Of course, its a Bosch front ring. They will wear out more than twice as quickly as the the rings with twice (or more) as many teeth. It's not just the reduced number of teeth, it's the fact that the chain wrap is more as well.
I would expect that chain suck may be one of the first things you will definitely notice, which itself may cause a catastrophic failure if you are not fast enough to respond. Then (or even around the same time) shifting problems will become more noticeable. The chain will be pushing material from the tooth face and creating burrs on the outside edges. I doubt the burrs will stop the chain shifting, but they will delay shifting down and possibly up. You might get some delayed down shifting, where you click to move to a smaller gear , but nothing happens until you click for a second smaller one, then you get two shifts!. I'm starting to get that now at almost 1600 miles (I have burrs, but with a chain at less than 0.5%). Not sure about increased noise levels. I've never had a chain on past its replacement point for long enough to experience that. I doubt that you will snap a chain just because it has between 0.75% and 1% wear, but if you are going to have a snapped chain, then this is when it will happen!
I'm going to bite the bullet and make the change. Just one more ride!
I would expect that chain suck may be one of the first things you will definitely notice, which itself may cause a catastrophic failure if you are not fast enough to respond. Then (or even around the same time) shifting problems will become more noticeable. The chain will be pushing material from the tooth face and creating burrs on the outside edges. I doubt the burrs will stop the chain shifting, but they will delay shifting down and possibly up. You might get some delayed down shifting, where you click to move to a smaller gear , but nothing happens until you click for a second smaller one, then you get two shifts!. I'm starting to get that now at almost 1600 miles (I have burrs, but with a chain at less than 0.5%). Not sure about increased noise levels. I've never had a chain on past its replacement point for long enough to experience that. I doubt that you will snap a chain just because it has between 0.75% and 1% wear, but if you are going to have a snapped chain, then this is when it will happen!
I already have a replacement cassette and chain. I'm a tight sod, so I don't want to change too soon when it appears to be OK. But I know that a worn chain spreads wear to all the parts it meets. If I leave it too long, I may have to get a new ring as well. But at 1600 miles, I'm already doing 2.5 to 3 times better on mileage than I ever did with a 9 or 10-speed analogue bike. So a new cassette is on target and I'm up two chains!
I've never looked close up at a Bosch small ring, so I cannot recommend one way or the other. But if the teeth are symmetrical, ie the profile is the same no matter which side you look at, then you would probably be able to do it. I can't recall ever having a symmetrical front ring, although you would have thought that 1x rings are the ones to be symmetrical because they have no shifting to do. However, if you think about the duty that the ring has, the teeth have to carry the load whilst allowing the chain to come in at different angles. I know the chain has quite a bit of flex, but it would help if the chain tooth was chamfered in some way. It would only have to be chamfered on one side (edit: I mean both sides of the leading face, but not either side of the trailing face) , so maybe the gear cannot be flipped and work the same way after all. But I'm guessing because I don't really know.
