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If the MTB drivetrain creaks, rattles, cracks or jumps, it's time for a maintenance treatment with a cloth and oil - or to replace the wearing parts. After all, biking is not a material-friendly sport. And drivetrain components are among the most demanding parts that need to be replaced regularly.
Sucked-out chains, gnawed cassettes and rounded chainrings
The material consumption for Chains, Cassettes and Chainrings This is normal, as mountain bike gearboxes do not run in an oil bath, but openly, leaving the door wide open to wear. Theoretically, the service life decreases as the material becomes thinner. For example, because more sprockets have to fit in the same space.
It's not so bad if the chain and sprocket wear kits only cost a few tens, as is the case with entry-level groupsets. Then you can swap them prophylactically before a big tour. However, the prices of the parts for the top groupsets are almost ten times higher and reduce the desire to dig through the thickest dirt.
At the product launch, Sram promises that the Eagle parts will last longer than 1x11 components due to their design. But is that true? In order to obtain reproducible and comparable data in a short space of time, we subjected the Eagle to our standard laboratory test: analogous to the Wear test of the 11-speed groupsets45 hours of sand torture on the BIKE chain test bench with a 38/18 gear ratio and 100 kilograms of chain pull.
In focus: the narrowest MTB chain in the world
At the centre of interest: the central wear part, the 5.27 millimetre narrow chain of the 12-speed Sram - the narrowest in the world to date. For comparison: the in-house 11-speed chain measures 5.6 millimetres wide. However, the inner width of the chain has remained the same, as has the tooth thickness of the sprockets. The teeth of the chainrings at the front are now shaped differently, but the principle remains that thick and thin teeth alternately engage in the chain to fix it on the chainring without a chain guide.
How long will the Sram XX1 Eagle last with these changes? And can it beat the in-house 11-speed competition or the Shimano XTR in terms of durability? You can find the answers in the wear test, which you can download as a PDF below.
Sram and Shimano: The test candidates in comparison
