Never had a chain snap but lots of everything else, rim explode, seat bolt snap while doing 30mph+ downhill on fixed, and most painfull of all a pedal broke off and had to do 13 miles on one leg suffering groin strain as a result. All in all I think I would prefer the broken chain!
The only time I broke a chain was back when I was a much less experienced rider and was trying to change gears whilst exerting full pressure, grinding up a steep hill...
Yes, I've had a few.
Modern 9- and 10-speeds seem to be difficult to join accurately with a rivet tool, you have to drive the rivet 'just right' which is not an easy thing to do by the roadside! Especially not with my eyesight. In fact I believe many chain makers don't advise joining a chain with a chain tool at all, instead use a 'powerlink' or similar. Is that right?
I also remember - many years ago - inadvertantly becoming the owner of a cheap chain with split rollers. Anyone else seen those? Ghastly thing, it was good for perhaps 100 miles if you were lucky, then utterly trashed and useless, and I was lucky to spot it before having my chainset and block chewed up too. This was a long time ago, but I don't think this horror came even from H*lf*rds, I would not demean even them for peddling such stuff, I think it came from a toy bike shop of some sort, whose memory happily escapes me....
As a kid the chain snapped on my old mtb when it was only a few weeks old, chains on raleigh bike back then couldn't have been much good. As an adult I snapped one on a commuter but at least it had done some mileage.
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