Comment by loeg
7 hours ago
> thinner chain which wear faster
This gets repeated a lot, but isn't true. Cheaply made single-speed and 6/7/8 chains aren't any more robust than nice modern 10 and 11-speed chains. Shimano CUES (11-speed) works fine for ebikes.
Belts are fine, but less efficient than well-maintained chains. And they require special frames with some way of breaking the rear triangle.
I wasn’t comparing 6/7/8 with 10 and 11 but with 1 speed. Those are indestructible. But as you noted the quality of the chain is also important.
As for the chain you might be right, but a well maintained chain over time needs more work that many wants to invests. It’s an option for the hobbiest and sportmans but not for most of daily commuters which want something that just work, days after days and years after years.
Also, e bike users tends to user the higher speed way more than others so that sprocket wear off faster than others, accelerating wear even more. I’ve replaced many cassettes with all the speeds almost brand new and the faster one totally destroyed.
> I wasn’t comparing 6/7/8 with 10 and 11 but with 1 speed.
I covered 1 speed in my earlier comment (“single-speed”) too. There are some nice graphs at https://zerofrictioncycling.com.au/chaintesting/ (although that testing doesn’t cover single-speed chains).
> As for the chain you might be right, but a well maintained chain over time needs more work that many wants to invests.
Right! Totally reasonable to prefer not to maintain a chain.