Thinking of fitting one to my Desert x. The idea of no chain maintenance on a tour strikes me as a huge bonus.
Its like most things , comes with protective oil for storage , an industry thing , I supply Stainless steel parts and they require anti corrosion for storage on the design documents work that one out lol . Clean it off with a rag with a dash of WD 40 and forget about it . 7K now , as new , no oil. My dealer Coventry Ducati said the same comment , now he just admires it . I will post the photos so you can see.
Low maintenance... not no maintenance... Unlike the shite OEM chain. After 3.5 years/25k miles of running the Regina HPE all year round on both my V4S and V4 PP Multi the only thing I can say about the aesthetics of the link platings is that, with a semi-regular spray of chain cleaner/soapy water and a wipe down, they stay gold. With respect to the ta-C / DLC roller coating - it must work , as there is very little friction heat generated. Even after decent mileage and/or a bit of track hammering it isn't hot (or particularly warm) to touch, which results in pretty much zero stretch - all with absolutely no lubing. IMO it's worth the £250 for that reason alone The only slight ball ache is the master links are quad stake open rivets... which is fine with the right chain tool. The PP and V4S also have different chain lengths: MULTI V4 PP = REGINA HPE - 525,126 LINKS MULTI V4/V4S = REGINA HPE - CHAIN 525, 124 LINKS I bought both mine off www.louismoto.co.uk but looks like not currently available... Maybe getting more popular. Chain tool - Motion Pro https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/333778787738?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=qA3NjSELRee&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=q4LWwZEmS_u&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COP
One question: how long did the chain last before you replaced it as compared to your experience with a standard chain? Marc
I didn't need to replace it as there is barely any stretch for the reasons stated above. The pic above is on my PP That I got last year but here's what it looked like on my V4S at about 16k miles... If the annual mileage covered is only a few thousand miles then, lube hassle aside, I get why it might make sense to run a standard chain. If bigger mileage is involved and the aesthetics of a gold chain are desired I can't see why it's not worth getting one of these.
That's impressive. I've been using the DID ZVMX and with regular cleaning and lubing they seem to need replacement between a low of 12K and a high of 17K with an average of about 14K. That's based on a total of 105,000 miles with two V4's. I have also had 2 of them fail due to broken "O" rings. The DID runs about $150 from Carpimoto while the HPE chain runs about $325. So about double. I like to keep the gold ones clean so that portion of the maintenance wouldn't change and lubing only takes a minute once the cleaning is done so for me the maintenance factor isn't such a big thing. Normally they only need adjusting twice or three times at most in their useable life. It really boils down to their ultimate longevity for me. Has anybody heard any feedback about that? Edit: Just read a little bit about the HPE chain on Regina's website: clean and re-lubricate the chain after washing your bike after using your bike in wet conditions and / or in salty or dusty environments before storing your bike at the end of the riding season (winter season) re-lubricate the chain once a year check correct chain tensioning every 3.000 Km. eliminates the need of periodic re-lubrication, while ensuring at least the same mileage obtained with a normal chain regularly lubricated every 500 km I guess they aren't suggesting it will go longer, just that it won't need lubing. I'd still like to hear some real world experience before forgetting about it. Marc
Very impressive chain technology, I presume they have been developing such chains with endurance racing teams.
