What are the consequences of a worn chain?

What happens if i leave a chain which has stretched/worn on my bike….symptoms effects etc.

From what I understand a worn chain will wear out your cassette, chainring(s) and jockey wheels more quickly.

I think you can start to notice it with a slight bit of give in the drivetrain when you apply pressure to the crank, eventually this’ll lead to skipping.

slippage

snappage

poor shifting

youll be surprised how far you can push it though

i had a chain and cassette off my 2008 race bike on my hooligan bike up till last week. it was a pg990 and a sram hollowpin chain.

it was beginning to slip on my race bike in certain gears so i swapped it out onto my hardtail and put a new one on racebike. Its since been to france for a week , its done several local rides , trashed a middle ring and trashed a granny ring. It wasnt till i did benachie in 22:13 as it was the only working gear i decided new rings cassette and chain were needed 😀

http://sheldonbrown.com/chains.html

if you swap a chain early enough you may be able to get away with using a second chain on the same cassette but this wold depend on how worn the teeth are, but from what you’ve described i think you’re probably looking at a new chain/cassette/chainrings…
you can carry on using the chain but bear in mind it will skip and need constant adjusting through the shifter.
once your chain gets to the point where its skipping about on the cassette you may find that the chain starts to weaken at the links, if that happens its more likely to snap under load like mine did…

If you spend a few quid on a chain gauge you can pro-actively replace the chain before it starts wearing into your cassette and chainrings preventing the need to replace those componentns (or massively reduce the frequency of their replacement). Chains are relatively cheap so regular replacement is more cost effective in the long run.

I have a 10 year old Giant Terrago (the V brakes one) that still has the original drivechain on it and it works fine (although I know it’ll now explode the next time I look at it 🙄 ).

I bought the bike new and used it at least weekly for the first 3 years of its life and I’ve ridden the coats to coast on it 3 times.

It’s been my pub/hack bike for the past 4 years with 2/3 ride a week.

I’ve got to the point with it that I know the entire drivechain will need to be replaced en-masse (I’ve even got the parts ready) but as it only gets used for short runs of <2 miles I’m not going to be too far from home if when it breaks so I’m just going to see how long it will actually last 😀

It still shifts fine btw

Certain death

There are two philosophies:

1. use a chain checker, and replace the chain as soon as the checker says it’s worn. This way the sprockets will last a lot longer – 3-4 chains before you need to replace the sprockets is not unusual.

2. wait until everything is totally dead, and replace the lot.

Cost-wise, there’s probably not an awful lot in it either way.

almost noithing though every time you ask this question you get these sort of answerrs – possibly wear stuff out quicker

FWIW i had a 7 speed chain way too stretched to use and it worked fine with a brand new 9 speed x 3 crank without skipping

I personally think it is a load of nonesense and would ride till it skips and then check it was not the indexing.
No actual research on this that I am aware of prooves this to be anything other than stuff we do.
Engines used to be chain driver – think of the force and how often the revolved and how often those chains were replaced etc

I had to replace the drivetrain on my cross bike last year. It had got to the point where it skipped a bit on the large chainring and I couldn’t clean it as all the muck was the only thing keeping the chain together. If I removed the powerlink the bushes fell out of both ends of the chain.

Curiously it worked fine (except for the large chainring) until suddenly it didn’t; I got to work with no problems at all, but on the way back suddenly I had to accelerate reeeeeally gingerly and couldn’t use the smallest two gears at all without it skipping uselessly.

There are two philosophies

There is a third – use 3 chains and swap then round every 200 miles or so. That way the chains should wear at approximately the same rate and so will still work with a worn cassette.

I’ve been doing this for the last couple of years and it seems to be going OK. The one thing I have had to change is the granny ring, but they are only the same price as a chain.

I was also getting a bit of a problem with chain suck just after I’d changed. Realised this was due to me giving the chain a spray of light grease before putting it away (to stop it rusting) and not cleaning it off again.

What happens if i leave a chain which has stretched/worn on my bike.

The chain is the sacrificial part of the drivetrain and will wear out first followed by the cassette and then the chain rings

New chains are quite a bit cheaper than cassettes and chain rings.

A new chain on even a slightly worn cassette will often slip like mad.

Meh…

The ‘check your chain’ philosophy is about selling you stuff.

I’ve got an 8 year old chain and cassette running smoothly, yet if I followed the advice above I’d have bought about 12 chains and three cassettes over the same period. Chains and cassettes and chainrings all wear together and should be replaced when you start to get issues in my opinion.

The vast majority of people never wear their chains out, they get told that they should change them, so they do and then this becomes accepted wisdom.

