I went to the LBS and purchased a quick link for 10 speed chains. It is a KMC brand. I came home, attempted to install it on my DA 10 chain and I could not get it to close for love nor money. It appears narrower than the chain by fractions of a mm. Then for the hell of it, I installed a SRAM gold link (for 9 speed), and while a bit loose side-to-side, it works fine and causes no interference at the cogset. Any thoughts on either situation?
bump
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Anybody?
i dont use the links (any of them) and do not recommend them. a bicycle chain undergoes truly incredible forces. if it were to fail while applying power and in many other circumstances, the result could be truly disasterous to life, health, and/or family jewels. in my experience, the most likely point of failure on a chain is one of these “quick links” and/or the adjacent links where you install the quick link.
i suggest you connect your chain carefully and permanently when you install it new (use a factory rivet to connect the chain without a ‘quick link’, even if one is included with the chain). then pop any rivet out to remove the chain to throw it away after it is truly worn. you can tell when that happens by measuring it or using a number of clever tools out there. do not go by “miles” or just time, as wear is highly influenced by a number of factors such as miles and pedal forces, riding style, moisture, lubrication, amount of climbing done, etc.
clean the chain on the bike. it is easy, quick, and efficient. don’t be anal about it unless you do a lot of 50-milers in pure sand. getting a goofy link just to clean your chain to food safety standards is simply not necessary. do not waste your limited time on this planet.
just my suggestion…
Hey, thanks for the reply. I’ve used the SRAM links for 5 or so years now without any problems, including tandem use, so I’m not real concerned about whether or not they can stand up to the forces the chain undergoes - I’ve already seen that they can. I’m more interested in the KMC 10-speed link vs the DA 10-speed chain question and the use of the SRAM 9-speed link on a 10-speed drivetrain question - although I may be answering my own question on the latter since it seems to be working w/o any problems.
Does anybody else have input on this deep and probing issue?
you may change your mind if and when one fails…
tell me, what is the whole point of the ‘quick link’? in 25 years of a lot of riding i have never used one and my bikes are pretty darn clean.
Greg,
I understand your concerns about chain failure. In my 26 years of ridin’ & racin’ I’ve broken 1 chain - a Regina hollow pin chain - about 16 years ago. I’m not saying it can’t or won’t happen, but it is down on my list of worrries on the bike. My biggest bike related worry/fear is a front flat descending a mountain at warp speed and especially if I’ve just cranked it over for a high speed sweeper or switchback. This fear was magnified by a factor of 100 on my tandem. We front flatted the tandem once on the straight and narrow and level ground at about 26mph. I did a 3 tank slappers trying to keep it up. We stayed up long enough that my wife’s screams had even the people up ahead of us turned around and watching us before the crash actually began. Finally we went down on our left side. I didn’t get hurt very badly at all, but when I rolled over to look at my wife, she was lying with her back to me, still straddling the bike. When I rolled her over she had road rash 360 degrees around her body, including her cheekbones and lips, as well as all the conventional spots. Somehow she did a barrel roll upon impact. Stokers live in a dangerous position and that became too big of a fear for me to accept, so I sold the tandem. Anyways, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
I’m still interested in other folk’s knowledge on this chain question of mine.
ok, but tell me, what is the whole point of the ‘quick link’? what is the whole point of constantly removing the chain?
Oh, I get what you’re driving at now…it’s the chain removal thing that you feel is unnecessary. Well, I would not say that I’m anal about bike cleanliness, but when I do it, I DO IT! I find it so much easier to clean the bike frame, chainrings and cogs if I don’t have to fart around with the chain being in the way. It takes 2 seconds to pop that baby off, then I clean the bike and wheels, and wipe down the chain. I pour some kerosene on a rag and wipe the chain until about 95% of the external dirt is gone, then I fold the chain over itself twice (4 layers of links) and place it in that stacked position on a newspaper. I then give it a quick soak of white lightning, work it in, wipe it down and then repeat. Then reinstall the chain and all is right with the world! Simple, quick and cleaner than leaving the chain on the bike.
