On Wed, 04 Feb 2004 19:55:33 GMT, meb <
[email protected]>
may have said:
>Werehatrack wrote:
>
> > It's the retainer clip for an old-style master link. I've never seen that type used with a
> > chain for a der, so it's probably a random accidental find.
>
>I’ve got some of these locking side plate master links on bikes with ders. Now that you mention it,
>the bikes are rear der only. I generally refrain from master links because they are weaker and more
>likely to have alignment issues resulting in thrown chains, although I’ve never had a master link
>break on a pedaled vehicle (I’ve broken many with internal combustion engine drives).
In absolute tensile strength terms, I doubt that the later-style master links are weaker in any
important manner than the chains they connect. They are potentially subject to one kind of wear that
the regular links are not, though, which could be an issue if they wore out before the rest of the
chain...but that does not seem to be the case in my experience.
>No problem with the rear der. I could see fder issues if the protruding plate were placed on the
>left, but downshifting with it on the right would seem a minimal concern since any bump sends the
>chain to the smaller ring anyway. I know many people use master links to make it easy to remove the
>chains for cleaning.
If the master was installed with the clip to the left, though, it could cause problems in the back.
You might get away with it on an old 5-speed freewheel, but on a 9-speed cassette it would likely
either jam or cause a really bad skip unless the chain was running on the largest rear cog. (As for
the cleaning thing, while it's true that off-bike cleaning has its adherents, and I used to be one
of them, recent evidence would seem to support the contention that it's not necessarily advantageous
to remove a chain and clean it more thoroughly than can be done on the bike. This topic will no
doubt continue to be debated.) The other problem with clip-type masters is in the fact that the
teeth of the sprockets at one end or the other (on a two-der system) will get a chance to hit that
link often, and might pop it off. Later-style links are held in the engaged position by the tension
on the chain itself, and have no clip to lose.
There is one exception from KMC, illustrated at the bottom of their US homepage:
http://home.earthlink.net/~kmcchain/english/index.html
In that one, the clip is one of the sideplates. I'm not terribly impressed with the idea, and I
don't plan to try it.
>I googled and found some bicycle master links with a keyhole on each side of the link and one pin
>attached to each side. Is that the implied new link from your “old” reference? Is that typical of
>“modern” master links?
Yes, and yes, respectively. The currently most popular ones are the SRAM Powerlink and (in certain
cases) the Wippermann link. There are others as well, including those on the KMC page cited above.
>Looks like there would be less of an alignment issue with the longitudinally symmetric links.
If, by "alignment", you mean left/right clip placement, yes, there's no alignment issue with them at
all because there's no clip. (Or, perhaps more correctly, the function of the clip has been designed
into the side plates of the links.)
Some current master links are "one-use" designs which are not intended to be removable, but most are
made to allow the chain to be broken and reconnected many times. The value of this often only
becomes apparent when one does not have a chain that is connected via a Powerlink-style master.
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