Know your bike, part by part

Your bike is not one thing. It is a collection of parts, each wearing out at its own pace. A chain might be done in 3,000km. A cassette can last two or three chains if you stay on top of it. Brake pads, tyres, chainrings, bottom brackets, even the battery in your electronic groupset all run on their own clock. The trouble is that most of us treat the whole bike as a single unit and only think about any of it when something starts skipping, squealing or refusing to charge.

Riders fall into two camps here. Some get on their bike and ride, giving their components no thought until something fails. Others like to know exactly where every part stands, swapping a chain or tyre based on the kilometres it has covered rather than waiting for visible wear to tell them. Neither is wrong, but if you sit in the second camp, or you would like to, the tools to do it have never been more accessible. The options run from a humble spreadsheet through to apps that do the tracking for you automatically. Here is a rundown of each, how they work and why it is worth the small effort to set one up.

Why bother tracking components at all

The cyclist’s favourite false economy is running a chain too long. A worn chain chews through your cassette and chainrings, so a part you could have replaced for around thirty dollars quietly destroys parts that cost many times that. Tracking wear flips the equation. You replace the cheap consumable on time and protect the expensive bits behind it.

Beyond saving money, component tracking means fewer surprises. No flat battery mid-ride on an electronic groupset. No tyre worn to the casing on the morning of a big event. No guessing whether those pads have one more wet descent left in them. You ride knowing where everything stands.

The options

The manual version: a spreadsheet

The oldest method still works. A simple spreadsheet with a row per component, the date you fitted it and a running total of distance will do the job, and plenty of riders have tracked their gear this way for years. The catch is that it relies entirely on you to update it after every ride, and the moment you forget a few entries the numbers drift out of date. It costs nothing and gives you total control, but with so many automated options available now, most riders will find the effort hard to justify. If you like the discipline of it, though, there is nothing wrong with it.

Strava

If you already log your rides on Strava, you can track gear with no extra app. Add a bike to your profile, then add components to it on the Strava website. Pick the component type, enter the brand, model and rough weight, set the date you fitted it, and Strava starts accruing distance against that part with every ride you assign to the bike.

A couple of things to know. Component management lives on the website, not the mobile app, so you will need a browser to set it up. Strava also tracks by distance only, and there are some quirks: a bike can hold one component of each type at a time, and once you retire a component it cannot be brought back. It is an option if your needs are simple and you are already in the Strava habit.

intervals.icu

If you train as much as you ride, intervals.icu is worth a look. It is a free analytics and training platform that pulls your activities in from Strava, Garmin and others, and alongside its fitness and power tools it has a capable gear tracking system. You add your bikes and shoes, then attach components such as the chain, cassette, tyres or sealant, and it tracks each one by distance, time and activity count. Components are shared across gear items, and you can set reminders to fire after a set distance, time or number of rides to replace a chain, top up sealant and so on.

It also handles gear assignment cleverly. Activities coming in from Strava carry their gear across automatically, and you can set filters to assign the right bike based on things like the power meter used. The data is exportable, and because the platform is built around training metrics, it suits riders who already live in their numbers and want component wear sitting in the same place. The core platform is free, with a low-cost supporter tier for the more advanced training features.

Garmin

Garmin rolled out an expanded gear tracking system across 2026, and as of the June update you can now manage it directly on a compatible Edge cycling computer rather than only in the Garmin Connect app.

You build up each bike from its individual parts, anything from the drivetrain and wheels through to tyres and even your shoe cleats, and set a target lifespan for each. Every ride you record adds distance to those parts automatically. The Edge shows progress bars on the device and Garmin Connect sends a notification when a component is approaching the end of its life. You can go granular and track each drivetrain part separately, or keep it simple with a single “drivetrain” item if that suits you better. There is also a gear database to speed up setup, so you are not typing in every detail by hand.

Dedicated apps like Componentry

If you want the full picture, a purpose-built app such as Componentry goes well beyond distance. It syncs automatically from Strava, Garmin, Wahoo and Hammerhead, so every ride updates your components with zero manual logging. Where it pulls ahead is in how it measures wear: not just rough mileage, but distance, ride time and calendar age together, with terrain, power and even weather factored in. The same 100km wears a drivetrain harder in the hills and the wet than it does on a flat, dry day, and this app reflects that.

The payoff is prediction. Rather than a generic manufacturer interval, you get replacement estimates based on how you actually ride, including a projected state for each part on a chosen race day so you know exactly what to swap beforehand. It also handles practical extras like low battery alerts for electronic groupsets and saved bike fit measurements across multiple bikes. It runs on a small subscription, so it is the option for riders who want to treat maintenance as seriously as they treat training.

HubTiger and MC

The options until now tell you about the lifetime of a component. HubTiger tells you something different and, for most riders, more immediately useful, which is where your bike stands since its last service.

HubTiger is the workshop software we use here at MC, and it has a rider app that connects to your Strava account. Beyond ride tracking, it keeps a detailed service history of the maintenance, upgrades and component replacements done on your bike, and it sends maintenance reminders based on distance covered so you do not miss a service interval. Because the data is tied to the work we have actually done on your bike, our team can see the wear and tear accumulated since your last visit. That window matters. Your service intervals come around far more often than the full lifetime of your chain or cassette, so a view anchored to “since last service” is the one that tells us, and you, what genuinely needs attention now.

How they fit together

These tools are not mutually exclusive, and the smart move is to layer them to suit how involved you want to be.

If you want the lightest touch, lean on HubTiger and let the workshop reminders and service history do the work. If you ride with a Garmin or live in Strava, switch on gear tracking there for a running tally of component distance at no extra cost. If you are already deep in your training data, intervals.icu lets you keep component wear next to your fitness numbers. And if you want to manage your bike down to the last link with predictions tailored to your riding, a dedicated app like Componentry sits on top and pulls it all together.

Whichever route you take, the principle is the same. Don’t treat your bike as one object that either works or does not, and start seeing it as the sum of its parts, each with a lifespan you can stay ahead of.

Need a hand?

If you are not sure where your components stand, bring the bike in. We can talk through what is worth tracking for the riding you do, get you set up on the HubTiger app so you can see your wear since your last service, and make sure nothing on your bike is quietly costing you more than it should.