C’est un stylo!
watch those carcinogens, cowboy…
i’m a simple green fan.
i find it way easier to just pop out the rear wheel.
I’m gonna bump this one more time, cause except for Greg X, I’m just not feeling the love that I know is here. Got “Black Betty” by Spiderbait playing on iTunes as I type this - my lucky charm - now being followed up with “Proud Mary” by Ike and Tina “a little bit nice and a little bit rough” T.
The “permanent” links are the most frequent point of failure on those chains so worrying about quick links because they might fail is misplaced.
I wouldn’t want much slop because in just the right conditions it could result in bent side plates and failure, but if you can find one with the right width they are fine. I haven’t heard about many failures on any of the quick links but have seen numerous ones with the “permanent” ones. In theory they may be better but in practice they can be finicky to install, which isn’t an issue with quick links.
Just get a KMC chain and you won’t have to worry about fit. They shift better anyway.
I am going to take Slowmans advice and try a Wipperman for my DA 10 speed setup…I always used SRAM with my 9 speed…worked great.
180,
Dunno if anyone actually directly answered the question, but don’t use the 9 speed sram gold link on a 10 speed shimano chain…this is actually the worst combo goin’. The new shimano 10speed is 6.02mm wide as compared to the 6.5mm of the gold link. A customer of ours tried to use the gold link with a campy 10 chain at 6.2mm and this came open while back pedaling under braking. The problem was that his freehub body added just a little bit of resistance to back pedaling, when combined with the wheel rapid decellerating forced the link open. As for failure of specfically the wipperman link, i’ve used the 10 speed version personally for about 4 seasons (i might be wrong +/- a year) on four different bikes in cross, tt, road and training applictions and have never had a problem with it, nor have i seen any of the hundreds i’ve mounted through the shop fail. Campy’s old press link however, i’ve seen fail a few times. I agree that the gold link does fail occasionally, two that i can recall, but nowhere close to the frequency of failure of chains with a perma link.
Don’t know about KMC links, but I use a “Superlink” and it fits perfectly. They have different models for 10spd and nine, each with colour-coded packaging so it’s easy to tell which one you need.
I’ve also used SRAM connector links and liked them as well.
have you seen regular factory chain links fail many times? not the permalinks or quick links but just the regular plain normal repeating standard chain links on a DA or good wipperman chain?
why are people so interested in taking the chain off the bike? this puzzles me, but maybe i am a retro grouch. just like the desire to carry a heavy inflator and co2 cartridges on training rides when a GOOD very light, very reliable frame fit pump will do the job 10,000 times better. or like getting a ferrari to go a the store 1/2 mile away. or a hummer to take kids to the soccer field. people seem to like super overkill.
welcome to the modern world…
(the rant of the day).
i’ve only seen perma links fail when incorrectly installed…which happens more often than it should. As for ordinary links, ie those not broken, i’ve seen them fail as well, usually due to poor lubrication, cross shifting, chain suck etc. There are the few times when seemingly out of the blue a chain will fail under an experienced rider, and based on purely my personal experience this seems to be happening quite often with ultegra 10s chains. This season alone i’ve seen 5 go. One solution we’ve had luck with is replacing them with dura-ace for a little more, and we currently have 3 cust’s on wipperman chains with no problems yet. My experience with wippermans has been very good, and I’ve never seen one fail. This could be due to the much lower percentage of riders on them though.
In response to the original question, the majority of the failures i’ve observed have actually been in the plate area rather than the expected failures in the pin area. Its a pretty safe bet that when a chain fails at the pin its from incorrect mounting, and when at the plates its from massive abuse. another common source of chain failures in the dh/free rider crowd is from riders shortening they’re chain to prevent slap, only to have it break under suspension bottoming.
Thanks everyone for their contribution to my edu-muh-cation on the 10-speed world of quick links. It has been informative.