I worked with Igus while I was an R&D intern at Rocky, to develop additional bushing formulas that would reduce wear. While Igus bushings generally include a lubricating ingredient or two, there are hundreds of different formulas out there, and the ones usually used on bikes are definitely compatible with common petroleum based greases. We also tested with many different kinds of grease, accelerated wear with various contaminates, the effect of extreme heat conditions, etc...
For what it's worth, we did end up finding a very good Igus formula (based on product for the pulp and paper industry - high contamination) that seemed to really reduce bushing wear as well as wear on the reducer anodizing, but that happened to be right before they switched their product to run bearings on all the pivots.
Additional: With regards to introducing contaminates by applying grease, that may be a concern if the sealing elements used in the ABC/BC2 pivots worked really well. But with SO MANY bicycle bushing pivot designs, that's just not the case. Greasing them 100% led to longer lasting pivot components. When they went to BC2 design (Thanks Lyle!) in the link pivots, the sealing was slightly better, but far from perfect. The grease ports were mostly just to give the "I hardly ever service my bike" crowd a nudge in the right direction.
June 20, 2022, 9:25 a.m. - Mammal
I worked with Igus while I was an R&D intern at Rocky, to develop additional bushing formulas that would reduce wear. While Igus bushings generally include a lubricating ingredient or two, there are hundreds of different formulas out there, and the ones usually used on bikes are definitely compatible with common petroleum based greases. We also tested with many different kinds of grease, accelerated wear with various contaminates, the effect of extreme heat conditions, etc... For what it's worth, we did end up finding a very good Igus formula (based on product for the pulp and paper industry - high contamination) that seemed to really reduce bushing wear as well as wear on the reducer anodizing, but that happened to be right before they switched their product to run bearings on all the pivots. Additional: With regards to introducing contaminates by applying grease, that may be a concern if the sealing elements used in the ABC/BC2 pivots worked really well. But with SO MANY bicycle bushing pivot designs, that's just not the case. Greasing them 100% led to longer lasting pivot components. When they went to BC2 design (Thanks Lyle!) in the link pivots, the sealing was slightly better, but far from perfect. The grease ports were mostly just to give the "I hardly ever service my bike" crowd a nudge in the right direction.