rc5781

4000??? You must ride strictly on the road with very little traffic and no stopping and going.

xroadcharlie

Well Google says a bicycle chain might last 2,000 - 3,000 miles. Based on the 2,800 miles that ruined my freewheel cogs, perhaps 1,500 miles might work with better cleaning and lubing practices. I will monitor chain wear. I track my mileage with the odometer function on one of those cheap bike computers.

I went for a short ride on a dusty trail hill. I could not believe how much dust I picked up on one ride. I used to frequent that hill, But I think I'll stick to my road rides now. Which I throughly enjoy too.

Unfortunately there are no paved hills near me. I do enjoy the free ride down.

cyccommute 

The range is quite broad and the measurement of chain wear is somewhat subjective. In my experience, the “12 inch rule” method isn’t nearly as accurate for measuring chain wear as some make it out to be. In a recent discussion, I actually tried measuring with a tape measure and found that the 12 inch rule was much less accurate than a chain checker, especially when measuring 0.5% which is what 1/16” over 12” is actually measuring.

Most people don’t really track their mileage and are only estimating the actual mileage. I track my yearly mileage obsessively but I don’t track chain mileage. I have started a long term tracking experiment on one of my bikes where I’m keeping track of mileage between lubricant application and wear but I’m not about to do it for the other 7 bikes I have. But simply estimating the mileage can lead to widely varying results, especially given the interval of measurement. Getting 3000 or 4000 miles on an individual bike can be a significant time investment like on the order of months. Unless you are actually writing down the mileage, it’s easy to forget how long or how many miles a chain has on it. Add in multiple bikes and the task is even worse…unless you keep detailed records.

xroadcharlie posted that Google say 2000 to 3000 miles which I would consider a little low. I would say, given the number of discussions I’ve been involve in here on Bike Forums, that the range is more like 2000 to 4000 plus or minus 500 miles. Some claim over 10,000 miles but I view those as outliers as I do people who claim less than 1000.

Kai Winters

I know exactly how many miles I ride per week. This week, so far 140 miles, last week 215 miles.
I've always, for roughly 40 years of racing/riding, cleaned and lubed my chain every other week regardless of miles. I've never broken a chain and never had a "mechanical" during a ride or race pertaining to the chain or drive train and at my peak I was doing 50 usac...back then it was the uscf...races, road races/crits and tt's, per season for near 5 seasons.
I've also worked as a wrench for over 20 years in several shops.