So, this might have happened... NBD - 2016 Fuji Touring workhorse

[All uphill]

Thanks @wafter as always these updates are interesting and useful to me.

I'd agree bar end shifters reward slow, methodical changes, ime. In the busy bits of town I tend to stay in one gear and let my legs spin or slog a bit more than on an indexed bike.

I'll be buying a set of the 11s jockey wheels and have a play.

 

[wafter]

Thanks chap - happy to hear that someone finds them of some value

The shifters wouldn't be so bad if I could run the RH one indexed as it would faciliate faster / more precise shifting (although would obviously still require a change of hand position to shift).

I'd also not considered making do with a less-than-ideal cadence; I suppose the indexed shifters I've become used to over the years have probably spoilt me in this regard.

Good work with with the jockey wheels - although do take on board the clearance issue I've had with the bottom one - not insurmountable but sadly not a straight swap unless you're happy for the cage to nibble a little bit out of the pulley

 

[wafter]

Stuffed some washers up the brake shoes and now they work properly, which is nice.

Need to order some more cable dust covers but every time I try I'm too overwhelmed with excitement to continue..

 

[wafter]

The Fuji largely continues to behave itself; at least relatively speaking.

It's nice to have a full set of properly working brakes again although the bite point of the levers is a bit further forward than I'd like. I suspect in future 1.0mm thick washers to space the pads out would be a better choice than the 1.6mm items recently fitted but they can stay until the pads need replacing.

This looks like a decent way of managing pad wear since there's not enough range in the barrel adjustors to accommodate this from new to worn out, meaning otherwise the cable would have to be moved in the clamp which is is a pain and just contributes to it getting chewed up.

The cable length can initially be set with new pads, no washers fitted and barrel adjustors set to their minimum, then the barrel adjustors used to maintain lever throw as the pads wear until they're nearly at the end of their range. At this point the adjustors can be backed right off, washers fitted (taking the opportunity to sand the inevitable contam from their contact faces while they're off), and the adjustors used to compensate for wear again until new pads are required and the process begins again.


During the relatively few miles covered since fitting the 11sp chain I seem to have suffered fewer shifting issues. Perhaps this is unsurprising since the chain is nearly a full 1mm narrower externally than the 9sp item (the ever excellent Bike Gremlin site suggests a mean of about 5.6mm for the 11sp v. 6.6mm for the 9sp).

As such correspondingly more RD cage displacement is required to engage the chain / there's more "free float" available to the cage between shifts; allowing for a greater margin of error in RD position before it becomes problematic if this makes sense.

There are also other factors to consider regarding clearance between the narrower chain and adjacent sprockets during a shift; although thinking about this has made my brain melt so we'll leave it there for now.

Suffice to say that while the 9sp chains will be going back on and run until worn out, current experience with the 11sp is pushing me very much towards running 11sp chains exclusively when the current ones need replacing.

 

[wafter]

Another almost inconceivibly exhilerating update..

A while ago I noticed that the spacers on the brake pads appear to be the wrong way around - I have the thinner ones on the inside of the arm and fatter on the outside. This matters as it alters the angle the arms are at relative to the wheel, and with it the angle of the pads and mechanical advantage applied by the cable.

Not sure if this is my cock-up or whether they came this way.. Will swap them around next time each end needs pads. I also need to fit some new cable dust covers but again this can wait until it all needs to be stripped as I don't like repeatedly clamping / unclamping the cables.


The 11sp chain has been rotated off having covered a few hundred trouble-free miles, replaced by the 9sp one fitted just after I got the bike. Shifting now seems markedly worse - I think predominently because it's less tolerant to imprecise lever input. This is less of a problem if you take your time and pay attention but certainly not ideal when trying to bang it up or down a few gears in a hurry.

My gut says this is because the 11sp chain is narrower so gives a greater margin for error; however the 9sp item is also a lot more worn - showing >0.5% wear on the chain checker in some areas - so this may or may not be affecting shifting also. Wear appears quite variable by location on the chain; with some areas convincingly fine, some taking a slight prod for the gauge for it to slip through and some seeing it falling in with no persuasion (the correct benchmark for dead).

I'll investigate further once the chain needs a re-wax - at which point it will have covered a shade over 4k miles. I suspect it might get written off..

Finally, last week the Fuji got two compliments

 

[wafter]

A more detailed inspection of the X9 EPT chain that was fitted revealed a few uncomfortable truths.

Testing from every link showed a huge disparity in wear – with about 50% showing as somewhat inside the 0.5% wear limit, the other half not and some of these showing a significant amount of clear daylight between the register face of the gauge and the roller it should be in contact with… some of the worst affected links confirmed as those around / when measurement includes the quick link.

Clearly I’ve dropped the ball in terms of staying on top of chain wear assessment. In my defense I’ve not previously consistently covered the distances I have in the past eight months; the bike having done around double the mileage in this time than it had in the preceding 2.5 years.

As previously mentioned there have been a few drivetrain related issues; some ongoing (ghost shifting) some more recent (chain separated at quick link whilst riding on one occasion, a periodic clicking on occasional pedal strokes). I suspect some of these might be the result of the chain’s significant elongation in some areas.

