Originally Posted by vicyclist

I've been road cycling since the 80s, but some friends talked me into gravel biking last year. I bough an old '91 GT Tachyon and converted it to 700C and have been having a lot of fun, but much of it is new to me...particularly what I should expect of some components. The 8-speed Shimano chain on my road bike is pushing 7000km and is still good. In contrast, I started experiencing some skipping and jumping on the Tachyon's cassette, put my chain checker on it, and it dropped right through the link. When I compared it to the new chain, it was indeed seriously "stretched". That's less than 2000km. When I bought the bike from the original owner, he put a new SRAM PC-830 on it. So is a PC-830 just a poor quality chain? Is this the result of riding in a wet climate in fall and winter and the chain getting covered in grit? It does get pretty nasty, so I clean it after every ride. Still...it seems like I should be getting a lot more than 2000km out of a chain, especially with regular cleaning.