteful as a first choice
Great for flushing out grime from hard-to-reach areas
Good for a quick drivetrain blast
Expensive
Difficult to control
Wasteful
Weight: 
354g
Contact: 

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Juice Lubes Dirt Juice Boss In A Can is exactly that: the excellent Dirt Juice Boss degreaser, as an aerosol. If you're short on time and just need to give your drivetrain a quick blast then it's a useful thing to have in the shed, but it's an expensive and wasteful way of buying degreaser, and for nearly every task you're better off with a bottle.

First things first: Dirt Juice Boss is an excellent degreaser. When Adam tested it back in 2020 he gave it high praise, calling it 'Fast acting and extremely effective'. It's quite expensive at £14.99 for 500ml but because it's so powerful, you don't need much, and you can make it last. It's a biodegradable formula, too, so you don't have to be quite so worried about drips and spills when you're working.

The aerosol is a 400ml serving, pressurised and ready to spray onto your moving parts using a directional nozzle. At a tenner it's better value on paper, but the nature of an aerosol can means you use loads more, and loads more of it is wasted: hitting things you didn't want it to, and flying past your bike into the shrubbery. Just as well it's biodegradable.

The power of the aerosol spray and the efficacy of the degreaser itself mean that this can is super handy for some specific tasks. It's ideal for loosening oily crud in hard-to-reach areas: blasting it out of brake and mech pivots, for example. Also, if you've pulled your bike out of the shed just before a ride to find the drivetrain's a grubby mess then you can give it quite an effective clean, quite quickly, by backpedalling and blasting the chain and cassette at close quarters.

I'd estimate from my use that you've got about five goes at that before the can runs out, so a couple of quid a go. Realistically, you need to be pretty time pressed for that to be a good spend of your money and use of the world's resources. But hey, we've all been there.

Juice Lubes' own instructions suggest you're going to be spraying this on components, letting it work for half a minute, then scrubbing it off and washing. If that's your workflow, you want the bottle of degreaser, and a brush. Not this. You'll use loads less and it'll be just as effective.

So should you buy it? Well I don't use a spray degreaser much but I've generally got one in the shed, because, like I said, there are some jobs that it's really good at. If you're going to buy the Dirt Juice Boss In A Can, keep it for those specific jobs, and tackle more regular cleaning using a standard degreaser, of which this formula is an excellent example.

In terms of value, £9.99 is about what you expect. Some, such as Finish Line's Speed Degreaser (tested by Stu last year), are more (£13.49 for 500ml), others – WD40's bike degreaser, for example, which Neil thought did an excellent job – are less (£6 for a 500ml can).

As I said earlier, it's not a good value way to buy degreaser, but it is a handy thing to reach for from time to time.

Verdict

Good degreaser that's handy for certain jobs, but expensive and wasteful as a first choice

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road.cc test report

Make and model: Juice Lubes Dirt Juice Boss in a Can Chain Cleaner

Size tested: 400ml

Tell us what the product is for and who it's aimed at. What do the manufacturers say about it? How does that compare to your own feelings about it?

Juice Lubes says: "Juice Lubes Dirt Juice Boss In A Can works as a spray-on drivetrain degreaser, to help clean your chain and restore it to box-fresh, ready for a fresh coat of lube.

"It acts quickly and sends oily, greasy grime packing. Think of it as a shower in a can for your drivetrain, it's perfect for getting you ready to go when you don't have time for a full-works drivetrain scrub."

Tell us some more about the technical aspects of the product?

Juice Lubes lists:

Fast and effective formula removes grease and grime

Removes all chain oil, wax residues and contaminants

Safe on metal, plastic, rubber and seals

Ideal product for quick drive train cleans

Water soluble formula for easy rinsing

Biodegradable formula

Recyclable packaging

Rate the product for quality of construction:
 
8/10
Rate the product for performance:
 
7/10

Excellent for certain jobs, inefficient for others.

Rate the product for durability:
 
6/10
Rate the product for value:
 
4/10

Not the best value way of buying degreaser.

Tell us how the product performed overall when used for its designed purpose

For its stated use case on the instructions, not particularly well. But is is still a useful thing to have.

Tell us what you particularly liked about the product

Great for flushing out grime from hard-to-reach areas, good for a quick drivetrain blast.

Tell us what you particularly disliked about the product

Expensive, difficult to control, wasteful.

How does the price compare to that of similar products in the market, including ones recently tested on road.cc?

It's in the middle of the market, prices range from £6 to £15.

Did you enjoy using the product? At times.

Would you consider buying the product? I do generally have a can; this one would be fine.

Would you recommend the product to a friend? Yes, to have for certain jobs.

Use this box to explain your overall score

A bit difficult to score. If you took it at face value based on how Juice Lubes claims you should use it, then there's no reason to buy it at all over a bottle. Having said that, it's a bit like that spanner you've got for a specific job: you don't need it much, but it's really useful to have when you do.

Overall rating: 6/10

About the tester

Age: 50  Height: 189cm  Weight: 98kg

I usually ride: whatever I'm testing...  My best bike is: Kinesis Tripster ATR, Merida Scultura, Dward Design fixed

I've been riding for: Over 20 years  I ride: Every day  I would class myself as: Expert

I regularly do the following types of riding: road racing, commuting, touring, club rides, general fitness riding, fixed/singlespeed, Mountain Bike Bog Snorkelling, track

Dave is a founding father of road.cc, having previously worked on Cycling Plus and What Mountain Bike magazines back in the day. He also writes about e-bikes for our sister publication ebiketips. He's won three mountain bike bog snorkelling World Championships, and races at the back of the third cats.

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