Originally Posted by
Brian Ratliff
Originally Posted by
Velocirapture
I'm not quite sure i'm following you here, and wonder if you can explain what you mean about the braking force working against tension-based master links? a braking force (i.e back-pedaling/ resisting the forward pedal momentum), still keeps the chain under tension, but transfers the max tension from the top of the chain to the bottom?
In my experience though, pushing pins in and out tends to have more of an impact on the strength of the chain than a master link, but the experience of others might differ
I think the deal is when you put back pressure, the change in tension can be dramatic and very snappy because it is driven by momentum. Like hitting the brakes hard on a car and everything flies forward. The inverse, accelerating so hard the chain "bounces" on the non-tension side, is more rare simply because we would have to produce that acceleration with our puny leg muscles.
FWIW, as long as you check the connection every once in a while, the screw/locknut concept is excellent. If it binds, you can always back the screw out a quarter turn and use the lock nut to make sure it doesn't unscrew. I went so far as filing a little locknut wrench for this purpose. If the lock nut is tight, it shouldn't unscrew.
Thanks for the explanation. This pretty much was my train of thought. My thinking also depends on the type of master link. I think a Wipperman or SRAM master link style could be vulnerable backing out in a track setup, but the KMC master link linked above wouldn't. I also don't think track chains have changed over the years, their pins should be sufficiently long to allow for reinsertion. With road chains it is a different story, since the 8 => 9 => 10 => 11 speed chains have grew narrower and narrower. Likewise the length that the pin extends beyond the plate has also shrunk. Measuring my current KMC road chain, I get a pin length of 5.9mm and the pin extends only 0.1mm beyond the plate. That's not much margin for error when pinning the chain. The same measurements for my Izumi V are 9.5mm and 0.7 mm. I might be a bit more cautious when it comes to chains, since as a big guy, I've broken at least of dozen of them. Two of these breaks were this year alone. One had a master link and the other was pinned. As I said before, with road chains, I use a Master link if the chains come with one, but for the track, I'm just not comfortable with master links at this point in time. That said, as a participant on this public forum, I'm open to other's views and who knows, I may be swayed and trust my well-being to that little lock-nut. I guess I would need to balance it against the vulernability of a couple of layers of paper thin cotton casing at 175psi.
