All that glitters is not gold.
Gold is best.
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YBN or KMC?
Iâve never tried them actually. Iâve always just used DA or Red22 on my 11s bikes.
there are a few varieties of vintage Shimano levers that used 22.2mm band clamps, making them amazing for use with bartape on rivendell style swept bars
YBN was underwhelming by my purely anecdotal standards. Seemed to wear out fairly fast.
Someone tested this. Ultegra chain lasted the longest out of all the 2x11 friendly chains.
For 1x the high end Sram stuff lasted the longest by a significant amount over the cheap ones.
KMC
I found the link:
KMC X11SL is near Ultegra in durability, thereâs a few others that fare better in that test. It also did okay on friction losses.
The YBN chains look promising.
And also, gold is best.
Found it too⌠also looked at shop records. The YBN chains were the nickle plated ones. So maybe not as good as the ones tested in this article.
Still for road if youâre balancing durability and efficiency Shimano is best. I swear they shift better than KMC. The low end KMC stuff in particular feels sloppy and runs loud. We donât sell the high end ones, so Iâm only going off all the cheap ones that come in on bikes we service.
Somewhat related, with 1x11 drivetrains in particular I swear I have seen diminished shifting performance when mixing chain and derailleur brand.
Ymmv of course.
Oh, and gold chains are ugly as hell.
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is this a squares and rectangles thing? surely all that is gold glitters, right?
Wasnât really meant to be relevant, the saying just popped into my head.
I take it to mean that just because something looks nice doesnât mean it actually is.
Because some TTers are riding with single rings up front. Not that I have ever seen a TT bike with a clutched mech. I DID see this goober drop his chain on his 1x TT bike on the GCN show when he was breaking the 160km TT record, which was all tail-wind, so a load of bollocks anyway. Itâs pretty funny. The karaTTe monkey was 3x 9speed with a DA rear mech.
This has always been my experience. I got the gold chain on a lark after reading that article and itâs surprisingly not bad. The Ultegra chain definitely has better lubricant out of the box. I ran the KMC chain for only a couple hundred miles before cleaning it and immersion waxing it. It was absolutely filthy and made my bike a mess. Had 800 miles on the Ultegra chain it replaced, which I also cleaned and waxed. The original line was still intact, kinda sticky like it tends to be and not terribly messy.
Non-drivetrain brand chains on complete bikes are not surprisingly an effort in squeezing $ off the BOM without it being as obvious on the spec sheet.
For similar reasons thatâs why you see them on pro team bikes. Shimano only actually sponsors a couple teams and they have to run all Shimano/PRO everything. Other teams that use Shimano components are actually buying them so if they can save some $ by getting KMC or whoever to give them free chains theyâll take them.
So I just use what goes with the rest of my parts.
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Iâm just being a dingus and making jokes about gold chains- dont pay me too much mind
sure, but then youâre not going to turn it off lest you lose the chain.
Zefal hpx is really very nice imo. I have one, itâs solid throughout and just pleasant and reassuring to use. Looks better than topeak imo. I also sort of dislike road morphs and i guess that prejudiced me.
Silca fits an ultra top end bike best but zefal just works good.
For sure.
I think it means that there are lots of glittery things that arenât gold. Diamonds for example.
This world record century with a tailwind is somewhat bullshit eh? It just sounds really fishy. Like i have strava koms like that and they are also bullshit but no one is confusing me with the fastest anything in the world.
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Yeah, very somewhat. But poms are obsessive on their TTing. Anything that isnât a loop is bs in my view, unless itâs up a hill. Plus they TT on motorways where you can get massive draft from the traffic.
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