Swapped my chain!

[nicolezoie]

I had a rather interesting biking incident on my way home from work last night. Biking home, it's dark out now, and even with my double-headlamp, I still didn't spot whatever it was I hit. Whatever it was, it nearly knocked me off balance, and proceeded to get stuck in my chain. And, after I manged to mostly clear my chain from just rotating the pedals, I noticed that the gears were skipping.

I was about 2 miles from home at this point, and right near the last major intersection, which happens to be right before the monster hill I must climb to get home, so I didn't have much time to try and fiddle with my gears to see if I could find one that wouldn't skip. No luck. I had to bike up the monster hill with skipping gears every 6-8 pedal rotations. When I got home I examined everything and determined I'd tweaked the chain, and went to the store and got a new one.

It had been a few years since the last time I'd changed out a chain, but I managed to remember how to do it well enough. By golly it is a MESSY job. I forgot about having to adjust the length until I had the brand new, partially cleaned chain in one hand, and the old chain (which had a week's worth of road grime in it) in the other hand, and noticed the old one was a wee bit shorter than the new one. I figured I'd have to clean the new one up some more anyways, so I just held the 2 together and measured, and removed the extra links from the new chain.

Getting the chain installed onto the bike wasn't too hard, but getting the pin that makes the chain into a loop set up WAS. I had most of the right tools, but the one tool that I didn't have was a pair of pliers to snap off the extra "guide" portion of the pin. I had to dig around my toolbox to improvise something. In the end, I was able to snap that guide thingy off by holding the chain with a pair of oddball needle-nosed pliers that I forgot I had and snapping the guide portion with a crescent wrench.

The good news is that fixed the problem. While the chain was off the bike, I did examine the rest of the components and determined that the problem definitely was with the chain, and my ride into work this morning confirmed that. I just love how smooth my bike rides on a new chain. It's like a brand new bike! I have regularly had the chain changed out as needed since I've had this bike, but I'd never done it myself on this bike before.

[Trek420]

and the shee rah princess of powere tiarra goes to.....nicolezoie!

for swapping the chain and keeping her balance

[Yasmin]

Congratulations! I haven't swopped a chain yet, so you sure have my admiration. Plus keeping balance & making it up that hill...fantastic skills.

[DebW]

Does anyone really use the "powerlink" removable link they provide with new chains now? The couple times I tried one of these things I've given up and grabbed my faithful chain tool to drill out a pin. So much easier. Of course, there's an art to drilling out pins...

[Veronica]

I use the Powerlink. In fact I took it off my old chain and put it on my new one when we rebuilt my entire train - 3 new chainrings, a whole new cassette, replaced the front derailleur cable.

The trick to the Powerlink is to squeeze the sides a little bit.

V.

[New Mexico MTB']

I carry a powerLink with me. Saves a lot of time if you break a chain during a race and a bit of frustration when you're not racing.