Do I need a new cassette and/or chain ?

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Brucey
Posts: 44454
Joined: 4 Jan 2012, 6:25pm

Re: Do I need a new cassette?

Post by Brucey »

mnichols wrote:
Steve wrote:If I was going on holiday/tour and at all unsure, I'd fit a new cassette for peace of mind, the old cassette can always go back on after the trip. But it sounds like you should be ok, if you've properly tested it on the road.


I'll see how I get on this weekend, if it skips at all then I'll change it.

I'm guessing that if it's going to skip it will do it in the first hundred or so miles rather than develop a problem after that?


yup
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Brucey~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NetworkMan
Posts: 727
Joined: 25 Aug 2014, 11:13am
Location: South Devon

Re: Do I need a new cassette?

Post by NetworkMan »

As a slight side topic, I've always imagined that a 7 speed would last longer than an 8, longer than a 9 etc etc ...... because the sprockets are thicker. Is there any evidence that this is true?
Brucey
Posts: 44454
Joined: 4 Jan 2012, 6:25pm

Re: Do I need a new cassette?

Post by Brucey »

re sprockets; shimano 7s sprockets (except in IG which were slightly thicker) are nominally 1.85mm, going to ~1.8mm for 8s and a gnat's less than that for 9s (1.78mm or 1.75mm for campag). Older 5/6s stuff used mostly 2mm sprockets BITD but since the manufacturers use the same sprockets on 7s freewheels as they do 6s ones even 6s ones tend to be 1.85mm these days. (BTW 9s chain is narrower internally though; the same internal width as 10s and 11s; most 7/8s chain will run happily on 2mm thickness chainrings and sprockets in a derailleur system, but 9s chain won't).

So based on thickness alone 7s stuff doesn't have a big edge over 8s or 9s. Death by a thousand cuts applies as you go higher and higher though; some 10s and all 11s are 1.6mm thickness. As important is probably the way sprockets are made; old UG sprockets were noticably harder wearing than any HG, and HG type ones vary depending on who made them. For example sun race sprockets (both freewheel and cassette) seem to be harder and more brittle than many; no good for an MTB with shifts under load (the teeth break off too easily) perhaps but potentially more hard-wearing on a road bike with non-loaded shifting.

It is worth noting that the amount of wear on a sprocket that can stop a new chain from running properly can be tiny; too small to measure even, a tiny change in the shape of the teeth is enough. You can see very bad wear easily enough, but seeing when a sprocket is just too worn is (IME) impossible. Ten microns in the wrong place seems to be enough difference to make a sprocket work or not. Occasionally I have seen brand new sprockets that cause skipping in new chains, simply because they were not made well enough.

The mechanism of wear seems to be that there is always some wear rather than none, but that the tooth shape is preserved (well enough) provided the chain that is doing the wearing is itself not too worn. The speed of such wear seems to vary enomously with pedalling force; I have seen cassettes that barely look marked and the chains that have run on them are worn to over 1%; this seems to happen with folk that don't push hard on the pedals, or spin nicely; strong folk and 'mashers' can knacker sprockets with a chain that is a little over half as worn as that.

Once the chain gets elongated two things happen;

a) the load is less well shared between teeth, so the load is more concentrated on one tooth at a time (OTAAT..?) and
b) the rollers move more on each tooth whilst under load.

The effect of a) is profound; anyone who has run a chain out to (say) 1.5% will likely have got to the point that the chain runs rough on the least worn sprockets; for example the climbing sprockets if they are not used often, with a "grrrr....grrrr.....grrrr...." sound emanating with each pedal stroke. In a lot of HG sprockets, the tooth loadings can be so high (vs the strength of the steel) that the sprockets actually start to burr over if you use a small chainring and/or pedal forcefully. The most used sprockets can be thus damaged in a little as a single ride. If the sprockets are hard/brittle enough, it is this which breaks teeth off wholesale even if you don't shift gears clumsily.

The effect of b) is more subtle; I think it wears the chain at the interface between the rollers and the outside of the half-bushings, but that this is usually the least significant form of chain wear. However it also wears the sprockets a bit faster than normal, until the tooth shape is once again a good match for the chain. Both sources of wear must generate wear debris, and this ought to be removed from the system since it makes what is often known as 'a third body' in the wear system, i.e. road dirt or not, you make yourself an abrasive sludge, right where it does most damage, inside the chain.

