I buy chains in quantity, rotate them. I'm finally down to my last new chain. I shop on the Bay of e 'cause I'm cheap. 2 vendors sell 'X8-8 Gold'. Neither listing explains what makes them gold - not actual gold metal, I suspect. KMC's website doesn't mention them. Neither does it tell me the difference between E8, X8, Z8.1, Z8.3 - I suspect E means electric. Bizarrely they offer 'custom length' X8s for $5 - I suspect they really mean $5 extra for a custom length, but they don't say that anywhere.

"8" for eight-speed, I suppose. Always liked Shimano's DA for 8sp. Talk about gold - those cost the gold equivalent nowadays!
KMC makes awesome chains. My bikes all shod with 11sp widths. Seem to last about 5k miles or so and no rotation for me.
Funny coincidence that this represents my 888th post!

Doesn't sound like a KMC chain issue sounds like a buying from non-authorized seller issue. In the end you buy from an authorized dealer you get all the info and get to know you are buying legit products.

For a legit KMC chain they are usually Ti-Ni coated.

I think in the 8 speed KMC chains it's just finish and color. Price varies, but I think that's probably just the cost of the various treatments and what sells the most.

On their website, it doesn't appear they produce the gold color any more. So the gold chains you are finding are either left over from earlier production or that other bad word that will get us slightly off track.

The custom length chain is $5.00 for 118 links. If you want 119 links then there is a additional cost of $23.80 for a total of 28.80. I imagine it goes up more as you add lengths.

They don't really explain the differences between the different chains, but you can see both physical shape of plates and stuff is different. When you get up to the 11 and 12 speed chains, they do seem to give a little more info about them. But still, mostly might be just marketing hype. But for the cost of any of those chains, and knowing that you'll wear any of them out eventually, I'd just try out a different chain if I was dissatisfied with the life or color of the one I'm currently using.

Plenty of fake KMC chains on Ebay and elsewhere. Check this thread Ordered a new chain what I got was fake
Papa Ado is a member here and is also a KMC rep from Taiwan who posts here occasionally and also on the linked thread. He gives some very good info on their chains and you can contact him directly. I buy KMC chains on Ebay but use sellers that have many, many sales and 99% or better feedback. TrailThis is one I have used many times with zero issues and good prices but there are others that sell for less but I wouldn't trust most of them. If the price is crazy low, it may be a fake.

the "gold" coloring is, most likely, Titanium Nitride plating... like with drill bits.

zinc or cadmium can also lend a gold tint.

e-chains are made to handle a higher torque load, but the difference is minimal... center punched pins instead of rivet head. It withstands the sudden shock of going from throttle off/coasting to sudden full throttle, mostly.
I watched a customer turn red, then lie, regarding doing this on a rented e-bike last year.... I put a Shimano chain on it for him. They hold up better under abuse and duress, IMO.. and cost ten bucks more.
i normally use KMC and SRAM chains here.... the shimanos are mostly for Racier folks, and now e-bikes.

TrailThis is good people... Great prices, the fastest shipping on Ebay, and always the right part.

the cheapest deal i've gotten for chains was a stack of twenty KMCs in cracked boxes... the crate was dropped coming off the ship... one half of one quicklink was missing.... 8 bucks each for x-8s. not recalling the seller.

There's a summary of the features of the various models here.

I've never had a problem.

All of them? I think you mean Ti-N, Titanium nitride, not Ti-Ni, Titanium nickel.

?

I can buy a 118-link chain for $5?

They say it has to be an even number. I don't see $23.80

I wouldn't have suspected. I've been buying okay chains there for years.

Good guess. The European site mentions it. It's odd the sellers don't say that. I wonder why KMC in the US discontinued them.

Thanks. The European site is very different from the US site. Odd.

I guess that is luck or you just didn't notice? Buying products that could be fake is always a poor way to go.

I did mean Titanium Nitride but not all KMC chains but all of their "gold" chains are.

Pick one of these.

• Counterfeit
• fake
• phony
• bogus

I've been dealing with TrailThis for some time now. Never had a problem and they are an authorized KMC dealer. Great prices and instant shipping.
Works for me

• snide
• hooky
• sham
• knockoff

Apparently. I can put it in my cart on KMC's site and it comes up as five dollars plus shipping, Why don't you try it and see?
Are you on KMC's site or some other site? Perhaps you are not on the KMC site for the USA and it just works differently for that region.


If you only ask questions and never try anything you just never will know for certain.

They worked well. They had the KMC logo on them. It's hard to imagine that a chain that works at all could be worth doing that much to fake.

So it seems. The US site had none, unlike the European site. The premium chains now have EcoProteQ; the pictures aren't gold.

