Reminder to periodically check your sprocket for wear
8d 23h ago by mander.xyz/u/Alcoholicorn in motorcycles from mander.xyz
Slipped a chain, luckly its vietnam so I only had to push the bike down 200 feet of highway and 1 intersection before I found a Honda shop. I'm lucky I wasn't stranded in some mountains or offf-road.
By South East Asian standards, that's as good as new.
New sprockets every other chain, and when you clean and lube the chain, check the sprocket for wear. You’re there anyway.
Should be cleaning/lubricating the chain about every 500mi/800km anyway, and if you check the sprocket when you’re cleaning it, you’ll have plenty of advanced warning.
Glad you didn’t have to go far and that nothing important (including you) was damaged!
I have the chain cleaned/lubricated/tensioned every oil change, which is 800km, none of the mechanics mentioned the sprocket, guess I should have inspected myself.
If the oil change seems shockingly short, bikes in SEA don't have replaceable oil filters, instead you just change the oil every 600-1000km, often with 20w50 or 15w40.
Isn't this caused by not replacing the chain often enough? It stretches a bit once worn and then can bear more towards the edges of the sprocket.
It's caused by age and wear. Plenty of things can exacerbate said wear and cause you to replace sprockets sooner, but they are a consumable item and will need to be replaced occasionally no matter what.
My owner's manual says to only replace the chain and sprocket together and that only replacing the chain will cause rapid wear.
Interesting! I'm coming at this from a cycling perspective where checking your chain for wear is important to reduce wear on the cassette/chainrings (sprockets). There are dedicated tools to measure chains for this reason so it's surprising to me that the same process isn't common in motorcycles. Maybe it's a cost thing? A chain is way cheaper to replace on a bicycle than the multiple sprockets.
The pins of the chain wear out their bushings over time and the chain then stretches. This means each link won't sit down deep valley between the teeth and wear down the teeth faster due to smaller contact area now acting as the bearing surface.
There's only 2 sprockets on a bike, since it uses a geared transmission. I got my chain and sprockets replaced for 18USD, labor included, which I suspect is somehow more than it would cost for a non-single speed bicycle, because bicycles prices are weird.
Under $20 explains why nobody worries about it. You could probably extend the life of the sprockets by replacing the chain, but it's not worth the hassle at $20 for a whole new set.
The smaller bikes only cost 10 lmao.
Craziness. Even dirt cheap garbage chainrings for a bicycle cost way more than that, with nice ones running hundreds of dollars easy.
Riding up mountains, over dirt, and constant acceleration and braking probably exacerbates things. It slipped while accelerating on a dirt shoulder to overtake a bus.