Taya introduced their high performance colored chains in January 2011, and we’ve run them on and off since then with pretty good success. None have broken and shifting is smooth, but the color coating on the external plates does tend to rub and flake off much faster than the inner links. For the most part, they’ve since limited the color coating to the inner links, where it tends to stick around, and now they’re offering the Traveler Series with multi-color chains in national flag schemes.
Beyond cosmetics, the chains use their DHT (Diamond Hard Tech) coating, which they say makes them 25% harder than anything else on the market and extends chain life up to 5,000km, and GST, claimed to be the industry’s only environmentally safe anti-corrosion treatment.
Chains are available in 9/10/11-speed 8/9/10-speed versions and have double punched inner and outer links to save grams. Flag-matching color schemes include Italy (shown), France (red, white, blue) and Germany (black, yellow, red).
