Hello hhnngg1, I use KMC chains on my race bike and on my TT bike and I have no problems with the reusable link. There aren't any tricks to using it that I've needed to employ. Perhaps you have a "bad" link. I've also bought the link separately for use with Campagnolo Record 10 chains and it's worked well. I switched to another brand of link (that I can't recall right now) because my LBS said they worked better with Campagnolo chains. I haven't seen a difference. Wish I could provide more insight to your problem.