If you ride for a few hundred miles often a new chain will elongate slightly as start to work OK with slightly worn sprockets that didn't want to play ball at first. However this is tedious work, since the most used sprockets are the ones that are most likely to skip in the first place.

I have a strategy for dealing with this situation, a 'cunning plan' if you like. Take a newish chain that is worn to 0.2 or 0.3%, set it aside and replace it with a new one. The slightly worn chain is your 'fallback chain', and you can use it should there be a sprocket that skips when a new chain is fitted later on. After a few hundred miles the bad sprocket should have been worn to match the fallback chain well enough, and the cassette should usually then accept a new chain without further trouble. Use the new chain to 0.2 or 0.3% and set it aside; this is then your new fallback chain. Refit the old fallback chain and change it out as normal, i.e. when it is worn to ~0.5 to 0.75% (depending on how you pedal).

FWIW wipperman published some chain wear test results a few years ago (comparing chain wear rates in different chains) and in many cases they manifested a distinctly 'J' shaped characteristic, i.e the rate of chain wear was low to start with (after intitial settling) and increased somewhat as time went on. IIRC the chains in their tests were not intensively cleaned and there may have been an element of the wear that was corrosion related (if water penetrates the bushings corrosion mechanisms can greately accelerate wear without obvious signs of 'rusting' per se). IIRC the comparison was such that the best chain (theirs, under the conditions of test) lasted at least twice as long as the the worst chain on test. However the thing that caught my eye was (after settling had occured) the low initial rate of chain wear with many chains. This is presumably some combination of

1) a very thin, hard, layer in the chain bushings
2) a gradual deterioration in the chain lube (which affects corrosion-related wear as much as anything else)
3) the formation of the 'third body' of abrasive sludge (dirt and wear debris).

Now there is nothing that can be done re 1) and indeed it is difficult to know if it even applies. But 2) and 3) are things that are within your compass; by lubing and cleaning the chain, it may be possible to keep the wear rate of the chain nearer the initial (rather than final) wear rate. If you can do this then the projected life of the chain may be much longer than it might be otherwise.

How often should you clean your chain? That is a tough one, but if you flip the question on its head you can get a good answer; 'how long does it take to ruin an un/poorly-lubricated chain?' can be answered. In an LBS near me they use KMC chains in the workshop and the usual life of a 7/8s one is 1000 to 2000 miles (given no cleaning and the occasional splash of oil). The same chain can wear out (to ~1%) in as little as 200 miles if it is not properly lubricated. [This experment was (unwittingly) done by a customer at the LBS; he degreased the new chain and lubed it with some waxy rubbish that didn't penetrate the bushings but just sat on the outside of the chain, a bit like like bird droppings might (in fact bird droppings might have worked better...). A couple of weeks later he returned to the LBS saying 'this chain is no good....' :roll: . They replaced it with another identical chain and suggested that he did something different with it, like not wash all the factory grease out of it; it is (with many chains) the best lube it will ever see.]

The interim 10s wipperman chain test results (included because of clear bmp)
Image
final 10s results (best quality I could find, you can just make out which is which)
Image
11s chain wear test data
Image

In brief the results suggest that there are (very broadly) three categories
1) basic chains; most SRAM, Yaban, cheapest KMC etc
2) midrange chains; most shimano, some wipperman, most KMC
3) most wear-resistant chains; including campag and best wipperman

Some chains wear slowly but are hampered by being not very well made to start with, (eg the KMC X10L silver model). This probably varies from batch to batch, and it may be that some 'selection bias' was applied by wipperman to the chains that were tested..

The conclusion is that, if you change your chain in good time (i.e. before it wears the cassette and chainrings), even cheap chains can offer VFM. In 11s, a sram pc1110 costs £11 :shock: and it lasts at least half as long as a £25 chain. One advantage is that you don't have to clean the chain whenever it is replaced.

OTOH if you intend to destroy everything at once (chain, cassette, chainrings) there is something to be said for buying an expensive chain.

