Half Link Chain.

[James Shields]

Hi guys, iv not long back gone stock but i sidehop towards the tensioner as im left foot foreward.

The issue im having is that, i really don't want to bend my 74 kingz tensioner and i heard off a friend, that you can run a half link chain on a stock,

without having to run a tensioner. Can anybody shed some light on this situation for me please ?

thanks james.

[Matthew_Gibson]

Search pal!

There bad news! You MAY get away with out a tensioner though, depends on the chain stay length

[N.Wood]

You might get away with it, yeah.

HOWEVER half link chains have been universally proven to be shit.

[sstein]

You might get away with it, yeah.

HOWEVER half link chains have been universally proven to be shit.

I thought that but I found that there are a couple of good ones. KMC make a really nice strong one that is about £23. Bad news is that the likelihood is you will still need a tensioner.

[Mikee]

I found one really good (can't remember what it is) i'm still running it now and have been for a while and it is still fine. Never snapped once. But it is unlikley that you can run it without a tensioner like has been said.

[Mark W]

I thought that but I found that there are a couple of good ones. KMC make a really nice strong one that is about £23. Bad news is that the likelihood is you will still need a tensioner.

The KMC "Pintle" is woefully bad. We're talking Major League Shit.

If you need to use a half-link to get your tension sorted, then just use one, rather than a whole chain full of 'em. Buy a good chain, then just add one Shadow Conspiracy Interlock V2 half-link and keep an eye on it.

[sstein]

The KMC "Pintle" is woefully bad. We're talking Major League Shit.

If you need to use a half-link to get your tension sorted, then just use one, rather than a whole chain full of 'em. Buy a good chain, then just add one Shadow Conspiracy Interlock V2 half-link and keep an eye on it.

That is what I do but it makes no real difference.

[Mark W]

Then a whole chain of them won't - think about it; if you ran... say... 100 'normal' links, that's basically 200 half-links. If you needed 100 1/2 links, that'd be 100 links and a half link. If you ran that in half-link form, it'd just be 201 half-links, but it wouldn't make any difference to the length. Two halves make a whole, and all that jazz. So if one half-link doesn't change it, a whole chain of them won't.

[tris]

Half link chains are ace for BMX. They are strucurally weak(for constant pedal kicks that are used in trials) but for BMX you don't use excesive stress and constant pedal strokes so they're fine.

Could'nt you try and invert the kingz tensioner to somehow run it upside down????

[Mark W]

Seen 'nuff of them snap for BMX too. If you think about it, every time you turn out of going fakie you're using your chain (Generally), and doing brakeless tyre-taps and stuff like that are gonna cane it too. Small sprockets don't help, either. 9t is pretty brutal, and even 8t for some!

[sstein]

Then a whole chain of them won't - think about it; if you ran... say... 100 'normal' links, that's basically 200 half-links. If you needed 100 1/2 links, that'd be 100 links and a half link. If you ran that in half-link form, it'd just be 201 half-links, but it wouldn't make any difference to the length. Two halves make a whole, and all that jazz. So if one half-link doesn't change it, a whole chain of them won't.

Didn't mean that one using one half link won't make a difference. What I meant was that using a half link as opposed to all half links doesn't make a difference. The chain is only as strong as the weakest link after all.

[Mark W]

Yeah, but the thing with all half-link chains I've ever used is that the links themselves are fairly shitty. They tend to have a lot of slop, like the links can move sideways pretty easily 'cos the pins, for some reason, tend to be slightly too wide on half-link chains like the Shadow one. If you've got just the one half-link in a normal, it's held in place fairly well by the rest of the links so it's less likely to work itself dead. If you've got just one weak link in there too, you can keep an eye on it better and see if it starts to develop cracks (like mine did), rather than having to look at a whole chain full of them.

[Anton]

You might get away with it, yeah.

HOWEVER half link chains have been universally proven to be shit.

Ive run a half link chain for the past 2 years and have no problems with it! Cant remember the brand but if your interested ill go find the tin and let you know (cost me about £15)

[Matthew_Gibson]

You need to sort that out, "normal" chains SHOULD be changed every 6-8 months just to be safe.

[Dan6061]

You need to sort that out, "normal" chains SHOULD be changed every 6-8 months just to be safe.

Then when you change the chain, you chould change all the cogs too, as they all wear together. Getting a new chain on old cogs will just wear it out quicker than normal, as it's trying to bed itself into old worn cogs.

Saying that, my chain is made up of 3 KMC Kools, Profile cog came with the hub 2nd hand 2 years ago? And the front cog is 2years old too..

[spartan]

wait if you've got a 74kingz then dont u just replace the broken spring with like a 1 dollar (.5 euro) hacksaw blade and your back in business.

Forgive me if im wrong but i thought that was the idea of the kingz.

[Mark W]

Then when you change the chain, you chould change all the cogs too, as they all wear together.

Having saaaaaid that, with trials, it seems like a lot of people run FFW so it's not really such an issue, plus if you're changing your chain regularly, the chain won't have stretched much to wear the sprockets either way.