You’ll definitely die if you don’t change everything bi-weekly

Thanks for the replies comedy ones included. i do have a chain checker and was showing as fully worn a month or so ago, its a 10spd and i ride it 3 times a week. cassette actually looks ok as does chainset although the outer looks a bit worn. noticed last couple of rides a bit of skipping and when some gears are selected it doesnt move until another change up/down though that could just be cable stretch i guess?

Thats a cable issue, not a chain problem.

A new chain on even a slightly worn cassette will often slip like mad

I think they are advising you to not replace the chian seeing the old one does not skip

FWIW IME it wont- i do change the chainin my XTR bling bike but I hav used old ones just to see and they work fine as well

Its a lie designed to seel stuff

think of the applications pre cam belkts that ran on chains

I run mine untill it looks like it just cant go on any more & the litle rollers are all wobbling about & loose then another few months.

Then change the lot.

I have never got to skipping that wasnt just mech adjustment.

The above post is wrong, I have tried the economy chain only route, I couldnt even pull away.

If I removed the powerlink the bushes fell out of both ends of the chain.

Oh, is this a sign of chain wear then? This happened to me last weekend, and I’m so incompetent I didn’t even notice until I stuck it back together and wondered why it was skipping every fourth pedal rotation. 😳

Couldn’t find the original rollers, so just stuck in a couple whipped out of an old chain and carried on…

There is a third – use 3 chains and swap then round every 200 miles or so. That way the chains should wear at approximately the same rate and so will still work with a worn cassette.

I’ve been doing this for the last couple of years and it seems to be going OK. The one thing I have had to change is the granny ring, but they are only the same price as a chain.

I was also getting a bit of a problem with chain suck just after I’d changed. Realised this was due to me giving the chain a spray of light grease before putting it away (to stop it rusting) and not cleaning it off again.

nearly five yrs on the current drive train doing this (one in soak, one hanging up and one on the bike).

A face like a bag of spanners and a trip to A&E.

Well that’s what happened to my mate who didn’t heed the advice of “you need a new chain” from the LBS. He thought he’d carry on riding the winter bike as it was and change it a month or two later in the summer when he’d be riding his other bike. We were training going for a hill sprint at which point the chain slipped and the bike collapsed underneath him. Wasn’t pretty.

Bad AIDS, no point sugar coating it.

Took me 5 mins to fit a new one ,then after realising it was too long it took 1 hour to get the new(oiled)one off remove 2 links then replace ,i got to be honest it was a tough repair.I wish i had read the instuctions ………oooppps

Just replaced the chain on my cx bike today – the old one was between 0.75 and 1.0 on the wear tool. Much better shifting and generally quieter but slipping on the smaller rear sprockets when in the small ring. Damn. Might have to fish the old one out of the bin and use it til it’s done!

So a few folk have replaced non skipping chains and then get skipping with new one and you still you think swapping chains is a good idea?
WHY?
Still think wear till it does not work is the way to go and everything else is marketting to get new parts sold

My road bike is original everything and thousand and thousands of miles 8 years old. I swapped the cassette for a new one for a hillier route and it worked fine. Chained stretched beyond 1 according to my chain tool

My experience has made me rather cynical about all this

If like me you use a chain for more than 5 minutes, the whole ****’ transmission then needs replacing as a new chain skips like crazy. No matter how early I try to catch ’em, they’ve always done the damage it seems.

I tend to leave them now until they start chain sucking like mad. Then get the wallet out. Although 9 speed cassettes seem suddenly cheaper all of a sudden so I am buying them up for store.

Personally I think the best thing to do is have at least 2 chains and swap them regularly – take advantage of the chain being off to get it cleaned and re-lubed. It is the chain wearing that accelerates the wear on the sprockets and rings as the load is less evenly distributed so keep swapping and then one day replace the whole lot.

Also if you come to go on a ride and find your chain is all nasty then no problem – just stick the other one on but try and keep the use/wear even.

As for chain checkers – use them as a quick indication/check but use a proper rule to measure more accurately.

I normally change my chain when the gear don’t mesh 100% and no adjustment will sort it.

Believe it or not, this normally occurs when im at >0.75 wear, funny that.

Normally at >0.75 and <1, new chain meshes fine. Also normally at >1, the new chain skips, time for new cassette, weirdness ay.

All measurement checked and verified on 3 different chain checkers.

Worst case though is your chain snapping. O so common in the shop is “my chain snapped, why”, “how old is your chain”, “dunno, couple of years”.

As a matter of course though, for the safety of my knees, even if i wasn’t measuring, id be changing my chain atleast every 6 months, maybe 3 months if i had been riding a lot.

I find the chain stretch tool very useful for cleaning between cassette cogs.