Amazing Chain!

[Mr Pig]

Seven thirty this morning, a late start for us, one of my cycling buddies arrives at the back door. As I'm getting ready for the off he mentioned that the chain keeps jumping off the chain rings when grinding up hills. Didn't want to get stuck in the middle of nowhere so I take a look, and I couldn't believe it.

The chain had a quick link and the middle of one of the side plates was missing! If you imagine the side plate and you drew two lines across it so you divided it into three equal parts, the two ends were there but the third in the middle was gone. How on earth that could have happened I have no idea but the chain was being held together by one side of the quick link!

Ok, I thought, just stick another quick link in it and we're away, I checked for stretch and it wasn't at 1% yet. But fitting the new link I noticed that the chain seemed very loose with a lot of sideways play in the links. As I looked along the chain I noticed that one of the side plates on one of the links was split right through next to the pin!

Unbelievable. How the chain hasn't snapped I just don't know, the hill he came up just getting to my house is huge. Makes you wonder what horrors other people are riding each day without being any the wiser.

So he got a new chain as well as a new link this morning and we got away eventually. Perhaps not surprisingly his new chain felt a lot better :0)

 

[Renard]

Sounds like a lucky escape. If it had snapped when it was under pressure...

 

[mocker]

Sounds like a lucky escape. If it had snapped when it was under pressure...

by FAR my most painful cycling experience.....grinding up a steep hill off-road in the granny ring...chain snaps...my leg flys forward with my kneecap slamming into the back of my handlebar stem, right into one of the steerer bolt "casts".....YIKES!

 

[Mr Pig]

If it had snapped when it was under pressure...

I can't figure how it didn't. I would post a picture of it but I chucked the broken link over the back fence. Lucky boy indeed, The Lord was smiling on him.

Mocker, ouch! How long did it take you to get back up? ;0) Went over the bars onto my shoulder once and was so dazed and winded it took me about ten-minutes just to stand up.

Went over the bars this morning actually but it was a nice soft landing. I don't think suspension forks are always a good thing. We came down a rough field and there was a little ditch across the bottom then up onto a track. Picked the wrong line I think and the front wheel stuck in the ditch. I think a ridged front end would've gone up the other side but when a suspension fork gets stopped like that it often just sinks and helps your take off!

 

[mocker]

you need to work on you manual/bunny hopping skills mr pig!

...took me a while from memory, hurt like hell...didnt help by having my mates laughing either!

 

[Mr Pig]

you need to work on you manual/bunny hopping skills mr pig! :?:

Too old and fat mate ;0) I should've tried to pull the front wheel up but it was rough ground and down hill. I do well to not fall off at the best of times, I'm rubbish at off road riding. Not brilliant on road actually ;0)

Found yet another track though so that's good. This is where we were: LINK

I live at the right-hand edge of the village in the top left. We were the tracks and fields around the loch in the bottom page. If you drag the page to the left, down etc you'll see that we've got a huge area of countryside to play in covered in little lanes, dirt tracks, fields and woods. What you can't see is how hilly it is! To the left of the right-hand tip of that little loch a TV transmitter, you can see the shadow of the mast form a black 'V'. That transmitter is 1000 feet higher than my house!