From the worn out "used chain" that was broken apart by Borg Warner's design engineer, the chain is only slightly worn on the pins (.002" of wear per junction) when we run completely out of the stock adjustment range.
Our chain can "last" more than twice as long as we have adjustment range, thus you can see the logic that everybody followed with the several extension methods that were tried to use up all the available wear life of the chain itself.
Wear to the guides is about half of what we see using up the existing adjustment range. The guides crack, chip and break off little edge chunks
but they do not wear down to the backing steel, ever ....
Rebending of the guides has been tried experimentally with several ongoing trials happening as we speak.
A chain system (guides and chain) that are worn to the point that it is hitting up against itself is shot.
New guides and a new chain should come next.
Not very many chains have ever been worn to this point yet ....
Fact is,
the riders are tending to get too old to ride all that much and the tests have never concluded.
I have two (2) spare super chains and I strongly think I'll never live long enough to use both of them.