The chains that might have the best 'TLC to increased life' ratio might be KMC 'XX' treated models eg X10L, X10SL, gold, silver variants.

if you can buy them cheap (e.g. reduced to ~£20 at some retailers presently) the midrange connex chains such as 10-SO models are good value too.

cheers
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Brucey~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NetworkMan
Posts: 727
Joined: 25 Aug 2014, 11:13am
Location: South Devon

Re: Do I need a new cassette?

Post by NetworkMan »

Thanks for that Brucey. Perhaps it might be put on 'to good to loose.'
Do you think that the approx. 10% variation between the KMC 10l gold and silver is down to sample variation/test variability or is there a more than cosmetic difference. I'd always imagined that the differences were probably just different plating etc. which is probably irrelevant if the thing is covered in engine oil like my chains are.
Edit
Perhaps some evidence from KMCs own website which I'd not looked at for a while. They rate the durability of the chains and in most (all?) cases the silver and gold version have the same rating.
Brucey
Posts: 44454
Joined: 4 Jan 2012, 6:25pm

Re: Do I need a new cassette?

Post by Brucey »

as I mentioned the wear rates are almost exactly the same in some cases but there may be an initial variation in the lengths of the chains. In the case of the KMC silver and gold 10s models the silver model shows an additional 0.06% over the stipulated length from the start vs the 'gold' version and both show ~0.2% over almost from the start.

This may or may not be typical (I think it isn't BTW) but it will vary with any chain manufacturer from batch to batch. An error of just over 10um per link is enough to make the chain 0.1% 'wrong' in length. The extra 0.06% results in about five hours less running time to 1% and each ~0.1% error in chain length from the start is worth about eight hours of chain life (on those tests).

Each (half) link is 12.7mm length so 1% is 127um, and 0.1% is 12.7um. For a chain to work well from new it needs to be zero to 0.1% over, i.e. each link (on average) needs to be in the range 12700um to ~12712um. I have known chains that are accurately made skip (or run rough) on new sprockets initially because there was about 5um of grease in every bushing.

Had the KMC XX 10s chains been 'normal' i.e. about 0.1% over from new, they would have performed almost as well as the campag record chain, and had they been 0% from the start they would have done better.

cheers
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Brucey~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
mnichols
Posts: 1465
Joined: 22 Apr 2013, 4:29pm

Re: Do I need a new cassette?

Post by mnichols »

If the chain may only last 1000 to 2000 miles then my plan to not change anything after a month before touring is scuppered. I typically do around 200 miles per week in the weeks building up to a tour, sometimes 300 and up to 500 in hell week (although i haven't done one of those this year, because I've not long come back from the Himalayas, and needed a recover more than I needed the training), and then between 700 and 1000 miles per week touring and max was 1000 miles in 5 days. This would suggest i should be changing chains several times

So, what's my best strategy? I don't really want to take a spare with me, or take an untested one
Brucey
Posts: 44454
Joined: 4 Jan 2012, 6:25pm

Re: Do I need a new cassette?

Post by Brucey »

get at least two further new chains and run them both for at least a couple of hundred miles (to test them) before you go away. If you might need a spare chain en route, have it posted on ahead.

cheers
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Brucey~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
mnichols
Posts: 1465
Joined: 22 Apr 2013, 4:29pm

Re: Do I need a new cassette?

Post by mnichols »

Brucey wrote:get at least two further new chains and run them both for at least a couple of hundred miles (to test them) before you go away. If you might need a spare chain en route, have it posted on ahead.

cheers


Thanks for all your help

I’ll raise a glass of wine, and say a toast in your honour on tour
Brucey
Posts: 44454
Joined: 4 Jan 2012, 6:25pm

Re: Do I need a new cassette?

Post by Brucey »

cheers indeed!

BTW if the chain lifetimes in the test data seem short, they are arguably under conditions that are about as bad as you might get in service; as per the footnotes in the provisional 10s result the chains are run 'as is' for five hours and then subjected to doses of water, sand and oil. This represents what some chains see quite well; they get wet/dirty, are not cleaned, and given occasional doses of oil.
The initial wear rate (0-5 hours) can be very low indeed; if you could keep that going then the chain would last x5 longer or better...

cheers
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Brucey~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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