Ultegra & Dura Ace chains barely elongated after ~3500 miles (5600 km)

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mpulsiv
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by mpulsiv

TobinHatesYou wrote:
Thu Jun 11, 2020 7:31 am

Yep, I fluctuate between 132-145lbs and ride decently hard. I expect 6000mi out of a chain and sometimes eked out 8000mi while using dry drip lubes like RnR Gold. It's harder for me to track chain-life now that I use hot-melt wax and rotate between 5 chains.

Contamination plays a huge role. I use the smart trainer a lot and I have a spare bike that hasn't seen an outdoor ride in 3.5 years. That's also how old the chain is and it's got the equivalent of 16000mi or more on it at ~220W average. It still hasn't elongated past .4% let alone .5%. In fact the link plates themselves are becoming visibly scalloped and that may be what finally drives me to replace the chain.
I was under the impression that chain will exhibit more elongation on the trainer since there's no freewheeling. Chain is in motion 100% of the training ride/race on Zwift or whatever you are using.

It's clear now that contamination is a real enemy. Some reported mere 0.5mm elongation with ~15000 km (~9000 miles) on the chain using exclusively Molten Speed Wax https://cyclingtips.com/2018/03/fast-ch ... -you-money
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TobinHatesYou
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by TobinHatesYou

pdlpsher1 wrote:
Fri Jun 12, 2020 1:40 am
All I'm saying is that one cannot discount roller wear. If you only measure elongation the chain will eventually cause accelerated wear on other components and increase drivetrain inefficiency before that chain is tossed out. I know some chain checkers only check for elongation and I don't think that's a good idea.

Practically speaking, at least with the chains I use, elongation occurs long before roller wear has any ill-effect on tooth profiles or collateral drivetrain wear. Additionally as I mentioned with the extreme case of my indoor-only chain with 16000mi on it, the face of the plates themselves are becoming scalloped and that will surely cause breakage before the roller wear results in any detrimental effects.

alcatraz
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by alcatraz

It seems that if you hot wax your chain you can be within 0.5% elongation even at 10kkm, but the rollers are basically desintegrating.

It'd be nice to have a concrete indication of when it's done. Maybe measuring inner to outer is the best compromise?

TobinHatesYou
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by TobinHatesYou

alcatraz wrote:
Fri Jun 12, 2020 2:00 am
It seems that if you hot wax your chain you can be within 0.5% elongation even at 10kkm, but the rollers are basically desintegrating.

It'd be nice to have a concrete indication of when it's done. Maybe measuring inner to outer is the best compromise?

With hot-melt wax, there is a barrier of solid paraffin (as well as lubricious powders) sitting between the pin and the inner circumference of the roller. Not only does this prevent metal-on-metal contact better than evaporative dry drip lubes and wet lubes, but it also prevents contamination. Roller wear is especially insignificant with wax.

alcatraz
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by alcatraz

A chain with worn rollers is noisy as hell. Is that really the only downside? Hmm...

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pdlpsher1
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by pdlpsher1

alcatraz wrote:
Fri Jun 12, 2020 2:00 am
It seems that if you hot wax your chain you can be within 0.5% elongation even at 10kkm, but the rollers are basically desintegrating.

It'd be nice to have a concrete indication of when it's done. Maybe measuring inner to outer is the best compromise?
OZ Cyling on YouTube has done some long-term chain wear testing. He checks the chain using both a KMC checker (takes roller wear into account) and by draping a used chain against a new chain. Both methods show zero wear over many thousands of miles. So I think wax is preventing both roller wear and elongation. Since I started waxing I rode 7,840 miles on four chains in rotation. So far I haven't seen elongation nor roller wear. But that's not a lot of miles on a per-chain basis.

