What I meant, George, was that after seeing how badly worn the sprocket was that PH posted (which was obviously in use) that perhaps we all change them too soon.
A 1:1 final drive is much more tolerant of wear than a derailleur system……where almost invisible sprocket wear can give problems as different sprockets will have different amounts of wear so some will not mesh with the chain.

Thanks in turn, Moronic, for your further thoughts. I see the value in this sort of "approval indicator" and am aligned with your views on the value in it when used as in your example.

At this point, I think it best we wait while I monitor the development of this feature in the SMF Forums. I know it is a requested feature and one of the lead coders has it on their "to-do" list as an approved internal "mod", so once finished, there should be few compatibility issues and we could surely try a trial roll-out to see how it goes. I don't see a problem with a rollback in case it doesn't suit or has unforeseen problems. There may be some delay before it becomes available because the coders are volunteers, just as I volunteer my efforts here.

TLDR: Let's hold tight for now while I monitor developments and when it becomes available, let's give it a try! If a LOT of time goes by, give a shout to remind me, as it is possible I may have forgotten.

Thanks again to all for the kind words and if you have further suggestions, I'll surely take them under advisement. Sometimes the ideas that appear easiest to implement have the most "backroom" consequences to administer, but if that is the case, I'll do my best to explain why.

All the best, Dan.

In my opinion, the best chain lubricant under a ChainGlider is the factory lube that comes on KMC chains when they are new, at least the ones designed for hub gears/single speeds. This lasts for a very long time inside a ChainGlider. But it does eventually wear off/wash off in very wet or very dirty conditions. On an exposed chain, it picks up dust if used off road in dry conditions and, like anything else, it picks up muck if used in wet conditions.

As I've mentioned before, I ride almost exclusively on clean if potholed country lanes and, even in Ireland, my bike is rarely exposed to rain for long enough for water to seep past the naturally tight-fitting interlock of the Chainglider -- actually, it has never happened, but I'm loath to say 'never, can't happen' in relation to water, the most insidiously powerful element on this earth and, besides, other Chainglider users on this forum have reported ingress into their Chaingliders in harsher use than mine. In the harvest season, when huge reaping and bailing machines with rows of lethal spikes the full width of a two-way lane dash around the country lanes from field to field to use every second of daylight, I often have to jump into the ditch either side of the lane, but I hold my bike above my head so the Rohloff, and the Chainglider with it, is never submerged. As in everything else, the longtime cleanliness of the Chainglider reflects the unavoidable necessities of where one lives and rides; I work at home in my study, so I have no problem waiting out the rain, and I live in the warmest part of Ireland by deliberate choice, where the winters are nowhere near as harsh as in most parts of Europe. I'm therefore not surprised to discover that the exemplary KMC lube lasts longer under my Chainglider than in your use.

This needs a response of its own:

In my opinion, the best chain lubricant under a ChainGlider is the factory lube that comes on KMC chains when they are new, at least the ones designed for hub gears/single speeds.

If there's more than one grade of KMC chain lube, purely as a commercial matter its application is more likely to be determined by the price of the chain than the service type of the chain. I've operated both the KMC X series of derailleur chains and their Z series of single-speed chains, and both had what appeared to be the same lube, by visual inspection and a similar length of service under the same conditions. Both types of chain were, at the time I started using them, at the top of their respective ranges, so, if KMC does use more than one grade of lubrication, they would have received the best lube. But Sheldon, who only had to ask the US KMC distributor's rep to discover the truth, says nothing about grades of KMC factory lube...

In addition, I found that the derailleur X chain lasted longer, if not by a hugely different distance, than the fixie Z chain, and ascribed this to the greater flexibility of the X chain, even though my bike's chain line (tread, Q factor if anyone insists on insider jargon) is to the Rohloff blueprint spec of less than a millimeter off perfectly parallel to the bike's longitudinal centerline; indeed, padded out to be perfectly parallel. If you run a chain as slack as a proper Rohloff setup, and ride fast at all, there will be many occasions, which you will only note if you look for them, that at sudden changes of gear or speed, like hard braking, a small compressive ripple travels along the chain and, obviously, puts more stress on the sideways stiff Z fixie chain than on the sideways flexible X derailleur chain. It may be a result of KMC's proprietary construction method of the derailleur chain (the riveting in the X derailleur chain differs from the Z single speed chain).

This discussion from 14 years ago still has relevance...
https://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=4655.0#msg22907

Best, Dan.

I had not read that before, but then I bought my Rohloff in 2013, so might have read the first sentence and moved on.

Thanks for remembering that.

This discussion from 14 years ago still has relevance...
https://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=4655.0#msg22907

Best, Dan.