I am guessing that this has been covered before, but I need to replace the chains again, sooner than seems reasonable, and wanted to know if you have some recommendations. We are a couple of Randonneurs, so we ride long distances with some extra food and clothes - think of it as light touring. Durability is far more important than any weight savings. We are running Shimano 10 speed.

Has the increased wear become an issue since you switched to 10speed ? I stuck with 9 speed on my new build because the shop said they were seeing users get about 1/2 the life out of a 10 spped chain than they saw on 9 speed (singles). I am a 200lb rider and get about 1200-1500 miles on a campy 10 speed chain, on 9 speed I would see 2000 & miles.

It is hard to say if there is a difference from a nine speed. We switched from a nine speed to a ten when we got a new bike (a custom Steve Rex).

We trashed the chains and the center chain ring on one ride - granted it was PBP which is 750 miles, and it was raining for most of it. On that ride we used our "old" tandem which has a nine speed. Obviously, conditions have a large impact. It is remarkable how much damage the rain and mud can do to a drive train. I had a brand new set of chainrings, cassette and chains and after 750 miles I had to not only replace the chains but the middle chainring looked like it had 50,000 miles on it. Absolutely trash.

It would make sense that the 10 speed chains do have a shorter life, but I would like to keep the 10 speed so do you have a recommendation for a durable 10 speed Shimano compatible chain?

I've never used a 10sp Shimano chain but in my experience the Dura Ace/XTR 9sp chain always lasted longer than the Ultegra/XT 9sp. Based upon that i'd assume that the 10sp would be the sameway but honestly don't know.

While there are a few tandems running 10 speed, your best bet for feedback on 10 speed chain durability for local riding will come from the single bike folks in your local area who log big mileage.

If we ignore all of the variables regarding maintenance and weather influence for a moment, tandem drive chain life will usually have a very linear relationship to single bike drive chain life once you factor in the added wear and tear of having two riders generating the power and torque that the chain must handle.

Notionally, I would expect to estimate the single bike chain life on a tandem by using a factor of .5 to .7 for your average tandem team in moderately hilly terrtain, e.g., if a single bike with a 180 rider gets 1,500 miles on a 10 speed chain riding in moderately hilly terrain I would expect a tandem team that weighs 340 lbs to get about 900 miles (.6) out of the same chain.

If a team is heavier and uses lower gearing for climbing it would be less (~.5) whereas a lighter team that spins higher gears might get more chain life (~.65). Change the terrain to something flat and the ratios tighten up and tandem drive train life gets a little bit closer to single bike life.

Of course chain maintenance is a wild card as your PBP experience demonstrates: wash out all lubricants and replace them with silt and you'll simply grind up your chain, chain rings and rear cassette sprockets which, by the way, I suspect are also trashed if your middle chain ring was damaged. It's nearly impossible to ride on a worn out chain that can damage chain rings without ending up with your most often used cassette sprockets being excessively worn with resulting shifting problems once you fit a new chain.

So, again, your best bet is to check with the folks who ride single bikes where you live and normally ride and see which chains are giving them the best service life. For big events like PBP contact the folks who have ridden those events in the past with similar equipment and see what the consensus is there.

Not to criticize reversegear in any way because I don't know the circumstances of his ride, but personally, on either a single or tandem I would have brought chain lube and cleaned/lubed nightly on a 750 mile ride. I usually lube my single weekly which is around 100-150 miles and the tandem every couple of rides which will be 60-80 miles. Getting caught in the rain always means lube before the next ride. Stuff is too expensive to grind up needlessly.

FWIW... Paris Brest Paris (PBP) is a 750 mile randonnée or endurance event inaugurated in 1891. The current format was adopted in the 1930's and under the rules the 4,500 qualified participants must complete the 1,200km route within 90 hours. It is held every only once every four years, the next scheduled for 2011.

I'll leave it to those who have participated to discuss the strategies for rest stops and maintenance while enroute.

I was not getting much of an answer on this forum so I posted a similar question on the Randon Google Group. In a nutshell, for others who may be interested, the suggestion was to use a single speed chain for the timing chain and a DuraAce or other high end chain for the drive chain. They ride a lot on that group and I received a lot of responses - so TandemGeek was spot on with his advice.

As far as cleaning and lubing the chain nightly on PBP... All I can say is that, yes, that would have been nice to have the time to do so.

Remember that PBP is a little more than 1200 kilometers with a cut off time of 90 hours. We rode about 275 miles on the first day (25 hours), through some of the worst conditions the event has had in over 50 years. Normally we can do over 300 miles in less than 24 hours (if we don't plan on riding another 200 or so miles the next day - which starts after a 90 minute sleep break), but even if we had more time I doubt we would have opted to clean the chain.