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pdlpsher1
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by pdlpsher1

alcatraz wrote:
Fri Jun 12, 2020 3:10 am
A chain with worn rollers is noisy as hell. Is that really the only downside? Hmm...
As I stated many posts earlier, Shimano chains have been known to come with looser tolerances with regards to rollers, unlike KMC chains which come 'tighter'. But Shimano chains also test out to be the fastest. So the theory goes that a 'looser' chain will be faster since more lubricant will fill in the spaces between components. How this will impact drivetrain longevity is unknown since we don't know if Shimano takes the 'loose' chain into account when making cogs and chainrings. At some point though too much gap is not good and it might even be slower. Who knows.

alanyu
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by alanyu

double post
Last edited by alanyu on Fri Jun 12, 2020 7:43 am, edited 1 time in total.

alanyu
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by alanyu

TobinHatesYou wrote:
Fri Jun 12, 2020 1:28 am
If you want a practical demonstration, remove all the rollers from a chain, install it on a bike and ride. It will work.
You are misleading others again :noidea:

If you remove all the rollers of a non-elongated chain, the distance between the neigbour shoulders/bushings can make the chain-gear touching point offset a lot, though the pin spacing still keeps equal to tooth spacing. The result is that it will seem OK when you put it on your drivetrain, but wear out the gears quicker and even slack under large torque.
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DaveS
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by DaveS

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TobinHatesYou
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by TobinHatesYou

alanyu wrote:
Fri Jun 12, 2020 7:42 am
TobinHatesYou wrote:
Fri Jun 12, 2020 1:28 am
If you want a practical demonstration, remove all the rollers from a chain, install it on a bike and ride. It will work.
You are misleading others again :noidea:

If you remove all the rollers of a non-elongated chain, the distance between the neigbour shoulders/bushings can make the chain-gear touching point offset a lot, though the pin spacing still keeps equal to tooth spacing. The result is that it will seem OK when you put it on your drivetrain, but wear out the gears quicker and even slack under large torque.

Have you actually done the math on the difference in effective radii between two displaced rollers on even the smallest cog/arc? I suggest using .5% total wear for the calculation since that's conventionally where it's recommended to swap chains out anyway.

DaveS
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by DaveS

The fact that some chains elongate quickly, while others do not, makes the mixing of roller wear along with true elongation questionable, but that's what Campy suggests, with their 132.6mm length between rollers. In this case, there is a lot more roller wear and little elongation.

Measuring each separately makes more sense and it's not difficult to do with a precision rule and calipers.

Morkai
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by Morkai

After installing a new chain (SRAM Red 22) it started slipping in the middle of the cassette (SRAM Red 11-25) when barely any power was applied: https://youtu.be/KL2u_aDvLXc
It could happen with the old chain but at 600 W+.
Along with the chain I've replaced the stock Etap pulleys with Tacx so I thought it might be the reason, because they seemed to have shorter teeth.
After swapping back to the stock pulleys the problem persisted.

Then I've checked my gear on Strava and it turns out that the cassette had 11,145.9 km with only two chains (1st 5,800.2 km, 2nd 5,345.6 km). Chainrings (50-34) are at 15,775.6 km (inner less than 2k of that).

I've replaced the current cassette (11-25) with an old one (11-28) that has 4,800 km and the problem went away along with the feeling that there is something slightly wrong with the drivetrain even after cleanup and relube.

According to the Park Tool CC-3.2 Chain Checker the old chain has more than 0.5% but less than 0.75% stretch. If I remember correctly the first chain had >=0.75%. The new one is at <0.5%.

Image

The first big 3 and the last small 2 cogs were OK (the least used ones).

Is there any website/app that tracks gear milage better than Strava and can import rides from Strava/Garmin Connect? Gear swapping and not only retiring, alerts for charging the lights/computer after set number of hours or for swapping the chain after e.g. 3333 km...

GeoffS
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by GeoffS

Yes look for ProBikeGarage. I use it specifically for tracking chain life.

Morkai
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by Morkai

Thanks :beerchug: (how is it free?!)

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