dwood

I'm just getting back into riding after many years of non-activity. In my youth I rode my 3-speed Schwinn to school and to deliver newspapers after school. I was never a high-performance biker, doubt if I even put much over 1k miles on all my youthful bikes combined. Any bike I ever owned always had the original parts, including tires [but probably new tubes] and brake pads when I got rid of it.

Reading this forum made me aware that many of you die-hard bikers put upwards of 10k miles on your bikes a year. Amazing!

So I got to wondering . . . if you ride any given bike those distances do you go thru several sets of tires, how many brake pads, do you wear out a rim from brake wear, how about the chain, what about the sprockets?

I realize there are many variables: different types of riding stress the various parts more or less. But surely some generalizations can be made.

Thanks,

DON

ax0n

Obviously this is just my experience, no one else's.

Pads on V-Brakes last about 750 miles for me.
Pads on yoked cantilevers, about 1500.
Pads on road calipers, about 2,000 miles.

My chains last about 2000 miles before they get stretched to the point where it's reasonable to change them.

I have replaced 2 sprockets. One due to wear on an old bike I bnought used - no clue how many miles. The other, because I needed different gearing. I haven't worn a cassette out, nor chainrings. I have over 3,000 miles on my road bike.

I don't have enough miles to tell you much about bottom brackets or hub bearings, but it's my guess that quality components (shifters, derailleurs, headset, wheel bearings, etc) would last close to 10,000 road/path/recreation miles unless they're being abused either with lack of maintenance or crashes, hard riding, etc. Hard duty use (racing, off-road) could decrease the number substantially, I'm sure.


At the end of the day, the only things I'd really expect to last forever on one of my bikes is the frame, fork, stem and handlebars. 10 years and 30,000+ miles from now, I'm sure a frame will be fine. Everything else will have been replaced time and again, most likely.

M_S

With anal cleaning and obsessive non-cross chaining, a chain can go for a really long time. But usually yeah, about 2-3000 miles per chain. depends on the chain and conditions in which it's ridden, I suppose. A chain on a dedicated foul weather bike might last only 1000 miles.

SDRider

I have about 4k miles on one bike and about 2k miles on another. I've gone through a couple sets of tires, no brake pads, and no chains (althought the bike with 4k miles is borderline-I probably have about 2.5-3k miles on that chain so I should probably just buy a new one and be done with it). I have yet to wear out a set of wheels but I have a few spare sets I can use as backup if needed and I can easily move them from bike to bike because the groups are similar enough that I could use the same wheels with just a cassette change.

knucklesandwich

I have about 3K miles on my main bike.
Changed the canti brake pads after 1,400 miles, and about to do so again.
Changed the tires at 1,400 miles as well, not b/c they were worn but I wanted slicker rubber.
Just had the drivetrain replaced (crank/bb/cassette/chain) due to a warranty issue with the crank. I would have gone a bit longer on it otherwise, but it was nearing time.

reiffert

Usually a good idea to replace rear cogs after about 4 chains (2-3K miles each). Sometimes the improvement in shifting is pretty amazing. With decent maintenance chainrings can go through 2-4 sets of cogs.

Fenders make a difference in trash on chain cogs, and rings, but the driveline is pretty exposed so regular cleaning will increase mileage, keep it quieter, improve shifting, help prevent indelible leg tattoos.

Also, regular cleaning of driveline makes it easier to clean and check things like rims, tires,disks, brakepads. Then it is also easier to hear problems coming up (pedals, BB). And not to start the war again, but gives the opportunity to touchup paint, esp important on steel frames.

Not doing reasonable maintenance? = Fun stuff like rim splitting, tire blowing off rim at 40mph, truing a rim in the campground and hoping the bike shop in the next little town is open on Sunday, ....

max-a-mill

if you can get away with riding singlspeed/fixed all maintenance pretty much ends.

i replace 3-4 chains a year on the fleey as needed; lube em, and ride em.

once every couple years one of the bikes might need a new set of gears... brake pads, tires...

i started singlespeeding not to be cool but because i am a lousy mechanic.

the amount of crappy weather you ride in definitely has a huge effect on mileage.

finally, keeping your chain clean doesn't seem to matter much in my experience, just keep it lubed. but then i don't have a bunch of gears the chain has to shift into.

gmule

I have little over 4,000 commuter miles so far this year. I have worn out 2 sets of tires 1 complete set of brake pads and 1 chain.

caloso

It's amazing what kind of wear that commuting will put on a bike. I replaced the front brake shoes on my commuter after a single year (less than 2000 miles).

