I let my chain go 200 miles past oiling and saw the difference in wear marks

Last weekend I finally got around to cleaning my road bike chain after putting off maintenance for like 6 weeks... the derailleur was grinding weird on hills so I knew something was off. When I wiped the chain down with a rag, the link plates had this grayish dust caked between them that wasn't there before I started slacking. I measured the chain stretch with my Park Tool checker and it jumped from 0.25 percent to almost 0.75 percent over that 200 mile stretch without oil. My cassette now has visible shark fin shapes on the middle gears where the chain was grinding in. Has anyone else seen how fast wear kicks in once you skip oiling for even a month on a dry climate bike?

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williamt444d ago

Honestly this is one of those things where the damage is already done before you even notice it. Tbh it reminds me of how people slack on small maintenance stuff in all areas of life and then get shocked when things break way faster than they should. Ngl the chain and cassette wear graph is basically a cliff once you pass that 200 mile mark without lube, not a gradual slope. Once you let the grit bed in and start grinding the metal down, those shark fins on the cassette tell the whole story. It's like how letting your oil change go 3,000 miles past due can wreck an engine, same principle just smaller scale.