Then again I suppose if you are a lot faster than us you could use that extra time between the intermediate controls to maintain your bike.

Heck no! I would have given my stoker and oil can and a rag and told here to get after it!!

Just kidding, I would consider Paris-Brest-Paris to be special circumstances and all other expenses considered a new drive chain was probably insignificant in the overall scheme of things. I was thinking along the lines of MS150 or other multi-day rides where you have a pretty casual evening schedule rather than none at all.

Yes, PBP is special, and while it is very expensive, it is blast. I highly recommend riding it. It is more of an international cycling experience than a bike ride. Take a look at the long distance forum, people are already starting to figure out how to ride it in 2011. There is a very good reason why, it is the best cycling event for an amateur rider on the planet.

Normally, I try and maintain things between rides, and AndrOid is correct by saying that there is no need to grind up things needlessly.

Sorry, I can't resist the reality check: Riding 275 miles, followed by a 90 minute "sleep break", followed by another 250 miles does not, in any way, sound like "fun" to me. It sounds more like an exercise in sleep deprivation. While I appreciate the conditioning required, and the feeling of accomplishment, I could not recommend this kind of ride to anyone. You have to be a special sort of character to do this; it is not for everyone.

Back on topic, I bet the belt drive would be a neat option here for the timing chain. I wonder how it would handle the same conditions?

The belt drive option sounds interesting to me and I made sure when my bike was built that it would accommodate a belt drive. In reading instructions for the care and feeding of belt drive it sounds like setup and removal are somewhat finicky, in particular the handling of the actual belt. I am reluctant to switch over to belt drive until it I get some more real world data. Does anybody out there have any feed back? Would it be practical to switch out the belt drive for chain drive when traveling with the bike? My bike has S&S couplers and has been apart twice in the 3 months since I have owned it, I also plan to take it with on a trip to the Midwest this summer.

A Randonneur friend in Texas suggested the belt drive. He said that there is a tandem couple that is using one and likes it. It seems a little pricey at around $500.00, based upon what he told me it cost, so I have not checked into it further. The group out of Texas rides a lot, consistently with the highest distance awards out of the nation. I am sure they are ranked well internationally also. So if they said it works I would believe them. I am guessing, but I think the couple he was referring to is riding RAAM this year.

Yes PBP is not for everyone, but strangely enough it is a lot of fun. Sincerely, it really is a lot of fun. I think mainly because of the people you ride with and who line the roads day and night cheering you on.

By the way, 275 day 1, 250 day 2 means you can split the remaining 225 miles over the next 42 hours, or come in with a good time. My wife and I do tend to slow down the further we go, however.

https://www.webcyclery.com/pages.php?pageid=72

Probably a wash on the subtle differences in removal/installation techniques and cleanliness factor. Remember, just because there's no lubricants doesn't mean the belt won't collect grime. So, as mentioned before, you can wipe your chain down before removal to eliminate most of the really nasty stuff so, again, not sure the belt earns a big bump here. Remember, what you're really buying with the belt is reduced weight and less adjusting / no periodic lubrication. Reliability is likely on par with the chain and while durability is much improved it's off-set by cost.

As hinted by chichi, at present the Gates Carbon Drive co-developed by Gates & Co-Motion is designed to work with 28.5" center-to-center distance between the captain and stoker cranks. Your Santana is too short @ something under 28" and unless your Rex was spec'd with a 28.5 stoker compartment belt drive use on it would also be precluded by compatibility.

TG your method for chain removal (see video) is very convient. It sounds to me that the eccentric would have to be adjusted everytime the belt is removed making the belt far less convient on a travel tandem. Also if for some reason you damage the belt a replacemnt will not be readily available.

Perhaps, but maybe not. Since I haven't had a chance to actually fiddle with the Gates belt but having fiddled with a forerunner to it on Bob T's Seven, I suspect you could by-pass eccentric adjustment by simply removing one of the left side cranks with the belt still mounted and, presto, the belt is now off. At least for me, pulling the cranks with the single 6mm self-extracting crank bolts is something I do when disassembling our tandems for travel anyway.

Three thoughts here:

1. Those belts (and pulleys) are pretty hard to damage 'just riding along'. If you had a crash or other incident that was severe enough to damage the belt or pulleys, there's a pretty good chance your trip will be cut short anyway.

