Originally Posted by
ethelred
I ignored the "skipping" for probably about 10 minutes. I started riding five years ago and am still learning what's a serious warning sign and what's an annoyance, so that's a lesson learned, I guess: Bike starts shifting by itself, beware.
So a couple of you mentioned a stiff link in a chain as a possible cause. How does this happen, and how can I prevent it? I'm good about keeping the chain lubed, but should I be inspecting each link when I apply lube to make sure they all move smoothly? Or are there other ways to prevent stiff links? What do I do if I find one?
.
Get used to your bike, and know how it sounds and feels. You don't have to be an expert in bikes to adopt a simple rule. The bike alays sounds and feels the same, so
anytime, anything changes you want to find out what and why. Once you've identified what changed you have to make a decision about what it might mean, and that may not be complicated, but you'll at least have taken the time to consider it.
As for stiff links, they have a number of causes and there's no real preventative except keeping your chain lubed and rust free. Stiff links announce themselves very uniquely and so are easy to identify while riding. They'll skip or make a pronounced noise going through the RD roughly once every 2-1/2 crank revolutions, not synchronized with either the pedal motion, or wheel motion, but seemingly randomly except it it isn't, and you'll notice the pattern after a minute or two. Links rarely ever stiffen while riding, except for mountain biking in the mud, and so are usually first spotted when starting out after the bikes been sitting overnight or longer.