It hadn't occurred to me that any of those words would 'get us off track'.

You added a link. Unless one adds a link it goes through as $5 for a 118-link chain. Shipping for 5 chains is $19.90 - $8.98/chain, shipped. They sell the same chain for $20 otherwise.


We have the same site. The $23.80 doesn't come up if you don't add a link. Who pays $20 when they can get it for $5? I suspect they have it backwards: they want $23.80 for the base chain, $5 for additions, but I get all the way to checkout.

I wonder if I'm missing something.

Twice I've been burned on eBay buying fake KMC chains. Both times I managed to return them after reporting the issue to eBay. The 'Bay did NOTHING to the vendors, as the same items were still up for bids afterwards.

The pics on the items were of real KMC chains, the products were fake. Caveat emptor & Si nimium bonum est verum esse, verisimile non est verum !

Ebay has no reason to get rid of the fake sellers, they make money either way so they are going to keep making money. That is their goal in life to make loads of money no matter what. Moral scruples don't come into play much with mega corporations. When they do get moral it is usually to make more money and then when the politicos get involved they get out of it to please them and in the end it is all "money money money it's all I ever hear in the house" "Manny, look at the pelican fly, come on pelican"

That is why I keep telling people buy stuff from authorized dealers and they will be very much less likely to have problems. Nothing is perfect in this crazy world but there is a reason why we have authorized dealers and why a lot of these manufacturers don't sell on third party sites. It is just too easy to get fakes and knockoffs through and it is even easier to take a picture from someone else and use it for their own thing. There is a thread in foo about news articles using bad pictures. It is super common these days unfortunately.

Caveat Emptor indeed.

I've bought from them before, but can't find TrailThis on eBay using the advanced search by seller feature. Any idea if they're out of business?

Looks like they are on vacation until March 25th. https://www.ebay.com/str/trailthis

I've bought bad stuff, been stiffed by the seller, had eBay refund me: they have an incentive to get rid of fake sellers. I've also been just stiffed. The discounts make it cheaper to accept some losses.

Perhaps....this is reason to NOT buy important stuff on Ebay!
Buy a shirt or some socks. Maybe a new hat some shorts. But not something that matters.

Why spend $2000 or $4000 or $10,000 on a bike then try to save $5 on a maybe/maybe not chain?

Last time I tried something like that was for hydraulilc supports for my car rear hatch. Lasted 6 months, when I had to go to the mechanic and get real, Honda-branded supports. So, I paid twice. Sometimes saving money is very expensive.

The image I showed was not answering the statement about whether you could put it in your cart. However since you seem to do better with visual stuff, here is the 118 link chain in my cart.


I can't make any assessment of why this is cheaper than their X8 chain of 116 links. The picture looks different. Perhaps you could purchase the chain and evaluate it. I have no need for a 8 speed chain. And I think I can find a 8 speed chain less expensive than that price including shipping at some of the local stores.

Apparently the ability to make a decision on what chain to buy.

It's not rocket science and it's not a lot of money. Or at least it doesn't have to be. Buy a chain. Any 8 speed chain, if it doesn't last as long as you think it should, then buy another model or brand next time.

I don't like KMC's site either. They really don't give you much information at all about the differences of their chains. So maybe there isn't enough difference in them to matter for longevity.

I generally will buy Shimano chains. However when chains were scarce during COVID, I did have to buy a KMC chain, and it seems to be holding up as well as any 11 speed chain I've used.

Except they really don't sure they might refund a few people but they are going to make more money off of those sellers and the people who don't bother with refunds and such. They want a place where any can sell anything that is not totally banned and they add a margin of safety but they want people to be able to sell fakes and knockoffs so long as they make money. You might lose a little here and there but more often then not they are making more money from it all.

A 118-link chain costs $5; a 120-link chain costs $29 - does this make sense? The site also says that you have to choose an even number but allows you to choose an odd number. They look like the same chain to me.

They have an 11-speed chain for $5: https://kmcchain.us/collections/11-s...-custom-length It's 138 links. A 140-link chain costs $75 - does this makes sense to you?

I can't. If I buy 5 shipping drops to $4/each.

It's an easy decision if it's what it appears to be to me. I'd have thought they could afford to get it right. I asked because I wondered if I was missing something.

My decision is how much it costs me, not on what eBay makes. They have to make something to stay in business. They make less on mis-identified stuff. Most of the fakes and knockoffs are honestly advertised; I've bought some and been happy with them. Issuers of travelers' checks made money on people not redeeming them. Gift card issuers count on the same.

I think that anyone ordering just the custom length surcharge without also ordering a chain to be customised will receive nothing in the mail. 😀