Needless to say the knackered chain has come off, replaced with the other 9sp item that came with the bike. This is currently showing as very healthy although this was immediately post-wax so I expect it to get sloppier by the time it’s due a re-wax; at which point it’ll be checked again.

In the 30-odd miles this chain’s been fitted there’s been no telltale clicking, while the shifting’s seemed decent if not perfect – probably comparable to the 11sp chain.


The situation with the old chain raises a number of questions; such as when a chain should be replaced in the event of uneven wear and how it should be checked to account for this as testing one spot in isolation really doesn’t give much of a picture.

The other big question is how long the EPT chain legitimately remained within useable limits. It’d covered a shade under 4k miles when it came off, but was clearly very worn in some areas a reasonable time before this.

While I’ve read that chain wear can apparently be very inconsistent (thanks @presta) I’ve not noticed anything as severe as this on my other bikes. The Brompton chain seemed to wear broadly-speaking in four quadrants – unsurprisingly as load on the chain varies relative to the pedal strokes and it was always fitted in approximately the same orientation relative to the crank (which always rotates so that the heavier folding pedal is at 6 O’clock, with the link always joined at around the middle of the bottom span).

On the Brompton the 100 link chain is exactly divisible by the 50 chainring teeth, meaning that while the chain does one rotation to every two revs of the crank there is no other relative movement between chain and ring – meaning that once the chain is fitted any given tooth on the ring contacts only the same two links on the chain as it all rotates.

Conversely the Fuji’s chain is 112 links and the almost-exclusively-used 36t middle ring 36t; meaning that the chain does one full rotation for every 3.11 crank revs. Looking at it another way the position of the chain retards by four links relative to the crank every three crank revs… or that the chain does one full rotation relative to the chainring every 28 chain rotations / 87ish crank rotations.

The takeaway being that the chain is constantly moving relative to the crankset so the variable cycling loading generated by the two power strokes per crank rev should be spread evenly across the chain.

Finally there’s the issue of the quick link apparently wearing faster than the rest of the chain – somewhat unsurprisingly since its removal and refitting post-wax can’t do the treatment any favours. On this latest fitment I’ve attempted to combat this by heating in the link with a lighter once fitted to re-melt the wax present; which can’t hurt.


Finally on the subject of future replacement chains, the 11sp X11 is about £20 while the 9sp X9 is £14 (prices from SJS for boggo grey 114 link items). As per my wafflings in this thread the X11 should be more wear resistant, although whether this is enough to justify its 50% greater cost over the X9 remains to be seen.

If I wanted to go for a 9sp KMC chain of apparently comparable wear resistance to the X11 it would need to be the E9, which is £33 so potentially poor value compared to the X11 as I don't see any benefit to the stronger pin setup on this ebike-adjacent chain.

I won't be going for the ostensibly more corrosion-resistant EPT variant again as they're considerably more expensive while the coating will wear off in contact areas rapidly so provide no additional wear protection, and I've had no issues with cosmetic corrosion on non-wear surfaces on the cheaper chains.

For now I'll cycle the existing X9 and X11 chains to see if there's any appreciable difference in performance / hopefully eventually get some wear data for both.

 

[wafter]

Another boring public aid-memoir...

Last night I abused the original X9 chain currently fitted to the bike with the checker - with around 15 sets of the 112 total links measured showing as over 0.5% worn; most isolated single-instances but again with a concentration around the quick link with all but one of those that included the QL showing as excessively elongated.

Pulling numbers out of my arse I'm thinking that a reasonable time to change the chain might be when more than 10% of the links show as excessively worn, so perhaps this one needs to go in the bin.

This once again raises the question as to how such a wide variation in wear from one link to another can take place (as discussed the quick link seems to be its own special case). I wonder if some is down to manufacturing tolerances - 0.5% wear on the pitch of a single link is only 0.0635mm so it's conceivable that production variations might be significant relative to this small number...

I do also have at home a load of SRAM quick links hoovered up in the great CRC corpse-picking of 2024, so might as well fit one of those as it might improve things in this and I have nothing to lose - especially if I'm going to switch to 11sp chains in future - rendering them redundant.

I'm also tempted to try a chain from another source (YBN, SRAM, Shimano..?) to see if their wear characteristics are any more even.


In other news I had a crack at measuring the remaining tread on the Schwalbe Delta Cruiser fitted to the front wheel about 4600 miles ago. This appears to be down to about 1.0mm depth measured a bit off centre to the side of the main central tread block; compared to 1.8mm on the new, un-inflated example I have sat in the cupboard.

The original fitment Vera Citywide on the back has lasted incredibly well (4600 miles on the back in my ownership and 700 on the front plus whatever distance the previous owner covered) but has to be coming to the end of its life now, so once the telltale blue puncture resistant layer reveals itself the tyre will be replaced by the Schwalbe on the front and the new one fitted in its place. Thankfully the cracks in the sidewall of the Schwalbe don't appear to have worsened so hopefully they remain only a cosmetic concern...