A Tired Old Chain Question
 

Hey Folks,

Being a 'NewBie' I've gotta ask....... What chain will give the longest wear if cleaned / oiled weekly, used on paved flat roads, not in wet conditions, and cost will not get me tossed out of my house. I'm not a concerned with weight just durability. Heck my shoes weigh more than most of the French or Italian rode boys and their bikes.......

I have a Shimano 7 sp road bike and have gone through two (2) KMC Z51 chains in 300 miles each chain. I ride 77.5 miles five days a week. Use the Park chain cleaner each week to clean and oil the chain using various oils. I measure wear using Park's CC 3.2 'go-no-go' tool and at 250 ~ 300 miles several areas of the chains are at the .75 limit.

This means I go through a chain every 3 to 4 weeks. Any suggestions...?

Thanks

What do you measure with a new chain?
Many of these checkers show a new chain as "pretty worn".
Measure with a ruler to make sure.

IF you are really wearing out chains that fast, you have worn cogs/rings.

You're replacing your chain weekly?

There is something drastically wrong with your bike, chain measurement method, or cleaning/oiling regimen to have this short a chain life. How old is your cassette and chainrings?

- Mark

KMC's "Z" chains are their cheapest ones, but even they should be lasting longer than 300 miles! Perhaps your cleaning ritual is doing more harm than good. I lube my SRAM PC-850s with Chain-L and don't need to do *anything* with them for 750 miles at a time. Some of them are at 3000+ miles and don't need replacing yet.

Don't clean or oil it for the first month then check it. I'm not a fastidious chain cleaner or oiler and get about 4 to 8000+km out of my chains depending on what bike(my commuter takes a beating). Also chains from new can read as almost worn so measure it with a ruler at the start so you have a number.

I very strongly, make that extremely strongly, don't believe you're wearing chains that fast.

I suspect that you're falling victim to gadgets that are over estimating the chain wear.

Start by tossing the gadgets, and measure chain wear with dime store 12" ruler. If the ruler doesn't overhang the 0 &12" marks, measure 11-1/2" from 1/4"to 11-3/4". that will give you a true sense of the condition based on a rule of thumb that says replace when stretched 1/8" over 12". Some people replace earlier, using 1/16" as the cutoff, so somewhere between depending on your preference.

Once you have the meast regents straight, you may consider alternating 2-3 chains, switching them out every few hundred miles (300-600, depending on a wear rate, or by thirds of the estimated life). Rotating chains allows taking them well beyond the normal guidelines, since the chain's and sprockets are always closely matched for wear.

Lastly, stop obsessing zbout keeping the chain's clean. Use a decent lube, and dry wipe the chain before adding lube so it doesn't carry loose dirt and grit into the chain.

The only valid chain checkers are made by
Shimano: https://www.amazon.com/Shimano-TL-CN.../dp/B00346ZEOE
and Pedro's:
All the rest are junk.
A ruler is more accurate.

Explanation here: http://pardo.net/bike/pic/fail-004/000.html

To me, the article contradicts you on that statement. The park tool, CC-3.2, does in fact assess roller and pin wear to a certain extent. As well do others. Whether they are manufactured with consistent quality, I cannot say anything toward that. As simple as they are, there may be many users that simply misunderstand how to use them properly.

As has been pointed out many times before the Park chain checker and similar ones have one somewhat valid purpose - a quick check of a chain in a shop situation where one does not have the time to crunch down with a ruler and peer at 1/32 graduations. Even then if I still worked in a shop and suspected the checker was overstating wear I would double-check with a ruler. I suspect most people have the tool because they feel it's more high-tech and cooler than a ruler.

Secondly, also discussed previously, it's best to leave the original lube on the chain for some time, as it seems to do at least as well as any off the shelf lube.

Finally, given the relatively low cost of a chain, cleaning (as in solvent dunk) weekly seems a waste of good riding time for questionable benefit. If you are not completely cleaning then you're just rinsing grit further in.

The problem is that we're dealing with a guideline or rule of thumb, not with any sort of precise measurement.

BITD the guideline was 1% stretch (1/8" over 12") based on pin to pin measurement. These days many choke down on that and use 1/2% (1/16" over 12"). Now people are talking about roller wear which was always there and factored into the pin to pin guidelines.

