![]() Shimano 12-speed road groupsets use the same Hyperglide+ chain as its 12-speed MTB groupsets. While you can mix some 11-speed Shimano and SRAM components, it often makes for a noisier drivetrain. In the past, chains of the same speed could typically be mixed between manufacturers, although this is generally not the case as you head up to modern 11-, 12- and 13-speed chains, where the designs are often more specific to the brand.įor example, SRAM Eagle 12-speed chains can’t be used with 12-speed road rear derailleurs and vice versa. SRAM’s 12-speed MTB chains are compatible with the brand’s 12-speed road groupsets. You’ll see that there’s a significant variation in width. The width of chains for different numbers of gears, according to Park Tool is: Therefore, you can’t run a 12-speed chain with an 11-speed sprocket set, for example, and it means that if you’ve got an 11-speed drivetrain you’ll need an 11-speed chain. Chains have become narrower to match, which limits their compatibility between drivetrains with different numbers of gears. Second, cassette sprockets have got closer together and narrower. ![]() That’s gone about as far as it can, which is why Boost spacing has taken off in mountain bikes to even out rear-wheel geometry. To accommodate the extra freehub width with the same distance between the rear dropouts, that’s meant that the rear wheel has been ever-more asymmetrically dished. As component brands have increased the number of speeds in their drivetrains, they’ve added the extra gears needed in two ways: first, the freehub that holds the cassette in place on the rear wheel has been made wider. Things get more complicated with the width side-to-side of bike chains. Chain width and ‘speeds’Īs the number of ‘speeds’ has increased, bike chains have become narrower, as shown by this 12-speed SRAM road chain. What changes is the width of the side plates. It’s worth noting that the roller widths of derailleur chains for different numbers of speeds are almost the same: 2.38mm for 5- to 8-speed chains and 2.18mm for 9-speed and above. It’s not something that can be done with a drivetrain with multiple chainrings, because the position in which the chain will land when shifted between chainrings can’t be determined, so the teeth in double and triple chainrings all have the same width, designed to mesh with the narrower inner-chain link. That’s used in single-ring drivetrains to ensure a robust connection between the chain and the teeth on the chainring, by having alternating wide and narrow chainring teeth. The inner link of a bike chain is narrower than the outer link, with a narrower space between the links. The standard distance between links, or pitch, of a bicycle chain is ½in (12.7mm), although there are occasional experiments with metric pitch (10mm) chains and Team GB was rumoured to be using ⅜in pitch chains on its track bikes at the Tokyo Olympics. The distance between links is known as ‘pitch’.
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