Kontact 

Your chains have lasted 10,000 miles? And that doesn't seem odd to you?

smd4

Those really aren't reasons FOR cross-chaining. They're given as reason WHY it might happen.

Are you really this desperate to find support for your poor shifting practices? Do you not see the utter silliness and futility in using the hardest gear/easiest gear combinations?

alexk_il

Less than, no idea how much less. Could be 8K, could be 6K. Point is, with my usage it's still good after 10 years. Doesn't seem to be odd, I grew up in the environment where people were riding old bikes for decades without any servicing or lubing. I service my bikes regularly, so 10 years is fine, right?

alcjphil

I wasn't talking about elevation gain, just the actual distance covered on the hill

SoSmellyAir

I was just kidding; I know what you meant about having to shift in the middle of an increasing climb.

ign1te

What is the point of this thread? You are already riding along merrily with your cross-chained drivetrain. Why would you need external support for your point of view?

Camilo

I'm probably lucky in that my shifting habits were burned into neuro-muscle memory in the 70s when cross chaining was very noisy and would visibly scar the FD because of rubbing. I'm slowly overcoming some of this as I cross chain more than those days, but still just avoid the extremes on either ring of a 2X because why wouldn't you (avoid extreme cross chaining). One of the reasons I quit using "sequential mode" (front automatically changes based on the rear position... controls simply shift up or down the rear and front follows as needed) on my AXS 2X bike is because I think that it doesn't automatically switch chain rings soon enough and goes to a cross chain I don't prefer, it should change one sprocket sooner, imo, when downshifting to the larger sprockets.

But I - and I'm sure many of you - know riders who have no idea what cross chaining is or means, absolutely no idea that one shouldn't use the extreme cross chain gears. They've never been told, or didn't pay attention. They have no idea and think the bike should just shift like a car, no thought other than just shift it. Actually, when electronic shifting takes over the world, I'll bet that "sequential" mode becomes the default for 2x systems, as will 1X systems.

Mtracer

I cross chain occasionally. Mostly big-big, but I would estimate it is less than a minute out of a multi-hour long ride, when I do do it. Mostly just staying in the big ring until I crest a hill. I'd wager that trying to shift to the small ring for a few moments is more wear than just staying in big-big a few moments. I'll rarely go small-small becasue that only happens if I forget to shift the front. So, this occurs even less often.

While there's no question there is more wear the greater the chain angle, I don't think there is any reason to believe that cross chaining is causing extremely higher rates of wear than not cross chaining. And I think plenty of reason to believe it isn't.

Below is a chart from this article ( https://www.cyclingabout.com/drivetr...between-1x-2x/ ). In this case, big-big watts lost is about 10 W compared to the most efficient gearing being about 9 W. So, big-big in this case is causing about a 10% increase in losses. To some degree losses are going to relate to wear. So, perhaps it is correct to assume that there might be 10% more wear in the big-big combination. It's also worth noting that the big-big losses are lower than being in 9th, 10th, and 11th gears.

Looking at small-small, this is certainly much less efficient at a loss of 15 W. If we assume the losses correlate to wear, we could conclude that we get about 2X the rate of wear in small-small compared to the most efficient position.

The big assumption here is that efficiency and wear are more or less linearly related. It's certainly possible, that in the most efficient position, there is very littler wear, and the losses are just going to heating but not causing wear. While, even the 1 W additional loss in big-big is all going to wear and could represent an extremely large increase in wear. But, I think it is more likely that wear and loses are closely related.

In the end, I avoid cross chaining as a general rule, but I don't avoid it as if I'm using up huge amounts of the life of my drive train. All I know, is I have about 10,000 miles on my chain rings, and probably 5,000 on the current cassette and chain, with no noticeable wear on any of them. Tire wear is a much bigger issue for me than drive train components.

Kontact 

A bike chain will last millennia - if it isn't ridden far or hard. Most bikes last a long time. They spend it hanging in the garage.

veganbikes

No it was reasons why someone might cross chain but it wasn't pro-cross-chaining. A random entity under the name of SRAM said big-big isn't as bad but that means absolutely nothing without context of who was saying it and why they said it. Any number of people can say any number of things at any number of companies and it doesn't make it a good idea or something to follow. I could write an article right now and talk to the janitor of Microsoft HQ and say someone from Microsoft said go to Downloadafreeviruswitheverysocialsecuritynumber.gov it is a really awesome site and guess what your computer has a virus and you just gave away vital personal information.

I am doubtful of the everything being ok. What I was referencing is customers who come in with worn out drivetrains after a long time without service and wonder why things are worn out and why they should have to replace so much. Chains and cassettes are short wear items, things like pulley wheels and chainrings are long wear items. The more often you replace your short wear items the longer time you get out of everything else. However generally at some point you will probably replace all of it after a given time of having the bike and riding it.

I get it people are cheap and that is fine but it is cheaper to replace a chain and cassette than it is to replace your entire drivetrain. Maybe you are keeping everything really clean often and keeping things nicely lubricated but even still chains wear out and the cassettes wear with them especially in longer periods so while you may think things are OK it might just be well over worn but you are so used to the poor performance it no longer bothers you. I have seen it enough where we replace all the worn out items and people think wow it is a new bike, I didn't know it actually did this when it probably did it a long time ago before they wore everything out a few times over.

If you really don't want to replace stuff then get a enviolo hub and a gates carbon belt drive (CDX ideally) and almost zero maintenance and will last a really long time. You will need to replaces cables and housing (it requires two cables) but you (general) would normally do that on a regular derailleur bike.

If you take care of your bikes they will take care of you, if you neglect them and just let things wear out further and further maybe because a piece of metal told you so those bikes could fail at a bad moment.

alexk_il

​​​​​​No intention of preaching or changing opinions. Just sharing what I've learned from the very recent article, see my list in the original post.

Some of the responses here are constructive and provide extra info/references, here is a good example. It provides more research data on the inefficiencies of the cross-chaining.
https://www.bikeforums.net/22850088-post33.html

So I've learned here something that I haven't heard before. Potentially some others will find it interesting too.