LittleBigMan

Not a problem.

Brakes will go. New pads are cheap (don't wait on this, your rims will pay.)

Tires too.

Chain/sprockets will wear (see Sheldon Brown--google it--for advice on when to replace. You'll know when your chain skips, but it's probably too late then.)

Find a bike shop you trust and let them fill you in.

zonatandem

Here are some numbers from an article we did back in 2002.

We ride tandem, so all equipment gets a bit harder wear due to extra torque by 2 riders.
This was what we replaced, in 50,000 miles, on that particular tandem:
Tires: 17 front and 22 rear.
Flats: 138 flat tires (65 front/73 rear). Living in the desert lots of thorns, glass, road debris, etc. Unusual stuff for flats: broken Presta valve stem, a large industrial size staple.
Most flats, due to construction on our local road: 14 in 10 days of riding!
Chains: drive chain 7; cross over chain 6. Broke cross-over chain twice. Note: we are sticklers on keeping chains and drivetrain clean/grit-free.
Cassette: 8.
Derailleurs: front replaced once, rear replaced once.
Rear der. pulleys: 3 sets replaced.
Cables:front der: 4; rear der. 10. Never replaced any brake cables.
Chainrings: replaced 54 and 40T chainrings at 17,000 miles. Replaced 40T middle ring with a 42T and replaced that one 23,000 miles later. 26T granny chainring lasted 33,532 miles before replacing.
Broke one chainring bolt.
Headest: replaced twice.
Handlebar tape replaced 4 times.
Wheels: cracked rear rim at 25,544 miles while climbing a very steep/long grade. Replaced rear rim 2 more times.
Stoker broke one toeclip. Pilot cracked one pedal (but that pedal had come of a previous tandem and had 80,000 miles on it). So, one new set of pedals.
Cable housing: rear der. cable housing 'exploded' after nearly 50,000 miles.
Replaced one broken stem bolt.
Stoker had handlebars replaced and also the stoker handrests (by choice, not neccessity).
Brake pads: wore out one set of rear brake pads.

Real Good Stuff:
Here is some of the orginal equipment that survived with flying colors:
Topline crankset; Front wheel (Mavic Mod. 3CD, Phil 36H hub and DT spokes). Delta QRs. Syncross Ti bottom brackets. Pilot and stoker stem and pilot handlebars. Scott-Pederson SE brakes. Shim. bar end shifters.
Front Matthauser brake pads.
Never broke a spoke.
This tandem was used for general riding:commute/tours/centuries/club rides/time trials.
It took us 8 years and 4 months to ride 50,000 miles on our Co-Motion custom tandem.
Moral of the story: good equipment and regular maintenance pays off in the l-o-n-g run!

Pedal on TWOgether!
Rudy and Kay/zonatandem

MyBikeGotStolen

Man, it looks like it will be a long time till I get to upgrade anything on any of my bikes

pinkrobe

wahoonc

As pointed out it will vary...but on my Raleigh Sports 3 speed that was ridden around 5k miles a year average for 7 years. Chains were every other year, tires varied depending on quality, but typically a couple of sets a year. Original brake pads were still on the rear last year, but the front were replaced somewhere along the way, couple of broken spokes replaced and that was it. It got a complete tear down and cleaning ever now and again as needed. FWIW the bike is a 1972 Raleigh Sports Standard and is still being ridden occasionally today. Now if you do like my brother and run into parked cars, over dogs, curbs and policemen you will need to replace parts a bit more often.

Aaron

Doug5150

The first recumbent I bought, I rode for two spring/summer seasons before concluding that it was a bit too short for me. The cyclocomputer showed 996 miles; the rear 1.5" wide tire had a narrow 1/4" flat strip worn around it in the center, and the front tire (also 1.5" wide) was still a round profile. The brakes were cheapish Promax disks, and the pads appeared to still have 3/4 of their life left (I live in a mostly-flat area).

I once read an article online about Freddie Hoffman; it said that he wears out a chain about every 5000 miles and new chainrings/clusters every 50,000 miles. The worn-out chainrings are given to big donors.
(-the link below isn't the same story, but it is one of them, and it has the same photos-)
https://www.miles4melanoma.com/hoffman.html

Freddie is probably the authority on wearing out bike parts; it'd be interesting to know what he uses on his bike.
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