Cycling UK Forum

Only £8, seems suspiciously cheap...

https://www.planetx.co.uk/i/q/CHSR1110A ... peed-chain

Live dangerously....Give it a go.....What on earth is the very worst that could happen ??.....

I have one on the bike now, done about 800 miles. Can't tell any difference between it and any other chain I have ever used

I also have one, mine is on an ebike. It’s as good if not better than the ebike specific chain I had on before.

Sounds good. I'll stock up!

SRAM is one of the standard brands, so it should be okay.

for years SRAM has had a cheap chain at the bottom of their range, the PC830, that isn't hardened properly, and doesn't last. When I saw the price of the PC1110 I expected it to be built the same way, but when I read the specs, it isn't. It ought to wear as well as lot of other 11s chains do, but is cheap because it isn't plated. It appears to be the spiritual successor to the original sedisport chain, if you like.

cheers

If it anything like a non-shiny version of the PC-X1, then it should wear reasonably well.

I've got a pair of X1s that have done around 1500 miles each in fairly mucky conditions, ridden in all weathers on & off road through the last 2 winter's with a not particularly rigorous cleaning regime and both are showing well under 1/32" elongation over a 12" length.

BTW I'm not sure whether it matters, or even what inherent difference there is, but the PC1110 is listed as a 1x chain.

Trouble is, one never knows if a chain is good quality until after
Wearing and having to be replaced early is bad enough, but a chain breaking could be more serious

I think chains are generally very strong but some might be faulty

chains can suffer QA issues whereby they are not dimensionally correct and/or have side plates that are more likely to crack than normal. I don't think that there is a chain maker that has an entirely unblemished record here. Commonly new chains are found to be in the range 0% to 0.1% (over the nominal 1/2") once you have done ten miles and pushed the grease out of the bushings slightly. If you are planning on changing the chain at 0.5% wear, you will pretty clearly get 4/5ths the mileage out of a chain that starts at +0.1%.

Modern chains need to be made of stronger steel in order to be strong enough simply because the side plates are a lot thinner than they used to be. This is (in detail) complicated but the net outcome isn't rocket science; you can nearly always make steel harder (stronger) but it will likely be less ductile (cracks more easily) and/or more expensive. Narrower chains (some 9s and all 10s, 11s etc) are made using 'bullseye riveting' which is more expensive to do but ought to result in flush sideplates and lower residual stresses in the chain when it is assembled. The internal width of modern chains is slightly narrower than before but most of the width reduction has come from the flush riveting and the reduction in the gauge of the sideplates.

However I've seen more chains that 'just broke' since ten speed became a thing, so I think that many modern chains are not quite as durable as they perhaps ought to/could be. Moves to ever more sprockets are unlikely to improve this situation.

When the sedisport chain was a new thing, the packaging said on it 'delta hardened'. This might have been marketing gobbledegook but it may have been an indication of the way the chain was made; steels in a certain range of compositions transform into a 'delta phase' at high temperature and this means that there is an additional tool which can be used to control the grain size and strength of the steel if it is worked in this temperature range. I have always assumed that this was how they made a low cost steel/manufacturing process to create chains that worked OK. Modern chains may well use other steel compositions/tricks to achieve the required properties.

cheers

However I've seen more chains that 'just broke' since ten speed became a thing,

A terrible confession which will appal proper bicycle lovers.

I recall many years ago breaking the chain on the very first bike I bought with my own money.

I had no idea chains didn't last forever - I recall looking at it after it broke and realising some of the rollers were missing entirely (presumably cracked and fallen off). That was a seven speed.

The only other chain that's ever broken on me was an eight speed, after hitting a rock on a MTB.

Ever since the first of these, I've always had a chain splitter in my toolkit.