So tools that factor roller wear, especially short tools which may overly factor that, need to be compensated lest they read high. Unfortunately, they don't compensate for counting roller wear twice (once when the rule of thumb was developed over time, and again by including it in the actual measurement).

So, as mentioned, the gadgets are convenient ways to quickly check, but one needs to understand that they read high and reconfirm that "worn" chains are actually worn to whatever guideline one wants to use.

Think of these tools as you might a medical screening test, which is bias to generate false positive rather than false negatives (for good reason). When the screening test reads positive, you know you need to do the more accurate test to know for sure.

Are you having any symptoms of chain wear other than what the gauge is telling you?

I use a Park tool as a quick check and a ruler if near the end of life. I ride daily in all weather and generally get about 2500-3000 miles out of my cheap KMC chains. I re-lube when the chain starts to get noisy. Every few months, remove, clean, and re-lube. If I wore out a chain in 300 miles, I would be looking for another cause.

Good Stuff - All.

Shimagnoio- your 'link' to chain wear is great. Yes, I saved it.

FBinNY- Good explanation and I clearly was weekly 'obsessing' with my cleaning. All the grease in the rollers washed out every week and the external oiling never really got in the links and rollers.

headsunder- Man yo-da-best!

ThermoionicScott- Good stuff.

Hooperdriver- You 'NAILED' my new chain maintenance regiment.

Thanks to all posters.... I now have my 'Pin-Head' back into daylight......

I don't purport that my experience is anything but anecdotal, but I use the Park chain wear tool and it seems to nicely correlate with what I'd expect insofar as chain wear goes on the SRAM and KMC chains I tend to buy. A new chain shows <0.5% wear, a chain with 2k miles or so may start to pass this guide, but generally shows <0.75% wear and after maybe 3K miles or so, it shows the chain probably needs replacing although I often let it go a bit longer.

I don't think of the Park tool as an absolute but a guideline for monitoring chain wear. For this, I think it works great and is a heck of a lot easier to use than measurement methods.

My chain cleaning/oiling regimen is pretty lax - I leave the factory lube on for the first 500 miles or so, then clean on the bike every few hundred miles with WD-40 followed by a little 90W gear lube, trying to be sure to wipe any excess off. I might remove the chain mid-life for a thorough soak in mineral spirits and dunk in gear lube. About every two or three chain changes, I replace the cassette.

- Mark

:lol:
I tried that once.
The upside was the chain was never quieter.:thumb:
The downside was the chain became flypaper;
I never saw such huge particles of dirt stick to a chain.:eek:

Campagnolo C9.

1. That doesn't sanity check. While most people don't match my 4000-4500 miles out of Campagnolo C9/C10 chains (at which point they've elongated less than 1/32", but have degraded shifting from side plate wear), it's not 1/5th of what you should be getting on a road bike.

2. Don't use chain checkers because apart from Shimano's they measure wear/tolerances in roller dimensions and clearance which don't matter because they don't affect pitch. Get yourself a foot long ruler. Shift into big x small. Pull the derailleur cage aft to put some tension on the bottom run. Measure between the same point on pins that should be 11" apart (left side, center, etc.). Replace the chain when you get 11 1/16" between pins (chains aren't metric - links are 1" and half-links 1/2"). In theory you're supposed to measure 12" of chain because that makes 1/8" 1%, although 11" means you still have fine marks in the right place on a foot long ruler, it'll definitely fit on bikes with short chain stays, and waiting to replace until you reach 0.55% elongation instead of 0.5% isn't going to result in excessive cog and ring wear.

3. Stop messing with cleaning because you don't want to remove the unbeatable factory lube and solvents can do more harm than good. Install a new chain. Leave it alone until it ceases to run silently (that means more mechanical noise, not abnormalities like squeaking). Add the chain lubricant of your choice when it's not silent. Wipe the outside off with a paper towel before and after lubrication. I get about 800 miles out of the factory lube, and 100-400 out of reapplications depending on weather - the rainy season radically decreases required lubrication intervals.

Riding a lot I go through two chains a year (8400 miles last year).