Juice Lubes AAS Juice - Aluminium Anti-Seize

Juice Lubes AAS Juice is a workshop essential that does what it should and is easier to apply than copper paste in cold weather.

Despite the slightly puerile name and marketing, Juice Lubes AAS Paste – Aluminium Anti-Seize – is a good product that your bike mechanic will thank you for using when it comes to servicing time.

At Bike Mechanic School, day one, as far as I remember, was all about how not to set fire to your workshop; after which we went straight to 'use anti-seize paste'.

Chances are, if you've experienced a stuck seatpost, steerer or bottom bracket, or your cleat bolts won't come out of your shoes, it's because it's been assembled without anti-seize. The old adage, 'a stitch in time saves nine', applies.

For years I've been thinking that anti-seize meant copper-slip and vice versa, but it turns out any number of metals can appear in it, and in some cases copper is not the best choice. In fact, I've learned it's best not to use copper-based products on stainless steel, where it can cause cracks, which is an issue for me as I have a stainless steel bike frame. It's safe to use with carbon components. Aluminium is also electrically inert, so can be used on electrical contacts too.

This particular aluminium-based paste comes in a 150g tub, which is more economical to use than a tube but slightly more difficult to keep it free from outside contaminants. My previous choice of copper slip, which was made by Finish Line, came with a brush built into the lid (that 235g tin has lasted me 13 years, though it's nearly all gone now). I cut off an old artist's paint brush to apply the AAS Juice and found it goes on smoothly with just the right consistency.

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In cold weather, I found copper anti-seize could become quite stiff and thick, and needed leaving on the stove top to soften. The AAS Juice hasn't done that, even when the workshop temperature has dropped to near-zero overnight, so that's a bonus if you work in an unheated space.

Whether it has the same long-lasting resilience to corrosion is difficult to assess in the time available for testing. However, I attempted to create an 'accelerated winter' in the name of science: I took two near-identical pedals and thoroughly degreased the spindle threads, treated one with the AAS Juice and left the other ungreased. I threaded them into two offside cranks I happened to have lying around and dropped them up to the pedal axle in a bucket of water liberally dosed with road salt. Then I left them out in the cold for four weeks.

At the end of the experiment, slightly disappointingly, both pedals came off with only modest effort, so the best I can offer is that there was still plenty of paste evident on the treated pedal, meaning it hadn't dissolved or leached out. Anyway, aluminium-based anti-seize has been a thing for many a year, so it's not like this is untested territory.

Value

As is often the case, there are similar products aimed at cyclists that tend to cost a little more, and others for general hardware use, which tend to work out cheaper, and the AAS juice sits in the middle of the price range.

At 6p per gram, it's cheaper than Park Tools' ASC-1 paste, which is £11.99 for 112g (10.7p/g), but more expensive than your hardware-store equivalent from Sealey, whose SCS103 Aluminium Anti-Seize Compound, in a 500g tin, sells online for around £8.

So AAS Juice is unlikely to trouble you financially and could save you a good deal more in trashed parts and contributions to the swear box. If you're a real heavy-duty user it comes in a half-kilo workshop pack at £19.99.

Verdict

Softer than some copper-based pastes in cold weather, a workshop essential in a sensibly sized pot