revtothelimit - motorbike forum

What’s the score with chain rotation???
My mate mentioned I should do it every 300 miles or so to even out wear???

What’s the principle behind this??

Cheers

Eebs eat chains, even with a regular chain check, when you come to replace the chain at slight wear you’ll find the cassette skips in the smaller cogs with the new chain meaning it’s put the old chain back on and run to destruction.

Keeping say 3 chains in rotation and swapping out at 300 miles will stretch the life of the system and you’ll get more mileage out of the cassette, something to bear in mind if your running an X01 cassette…….ask me how I know?

Mine has a Cassette: SRAM XS-1295 Eagle Transmission 10-52T

So I guess I need a new chain and chain tool

It's not an e-bike, but I've got 2 chains on the go on my full-sus. I think I'll get a third in rotation soon ish too.

formula400 wrote: Sun Apr 12, 2026 2:23 pm Mine has a Cassette: SRAM XS-1295 Eagle Transmission 10-52T

So I guess I need a new chain and chain tool

Nope - just a GX or above chain. They will come with a magic link - which you will need to pop apart (with a lot of frustration, unless you have the right tool). Then do the reverse with the new chain.
I change mine every 800 - 1000 kms. The more turbo / in restricted you use, the more hammering the chain takes. I am up to 2.5 k on mine and haven’t replaced the rear cassette yet

Tool will be needed to get the correct number of links chain length.

Couchie advised me to swap chains at 500 miles. I did that then at 1000 miles I put the 1st chain back on, no issues with chain skipping in any gear. I ticked over 1500 miles on sat, chain is still in wear limit.

Eebs eat chains if you leave them in high gear and use low cadences / high torque. Change down and spin high cadences eases the load on the motor / drive train.

As @MingtheMerciless and @crust says... Basically you can swap them regularly to reduce chain wear on the cassette, but you can also spin lower gears at higher cadences to reduce wear too.

OR... And the method I prefer... Check the chain for stretch regularly and just swap it for a new one when it gets past 0.5% wear, cos if you allow it to get to 0.75% it'll start accelerating wear on the cassette (and modern cassettes aren't cheap!), and if it gets to 1% it's probably already done enough damage that you need to change the cassette too regardless... I've had as many as 5 chains to a SRAM cassette this way, and many thousands of miles, before the cassette was ready for the bin...

The other school of thought is swap to a much cheaper drivetrain, wear the whole lot out as a unit, then just replace everything as a whole when it's all worn out.

Tbh these days as above I’m running cheaper cassettes and chains and replacing both when worn, lasting around 1200 miles so a couple of times a year. Not riding in really bad conditions and always spinning at a high cadence helps life too.

The local Trek dealer has has just rung me up and quoted me 560 GBP - rear suspension bearings and the cassette and chain are completely worn out.

Odd - the chain was absolutely fine when I replaced it 200 miles ago. Cassette doesn’t jump. So they can do the bearings but leave everything thing else alone

Right thanks for all that.

Is it just E-MTB’s that do this??’because of all the power?

I like the 0.5% and just change it, idea.

Right what a decent chain to get that’s easy to split and then rejoin??

Cheers

All bikes wear chains but the ridiculous power and torque of EMTB's dramatically accelerate this and also the propensity for E-Bikers to sit in the smaller cogs of the cassette all the time. My LBS say that even at 0.5% wear you can get skippy new chain in the smaller cogs on an E Bikers cassette.