New chain

After 34000km of loyal and 3500km of erratic service, my bike's chain has finally been replaced. And not a moment too soon either. At the end, it was clearly well past it's best-before date: it was tightened at the maximum and still it rattled and even hit the center stand.

Not only was it too slack, a few thousand kilometeres ago I noticed some of the chain links were stuck at the angle they're in when running along a sprocket. This has the nasty effect of constantly tightening and slackening the chain. So my chain was effectively pulled at many times per second when driving, which of course increases the rate of wear even further.

A chain is always replaced together with both sprockets. You can see why from the picures below: the teeth on the old front sprocket are eaten away almost by half.



On the rear sprocket, the difference is less pronounced, but it's still noticeable. That's because the rear sprocket is larger and does less revolutions than the front one.



Interesting note: according to my garage, some people only get about 15000km out of their chain, which underlines the importance of a good driving style. A chain and sprocket set is quite expensive.