Before my actual bike, I had a mountain bike for something around 15years. I never changed or did anything to the chain. It was perfect.
Now I bought a new one. After 2 years I went to the shop to have it checked. They had to change the chain. When I told them my story with the old bike they told me: "that's how it is today. Chains are not what they were". I'm still in disbelieve. Can you confirm this?
I can't speak much to bike chain quality, but 15 years with one chain seems kinda exceptional. I am also relative child still, so I may just not have been alive to experience chains that last that long. Chains are tested by measuring the distance between links with a tool[0], or by checking to see how much wiggle room your chain has between links when it's on the largest cog[1]. If the distance is too great, that means the chain has "stretched" (which is a bad word for it - the pins that hold the links of your chain together wear, and the distance between each link grows, so nothing has actually stretched). Worn chains usually also start to cause wear to your cassette and cog, so getting them replaced can be important. Make sure to maintain your chain by keeping it clean, adding lubricant once in a while, etc.
[0]:http://pardo.net/bike/pic/fail-004/18164_061544.jpg [1]:https://cyclingtips.com/2016/09/how-to-check-for-chain-wear-...
Needless to say, both are likely to get stolen within the first six months. ;-)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/21/world/americas/21iht-canad...
PS: 2 of my bikes were stolen.
[0] https://bikeindex.org/serials
[1] Wrapping your bike in tape, or otherwise making it look like a POS, is the way to go if you live in a theft-heavy location.
Don't. My bike was stolen by rapidly sawing (dremeling?) through a Kryptolok in broad daylight in a place with some of the most heavy law enforcement presence in Europe. Their locks are much weaker than their marketing.
Certainly there are bigger cutting discs, if you are willing to make a bunch of noise and sparks you can cut them more quickly.
[0] http://www.kryptonitelock.com/content/kryt-us/en/products/pr...
You should keep it just so you can get your money back from insurance if it is stolen..
The bigger point is that it's unreasonable to paint all people who buy used bikes without papers as supporting bike thieves. Anyone buying my bike would not get paperwork with the sale, but the bike is not stolen.
It's absolutely accurate to portray them that way; sure, there are some used, no-papers bikes that are not stolen, but people willing to buy such bikes are what creates financial support for bike thieves, since all stolen bikes sold meet that description, and if people weren't willing to buy bikes in that condition stolen bikes couldn't be sold.
Imagine if people had to drive around in creaking beater cars with leaking roofs because you couldn't store anything nicer anywhere but a garage with surveillance, and even then if someone finds out you have a nice car in a garage, there will be a breakin. That's pretty much the situation with bikes, and police simply shrug at what in most cities is very much organized crime and a huge quality of life issue.
All stolen bikes also have two wheels. I guess buying a bike with two wheels also creates a market for stolen bikes?
This is ridiculous. No one without papers can sell a bike according to you. I get that bike theft is a problem but you don't solve it by blaming innocent people. A lot of legitimate bikes are sold without papers.
Also, depends on mileage not years--an old, unridden bike will be fine. You can usually get ~3k miles from a chain without having to change the cassette (the cluster of gears in the back). If you let the chain go too far, it stretches, which wears the cassette out more quickly, then you need to change both. You can judge chain wear objectively by measuring the distance between chain links.
My daily bike doesn't have have indexed gears (it doesn't click when you shift), which will last longer. I use fairly cheap chains/cassettes, and just replace both every 10k miles or so. Simpler.
As I understand it, chain stretch is not due to the links stretching. Instead it happens because the rollers wear down and get thinner. And I don't see any reason the rollers need to be different on 10/11/12 speed chains. So if newer chains wear faster, isn't it something else like materials?
It’s one of the reasons hub gears (or, for the true hipsters as the stereotype goes, a fixie) can be so completely bombproof - the lack of dérailleur gears means the chain can be made much heavier duty & lasts much, much longer.
That said, your mountain bike probably did have quite a bit of chain wear, it just hadn’t reached the point that the chain had started to skip. How many gears did it have on the cassette?
2 years of life out of chains sounds reasonable to me if you drive a lot. Exposure to dirt, salt (from de-icing), moisture, etc can shorten the life of your chains. Keeping them clean and well oiled will make them last longer. And using quality chains in the first place, your bike might have come with cheapo chains.
Honestly, unless you're on a 11sp, chains are cheap compared to any of the other parts.
But it seemed to depend massively on how careful I was with cleaning, and where I was cycling. 99% on roads, with regular lubrication, and the chain lasted ages. Then I moved house, and cycled the same distance, but on gritted paths, and more often in the rain. Chains could be ruined very quickly if I was lazy, and didn't clean off the mud and grit.
Lighter bikes are definitely more fun to ride, but probably at some cost....
So I sacrifised the very highest and the very lowest gear compared to my old 3x9, but this thing never drops the chain off the front end, there is no front derailleur that always gets bent and fails to shift properly, and there are no awkward momentum-bleeding crazy shift-down-one, shift-up-the-other moves. And you save money, weight and complexity, meaning less maintenance and less failures.
Well, maybe if you live somewhere pretty flat. Or are willing to give up some high-end range (>25 mph). 10/11 speed cassettes generally only have a few teeth wider range than a ~7 speed, for example (e.g., you can get a 13-28 7-speed and the bigger 11 speeds are 11-32 (road)) . Mostly, the jumps are just much closer together, which makes for a smoother shift and easier to find a comfortable gear at a given effort.
> So I sacrifised the very highest and the very lowest gear compared to my old 3x9, but this thing never drops the chain off the front end, there is no front derailleur that always gets bent and fails to shift properly, and there are no awkward momentum-bleeding crazy shift-down-one, shift-up-the-other moves. And you save money, weight and complexity, meaning less maintenance and less failures.
Yeah, there are definitely some benefits! In my area (Seattle) with my level of fitness, I'm a fan of 2x front cogs.
However, when I asked the guys in the shop, they had nothing like that.
Also the biggest pro I've ever heard of is Magnus Backstedt at 6'4 and 207lbs. He's a GIANT compared to everyone else on the pro tour. "Big" Tom Boonen only weighs 180lbs and Lance Armstrong was 165. Pros have really good power for their weight, but in absolute numbers the power isn't that excessive.
If you want to see people who are tough on gear, you have to look at track riders. That's where a 1400W rider isn't anything special and 1800W+ starts to become impressive. Also since they're on single gear bikes the torque they put down at low speeds to accelerate is absolutely insane.
A lighter bike is nicer to ride. It is less effort to accelerate from a stop and a 1kg difference will be noticeable when riding up hill.
The trade-off of the thinner drive train components is that they will wear and stretch faster. Continuing to use a stretched chain will cause accelerated wear on the sprockets. When the sprockets get too worn the teeth become very pointy and chain will start to skip on the rear cassette or drop off the chain rings.
Track bikes (fixed gear, single speeds) are the exception, as the chains are still very thick as they are designed to take more force from acceleration from the track sprinters.
Additionally chains and gear teeth can wear together way past the designed for tolerances. So over 15 years things might work, but then you have to replace the chain, cassette, and chainrings. Replacing any piece alone would likely make things MUCH worse.
Generally if you ride daily it's worth replacing a chain annually, or at least checking for "stretch", which is actually wear. Chains are MUCH cheaper to replace than chainrings and cassettes.