Thought experiment:

Chain ring teeth wear and go hooky which is why you get chainsuck. I notice they don't all wear evenly and imagine the ones engaging when applying most pedal pressure wear the worst? Is that true?

So if I rotated the rings by 90 degrees before they got too hooky, would that extend their life by 50 percent or more?

Because of the arrangement of ramps and tooth profiles to give the smoothest shifting, should one rotate all three chain rings 90 degrees together?

Think this only works on SS?

ive heard about this for single speed but dont know about geared bikes as realman says.

Be a pioneer and give it a go so you can tell me even though i dont own a geared bike. alternatively wait 5 minutes for someone to tell you the answer.

It works.

It used to be all the rage in my day when rings were plain.

not too sure with ramped rings, you may lose some of the benefits of the pins and ramps, but I'm not entirely convinced how much they help since I have both and can't honestly tell the difference.

if it works – i'm not convinced – you need to rotate all three (or two) the same to get the benefits from the pins ramps.

i can see it on SS as you have no choice alot of the time but surely you could extend chainring life on gears by pedaling circles and not using a piston motion

"Pedalling circles and not using a piston motion"

Not sure I grasp why SS is especially different, except all that stand-up pedalling is maybe more piston-like, so exacerbates the asymmetric tooth wear compared with geared bikes?

With the best pedalling technique in the world, there is still going to be a "power zone" with a geared bike. In fact I recall seeing a diagram showing this in the Lopes/MCormack book. And you can't really argue with Lopes – one of the strongest pedallers in 4x.

I will experimentally rotate the chain rings on my geared bike.

If I have time, I'll photograph the worn rings to show the wear pattern.

I reckon it's a sound theory!
I seem to always start on my right pedal, in similar position, and this is probably the point that I'm exerting the most force (wear?) on the rings.

Well I'm gonna try it, we can start a new craze!

Think this only works on SS?

How about 1×9 or 1×10 set-ups then? C'mon, keep up!

Yup, running an unramped Renthal chainring and will be extending it by spinning it through 90 deg in a little while, although that said, it's lasting miles longer than the Middleburn ring it replaced.

How about 1×9 or 1×10 set-ups then? C'mon, keep up!

You're still changing the chain link to chainring interface (for want of a better word). With SS, the same bits of chain always take the main load. With gears, this is spread over the whole chain. I think.

Ahhh so your saying that with SS, specific sections of chain links, corresponding to the power zones, get stretched. And this causes uneven wear on the chain ring? So for SS, just shuffle the chain along one or two links when you clean it after a ride, that should solve that problem I guess.

But with changing gears on a geared system, chain stretching gets averaged out so chain ring tooth wear should be more even. What's got me interested is the chain rings I'm looking at that came from a geared bike and are worn unevenly. I still theorise it's the chain ring teeth that engage the chain though every power zone that get worn. I reckon that'll be teeth ~45 degrees back from both cranks. I will check tomorrow.

That is what I meant, yeah. Maybe you're spending all your time in one gear but not noticing? I don't know.

My chain cleaning regime involves removal of the chain anyway, so I get to distribute the link wear anyway.

You can also take the hook of with a file – this help to get more life too, by removing the prime factor in chain suck.

First, yes, chainrings wear unevenly so turning them will extend the life BUT if they're ramped they won't shift properly/as well.

As to the SS thing, there are some ratios that will mean that sections of the chain will pass over certain teeth on the chainring/sprocket more than others (basically to do with factors) which can supposedly affect wear but I remain unconvinced.