I had a SS chain break on me over the winter on my trainer…thank god it was on the trainer not sprinting for real.
I had a Wipperman chain break at the plate (the cheaper one, not the stainless) about three weeks ago. I was accelerating and got one heck of bruise on my thigh after it drove into the bar end of my drops.
“I was dismayed to find two side plates on her 9 speed stainless Wipperman chained”
wippermann hasn’t entirely perfected the stainless chain, at least not to my satisfaction. neither i nor anyone i’ve ever heard of have ever broken or had any problem with the nickel chain (which is cheaper). i’m a big fan of the wippermann nickel chain, it’s the only chain i ride. i’m a future fan of the stainless chain, but i’m not convinced yet that it’s ready for prime time.
I just installed a Wipperman Nickel…SMOOOOOTHHH…so much better tha DA…
Sam
As others have pointed out, it’s the stainless steel. As you shift away from a “perfect” chainline, the chain is being bent sideways. The constant bending-unbending, even though small, causes stainless to fail.
Read lots of DA chains breaking? I have never broken one. Replace every 5K even if there is no “stretch” as they aren’t too expensive. The little pin is dumb, but who am I to argue w/ Shimano engineers and experience over the past 50 years or so.Beware fakes.
I had two Shimano Ultegra 11sp chains break in 2021. Shimano chains at the time were very hard to find, so I wound up buying them from an Amazon seller at an inflated price. The chains came in the usual Shimano grey box. The packaging rust-preventative grease felt like factory Shimano stuff to me.
I broke both within a couple hundred miles of mounting them. I have NEVER broken a chain before in thirty years of cycling and maintaining my own bikes… and suddenly I break two in a couple of weeks? Hmm… I’m almost certain the chains I bought were counterfeit. Fake Shimano chains are supposedly very common, especially at the height of the pandemic. From now on, I only buy chains from a bike shop I trust.
Note: I have had really good luck with nickle-plated Wipperman Connex chains. Super durable, smooth shifting and the best quick link in the industry, IMO.
Did you realize you just revived a thread that had not seen any posts in 18 years?
(I kept scratching my head when people were talking about about Shimano non-replaceable pins…)
Did you realize you just revived a thread that had not seen any posts in 18 years?
(I kept scratching my head when people were talking about about Shimano non-replaceable pins…)
Do you realize you’re replying to someone who hasn’t logged on since 2006? 
To be fair the original culprit is no longer part of this thread. Someone on this forum thinks it’s funny to register accounts that are AI chatbots, e.g. Dante95. This latest account was scrubbed.
I wouldn’t mind if there was any entertainment value at all provided. But there is none.
Did you realize you just revived a thread that had not seen any posts in 18 years?
(I kept scratching my head when people were talking about about Shimano non-replaceable pins…)
Do you realize you’re replying to someone who hasn’t logged on since 2006?
To be fair the original culprit is no longer part of this thread. Someone on this forum thinks it’s funny to register accounts that are AI chatbots, e.g. Dante95. This latest account was scrubbed.
I wouldn’t mind if there was any entertainment value at all provided. But there is none.
Of course I replied to the wrong guy. Sigh. Comedy of errors.