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Old 02-18-09, 09:56 PM
  #11  
Mr. Underbridge
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Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Reston, VA
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Bikes: 2003 Giant OCR2

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Originally Posted by operator

Dude.

16 years.
I know. It's beautiful, isn't it? Completely nuts. At some level I was so impressed by the stupidity of it I almost wanted to see how long it would go.

In fairness, I did post a thread a few months ago asking if there was any other sign that a chain needed to be replaced other than 1/16" of stretch. General consensus was, that was probably good enough. Though I did probably fail to mention the "16 year old chain" tidbit, mayhap the advice would have been a tad different if I had!

Originally Posted by operator
Shimanos "special rivet" for attaching the chain is ridicuously stupid and ********. Every other chain manufacturer has gone to a quicklink type of connection because it is 30 billion times more foolproof than pushing a "special rivet" through.
I think I'm coming around to that line of reasoning.

Originally Posted by operator
The reason why your chain failed is two reasons.

1) Chain wear
2) Improper/faulty installation

#2 usually happens quite quickly, espeically in high torque situations but I can imagine a situation where pin installation was borderline leading to premature failure sometimes (or much later in your case) down the road. Screw shimano and their stupid chain connections, sram produces a superior and much more foolproof chain at equivlalent cost. (e.g PC48 7/8 speed chain = < $5 wholesale, x2 retail).
I might be obsessing unnecessarily on this, but I cleaned the chain and looked at the inside of the plates. It seemed to support exactly what you stated - the wear wasn't even on the inside/outside plate and pin, and my guess is it was installed just a little off. Not enough to cause it to fail during, say, the first decade of use, but a tad later.

The hilarious bit is, I put an order in to Jenson last Sunday for parts to do a drivetrain upgrade to 9-speed. So if this thing would have lasted another week on top of its 16 years, it could have had a proper burial. For what it's worth, I went with an SRAM chain.

Now, don't get me started on the original factory tubes I still have from 1993. They're still intact...but I did replace them last year just to be on the safe side.
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