Kind of a newbie post, but I'm a bit curious. I bought a Salsa Casserole a few months back to complement my road bike and I really like it. I can't believe it has more than 800 miles on it yet. Last week, I took off hopeing to do my first century of the year and, as I climbed the steep hill out of town, the chain jambed and fell off and over I went (clipped in). Happened once more without falling and the next time the chain broke altogether. No cell service so a long hike home. Anyway, the drama aside, isn't that a bit soon for this to happen? Never happened to me before even after thousands of miles on other bikes. Chain broke on a normal link, not a connector, and I showed it to the bike shop and they said the links around it were about to go as well. They were ok about it and charged me $20 for a new chain and put it on. Old chain was a Sram PC951, which I've found is a cheapie so the new one is probably comparable. What gives? Happenstance, bad luck?
Thanks

I've always had good luck with that chain. Routine cleaning, lubrication, and the conditions it is exposed to are all important.

What exactly do you mean by "the chain jammed"? Perhaps the chain was already damaged somehow, or got damaged by those events, and then broke?

Even the cheapest chains are incredibly strong. 99% of all chain breakage comes from two causes.

#1 is a poor splice, which doesn't apply to you because you have a connector. (unless whoever installed the chain made an unauthorized splice)

#2 is shifting under load with a hyperglide (or same in another brand), which pushes the plates out on the pin, where the support is inadequate and sometime down the road the plate slips off the pin under load and the the chain breaks.

You seem like an experienced rider, so I doubt it's poor shifting, but the first time the chain jammed it might have had the same effect. In a sense you're lucky, because it isn't rare for a snapped chain to snag the FD and rip it off. OTOH if you were really lucky it would have happened 100 yards from home.

Now that you have a new chain, I wouldn't worry about it failing, but I would try to figure out what's casing the chain jams.

The front derailleur might be a couple millimeters too high or low

Most chain damage I have seen is due to lack of cleaning and proper lube.

Most chain damage I have seen is due to a lack of steering and proper landings.

- corrected -

=8-)

I like this bike a lot, but it has one issue that might have caused damage previously. The first few times I rode it, the rear wheel would pull out of the dropouts when climbing hard , not all the way but enough to cant the wheel sideways so it rubbed hard. I'd ride maybe a quarter mile or so that way thinking it was something else and the chain was severely crossed. Happened again the morning of the event as I had taken the wheel out and reset it for other reasons. I've found that I need to really honk hard on the skewer to get it to stay, makes it a pita to loosen. Anyway, thanks for the thoughts......I'm back on the road.

You need to have your shop check to see why the axle pulled out of the dropout. Damage caused by this may have caused the chain to fail.

Perhaps replace the skewer as well with a close cam type if the stock skewer is open cam (info on that issue here). Good Luck!

Cheers
lverhagen