Cycling UK Forum

There maybe a little irony linked to that.

On a more serious note; having recently purchased a very fine Raleigh Leeds electric bicycle for my significant other, and as yet being totally unable to trace spare sprockets for the motor drive, which is about the size of a jockey wheel, I am keeping a very close eye on the chain wear indeed.
And all this despite the dealers solemn assurance that they 'never' wear out because they are made from special steel.

I'll try again

531colin wrote:Sixty or seventy quid for a wear gauge is a bit steep just to satisfy my curiosity.......does this one fulfil your criteria?.........http://www.bike-discount.de/shop/a102769/chain-wear-indicator-tl-cn42.html?lg=en&cr=GBP&cn=gb&gclid=CNq_nJiSqLoCFWTHtAodvHYAHg

Can you clarify this for me?

CJ wrote:.................. In my case the choice of how much wear to call critical has been a matter of trial and error and has changed as I've adopted more accurate methods of measuring it (than the usual gauge). I used to think 1% elongation was okay, but after a couple of cases of a new chain jumping badly on a cassette recently vacated by a chain with exactly that much wear, I've dropped it to 0.5%. I don't always catch a chain at 0.5%, some get to 0.6 or 0.7 and sometimes there's a bit of new chain jumping on sprockets vacated by the latter - but usually only one or two sprockets and only for a short while. So I think 0.5% must be about right, as the amount of wear that lets you keep the old cassette. ..................

Does it mean some chains are OK at 1% wear, and some cause skipping at 0.6 or 0.7% wear? ....because that doesn't sound like a very useful measurement to me.
Or does it mean all chains cause skipping at 1% wear, and some do at 0.6 or 0.7% ?

I'm quite interested in this chain wear business, I wouldn't mind splashing out for the Shimano gauge I linked to compare with my Rohloff one, but the one CJ linked is a bit expensive just for fun, as I have a system which works for me.
At least a year ago, I said I would measure with a ruler the pitch on a chain that my gauge said was worn out......but with the caveat that I would do it on a chain that showed uniform wear. I still haven't had a chain with uniform wear, even the one I took off the summer bike this summer had patches of accelerated wear......which are, of course, patches of corrosion. So I always try to throw away chains where the majority of links "pass" the gauge test, because there are always several that "fail". I think that's better than throwing away expensive cassettes, which is what happens if most of the links are "fail".
If you measure 300mm of chain which includes a patch of 2 or 3 corroded links, how useful are the results?
When I was commuting to work, it wasn't unusual to find the chain rusted in an S bend round the jockey wheels on a winter morning, so I wouldn't be surprised if my experience of chain wear is different to somebody who washes and re-lubes the chain after any wet ride.

I agree some chain useage does cause corrosion; with some chain lubes I'd find the chain seized up by lunchtime following the morning commute....

I guess the issue of uneven chain wear does rather beg the question of 'how much does it matter anyway?'.

If the sprockets are always playing catch-up with the wear state of the chain, how quickly will the sprockets wear to match the worst links, if there are just a few bad links in an otherwise good chain? Is the average wear (e.g. by measuring total chain length) still a good indication or not?

I don't know for sure, but I would suppose that a chain with 10% bad links is going to wear the sprockets out just as badly as a 100% bad chain, it is just going to take about ten times longer to do it.

I reckoned that a few hours of corrosion was tolerable on a chain, but leave it a few days and the chain would be ruined. I noticed that immediate measurement of a freshly corroded chain was pointless; rust inside the bushings would give a false reading of chain elongation. A repeat measurement after 20 miles of riding would normally give a true reading, usually showing the full extent of the damage to the chain.

The old trick of lifting the chain off the big ring doesn't give a very accurate indication of total chain elongation, but it is quickly done several times over and can help to identify an unevenly worn chain.

If a chain is likely to get corroded and stay corroded for a few days then I would say that the best solution might be a different chain lube or useage pattern.

cheers

I took my folding bike to Scotland last January and did a 5 mile ride to and from Perth station in dry conditions and a 20 mile country road ride with a few light patches of snow and slush here and there. On return to home I looked at the Wipperman Connex 8 speed chain and as I could see plenty of clean looking dry lube on it I hung the bike up in the garage without giving the chain any attention... err wrong! Even though the chain still looked fine on the outside a couple of months later, when I went to turn the pedals nothing would budge: the entire chain was corroded solid internally and had to be cut of the bike in sections, lesson learnt....

Prolink and salted roads isn't a good idea, either.

What is a good chain lube for heavily salted roads?

In the old days, I was using LPS3 and that seemed ok, but technology has moved on since the 80s and 90s. Maybe there's something even better?