I’m pulling the trigger on a new gravel bike this week. I’ve been a Campy guy almost my whole life. I owned one Shimano road bike when I was a teenager and rode Campy until I bought my last gravel bike when Campy wasn’t really an option. So I’m a bit smitten at going back to Campy. Especially since it’s 1x13. This will also be my first 1x drop bar bike.
The only hesitation I have is the maintenance cost. I know you gotta pay to play but the price of an Ekar cassette makes me barf. Chains are relatively cheap though and I’ve always been pretty quick to put new chains on before any significant wear.
What kind of mileage are people seeing on the cassettes? I’d hope to at least get a full season on a single cassette.
Start waxing your drivetrain and the cassette and chain will last a really long time. My stuff on the road just doesn’t wear out and it does a really does a good job are keeping the grit out of the pins and rollers and you don’t get a buildup of grinding paste on the cassette.
If you stay on top of maintenance and replace your chain and chain ring when necessary, I don’t think you need to change your cassette too often. Of course, if you ride through mud and muck, that will shorten its life span.
This. I have put 9500km/6000 miles into my waxed road chains (I run 2 in rotation, for a total of 19000km ), and they still show less than 0.5% wear.(admittedly, this is road use, not gravel). Extrapolating that for cassette life, that will be several years yet, and my grandchildren may still be able to use my chainrings.
I can count on one hand the days I’ve ridden in the rain in the last few years. It’s pretty dry here. I wax the chains on all my bikes except my road bike in the early spring when the roads are still wet.
I would like to give my own experience to the forum concerning Ekar’s lifetime. I have been riding my gravel bike with Ekar for a bit longer than 1.5 years; mainly commuting (2.5k kms) and gravel riding (1.5k kms). Some minimal mud riding during the gravel rides. Generally, I kept the bike maintained at the local bike shop, clean and re-lubed the chain when needed.
My recent visit to my campagnolo certified bike shop (different one than the one I was doing the regular maintenance, due to bike leasing reasons) was frustrating. They informed me that after only ~4k kms the chain is completely worn and as a result the cassette too! I was quite shocked by the short lifetime, for reference my road bike with campy potenza I did the same replacement after ~10k kms (and at half the replacement price).
With this experience, I plan to buy a calliper in order to check myself the wear state of the chain regularly hoping to expand the new cassette’s lifetime. I was checking online for similar experiences by other Ekar users. So far, I haven’t found similar reports.
