Just bought a nearly new chainset off eBay and now looking to buy a new chain, but the price for KMC X11L at £28 is approaching what I paid for the chainset! Why are they so expensive and anyone know the cheapest place to buy?

Shimano 105 chains are usually about a tenner from Wiggle et al.

and the friggin split link is not reusable!

I’ve bought KMC and SRAM both from CRC for about £16 each. They’ll be lower end than a £28 chain of course.

Probably this one:
http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/sram-pc1130-11-speed-chain/rp-prod123726

The existing chain (very low milage) is a KMC X11L and as I need extra links, I was hoping to get an identical new chain and transfer remaining links to the old chain giving me a second chain; is this doable?

Sram PC 1130 = £15.99 @ CRC

What’s the point, they’re a throw away item anyway.

Yes.
I have no idea why you’d want to though.

You’ll just end up with another chain thats too short. And once your first chain is high mileage, and due for replacement, it’s not like you’ll be able to reuse the links.

Only if he needs the full length of the new chain, which is unlikely.

But quite possibly going to need enough of it to make it too short to use……..

Either way, he needs a new chain. It wouldn’t be that surprising if the number of links removed to fit the new chain would make the old chain long enough. Makes sense to me.

I also wouldn’t be too surprised if you could join together 2 completely different 11-speed chains with a split link and not notice any difference in functionality.

Thanks for the replies. Reason is, I’m replacing a 46T chainring with a 50T and hoping (haven’t yet counted the existing links) that I’ll have an extra 4ish links to play with!

or butcher a 10sp for some inner links and use 11sp split links to make it a little bit longer, it’ll be fine

10sp is 5.88mm width, 11sp is 5.62mm – pitch is the same for both