- Morning trainiacs.
If your chain sounds anything like this
(bike chain spinning)
we're gonna make you a lot faster today.
(upbeat music)
So, traniacs, very quick video today
because I just came from early morning fasted blood draw.
They took out about eight vials of blood.
That is legitimately the first time
that I've ever got woozy giving blood.
Just gotta make sure that my levels are
all topped up before we get into hard core race season.
And then in about two hours I have
to go pick up Melissa, aka Mell,
and we gotta go on an all afternoon shoot.
So, we gotta do this really quickly.
You see this?
This is an ugly, ugly commuter chain.
Now this baby here is so rusted up,
that if any of you have a chain
that looks like this on your try bike,
y'all should be ashamed of yourselves.
But this bike is like an outdoor dog.
It rarely comes inside, really just to get
a little bit of work done on it.
So things rust up on it a lot.
You aren't gonna have a bike chain that is this bad
on your try bike, but if you have any little
bit of squeaking, any bit of dryness, crustiness,
that's gonna add a lot of resistance to your pedaling.
And you're going to be working harder
than you need to be to go fast.
So I'm gonna tell you how to replace this, very easily.
It's basic stuff, don't worry.
Okay so what you gotta look for right off the start
is there's going to be a link
that is like the end of the ch...
There we go, perfect timing.
You're looking for something like that.
That you can peel off, and what you do with that
is you grab yourself a pair of needle nose pliers,
something like that, and you wanna get rid of that link.
Basically you're just twisting it right off.
There we go, it came off.
Now what's going to happen, and then what you'll have
is you'll have a couple of little nubs that
are sticking out, and you need to push those through
the other side of the chain, and that'll separate them.
You're gonna wanna press the chain together
to give yourself a little bit of give.
You don't want a really tight chain.
Basically just knock that thing out.
Don't hit your carbon bike, and, bam.
The chain comes off.
Now, what if there isn't a very clear link like that
or for some reason this is rusted on?
What you can do in that case is you're gonna
have to position your bike in a way
that you can bridge the chain across two solid things
and then you take yourself a punch,
put it on top of one of these rivets here,
or whatever these things are called.
Try to hammer one of these links out.
We will try to do that right now.
(hammer banging)
There we go, we got two sides of the chain.
Now, what you might have to do is shorten the new chain,
and you can use that same process.
Old chains off, we'll take this opportunity to degrease.
Eww, chain ring, that is disgusting.
(brushing)
Little bit on the back too.
Then we're ready for a new chain.
Which we just so happen to have right there.
Unravel, there you go, drape it through the frame.
Over top of the rear cog,
and the front chain ring.
Give yourself enough room that you can join it underneath.
And what you're looking to do here
is see how long it needs to be.
So we have a ton of space down there
that we have to shorten up the same way
that we just did with the punch.
Now, if you're smart, unlike me,
you've got yourself a chain breaker.
Small, inexpensive tool, costs
somewhere around, I think, $20 to $30,
and that makes this a lot more exact.
Punches the rivet through the same way,
and maintains the integrity of the chain.
So we are probably gonna punch this apart.
And then, gonna have to repair it just a tad.
Make sure whatever link in the chain
you're punching apart is going to match there, the end.
So that you can put it back together.
I can just imagine the comments from all the bike heads,
and the mechanics right now that are losing their mind
saying, "get yourself a chain breaker Terran."
Well, sometimes, we gotta repair a chain
and we don't have a chain breaker near by.
(hammer)
And voila, good eight inches taken out of the chain.
So we've got the length of the chain now,
right around where we want it.
That's basically, it's just a tad too short.
But over here, we'll move the wheel forward
to be able to make up that space.
There we go, that gives us lots of slack to work with.
Right around there where they're almost touching.
And then in the chain package,
you're going to have one of those
links to bring it together.
That's what we took out right at the start.
One side of the link looks like this,
push it through one side,
push it through the other, locking thing, part.
And I think this one just needs to be pressed on.
There, so after struggling with that for quite
awhile, because it wasn't easy to link
that's open on one side.
I think we've got it done, I moved the wheel back
so it's nice and, not tight, but snug.
Basically right around here where there's a little
bit of give but it's not sloppy,
just kind of like this, so with your finger you can move it.
Here we go, not squeaky, and that is how
in just 37 simple steps in an hour,
you too, can have yourself a new fresh chain.
Hoo hoo it is so quiet and smooth.
I like it, oh, I'm gonna be flying
in the one mile bike ride to the pool.
Create a strava section, there you go traniacs,
you can definitely do this on your own.
I do, however, recommend getting a chain breaker.
Money well spent, especially if you're gonna be
doing this for awhile, you're gonna have to replace
a lot of chains, its probably one of the easiest
little bits of bike maintenance you can do
that is guaranteed to make you faster.
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Later, trainiacs.