2. FWIW, if I were to buy a belt (Note: neither of our tandems are short enough to work with the Gates carbon drive so that ain't happening) I would buy a spare belt and a spare pulley at the same time simply because I tend to keep spares on hand that way, e.g., you'll find a spare headset, bottom bracket, cables, tires, tubes, bolts, chains and cassette in my tool box when we've got our own vehicle close at hand along with a spare rim and/or a spare wheelset if we'll be using the Topolinos or Rolfs. For a trip, I'd definitely pack that spare belt and pulley along with a spare tire, tube, rim, cables and some basic tools. They'd stay in my hard case with the rim vs. being carried on the bike 'just in case' so that we'd be good to go the next day.

3. If I had any doubts or concerns about the reliability of the belt drive I probably put the belt & pulley system in the same boat as racing wheels, i.e., the belt drive would not be what I fit to our tandem for touring. Instead, before leaving on a trip I'd switch out the belt & pulleys for a set of conventional timing rings and sync chain and eliminate any nagging concerns. The latter is the same reason that I fit conventional wheels as well as our rear disc when we go on trips: it's just my way of eliminating any concern for wheel reliability or rear rim brake performance at a time when I will readily trade-off minor performance enhancement for substantial increases in piece of mind. But, that's just me.

Can anybody confirm or deny? it does sound like a reasonable aproach.





[/QUOTE]2. FWIW, if I were to buy a belt (Note: neither of our tandems are short enough to work with the Gates carbon drive so that ain't happening) I would buy a spare belt and a spare pulley at the same time simply because I tend to keep spares on hand that way, e.g., you'll find a spare headset, bottom bracket, cables, tires, tubes, bolts, chains and cassette in my tool box when we've got our own vehicle close at hand along with a spare rim and/or a spare wheelset if we'll be using the Topolinos or Rolfs. For a trip, I'd definitely pack that spare belt and pulley along with a spare tire, tube, rim, cables and some basic tools. They'd stay in my hard case with the rim vs. being carried on the bike 'just in case' so that we'd be good to go the next day.[/QUOTE]

Agree spare parts are always a good idea, if you are able to install them. The rim is interesting in that even though you might not be able to rebuild the wheel yourself, you could still find a shop if you were able to supply them with the rim.

[/QUOTE]3. If I had any doubts or concerns about the reliability of the belt drive I probably put the belt & pulley system in the same boat as racing wheels, i.e., the belt drive would not be what I fit to our tandem for touring. Instead, before leaving on a trip I'd switch out the belt & pulleys for a set of conventional timing rings and sync chain and eliminate any nagging concerns. The latter is the same reason that I fit conventional wheels as well as our rear disc when we go on trips: it's just my way of eliminating any concern for wheel reliability or rear rim brake performance at a time when I will readily trade-off minor performance enhancement for substantial increases in piece of mind. But, that's just me.[/QUOTE]




I think this aproach of touring with your most durable and field servicable equipment is the best aproach, I had my bike built with touring wheels and will most likley pick up some go fast stuff next year.

Come-on now, where's the fun in that. Actually, doing a simple rim swap is a good way of learning how to build wheels since it eliminates the lacing part of the process. Here's the deal:

1. You pull off the tire, tube and rim strip from your damaged rim.
2. You take your spare rim (same brand / model) and match up the valve hole with the damaged one and make sure the rim/rim's spoke holes are oriented the same way.
3. Once they are oriented, you tape the spare rim to the old rim in three places around the wheel.
4. You loosen all of the spokes on the old rim, a few turns on each nipple going around the wheel a couple times to keep the tendency to taco in check.
5. Once the spoke network is loose, you simply move the spokes from the old rim to the new rim one at a time by unscrewing the nipple, bending the spoke a little to clear the rims, then reinsert it in the new rim and reinstall the nipple with a few turns.
6. Repeat this all the way around the rim until the old rim is now loose and the new rim is laced to your hub.
7. Tighten the spokes in a uniform manner to bring up the tension (you can usually keep things straight by keeping an equal number of exposed threads above the nipple) while keeping the rim round and true.
8. Do the final tensioning & truing in the bike frame using your brake blocks as a guide.
9. Pull the wheel off and stress relieve the spokes to clear out any wind-up then do a final truing and tension check. Close enough is good enough for finishing the trip.
10. Do a proper tension check or have your shop check it out when you can.

I have built wheels from scratch in my youth, I generaly did well until step 7. I would think I could get something together if no other alternative was available but I would not expect any long term durability from my work. Given time and the right tools I think I could build a decent wheel.
My favorite wheel builder was the father of the LBS owner. I don't think he started building wheels until he was in his late 60's to my knowledge he was never a bike rider. He paid maticulous attention to detail and spoke tension. I have wheels he built over 25 years ago that I still commute on in the winter and they have never needed any truing.