Solved: Jumping chain, Appaloosa edition

[Eric Marth]

Hey friends — I recently had a frustrating issue with a skipping, slipping, jumping chain. It turned out to be a stiff link in a new chain I installed. But it took me a long time to get there. 

Back in April I planned to attend Gunk's Not Dead out in the Hudson River Valley. (Due to some medical issues I bailed out of the trip from New York City. All is well!) But before I left I overhauled my bike. 

It was loooong overdue. I had been running the same tires since I got the bike new in 2021. The RH endurance casing held up quite well. My Ortho bars were too wide. I was sick of the gray cable housing (not a fan of anything gray, tbh). My chain was stretched and my cassette was ready for replacement. 

So I did a quick refresh: 

• Bar swap: Removed Ortho Bars, installed Billies. Wow, I so much prefer the Billie bars. Kinda wish they made a "Big Billie" that was just a little bit wider but longer at the hooks and the grips. 
• All new shift and brake cables, wiped with a bit of Phil Wood Tenacious Oil. 
• All new shift and brake cable housing: Nissen / SimWorks 
• New tires: Gravel King 50mm
• New tubes
• Swapped the rear cassette for a fresh 9-speed 12-32
• New Shimano 9-speed chain 

Everything worked great for a few weeks. Then the chain started jumping. Pretty much constant chain skip, bad when riding at a relaxed pace. Worse when the chain was under load. 

On one ride the chain was clunking and thunking and making a racket and on a steep climb it broke! My first time breaking a chain. Fun walk home. 

I removed the rear wheel and made sure the cassette lock ring was tight. It was very tight. Made sure there weren't any issues with my olde Nexave T-400 rapid rise derailer. No kinks in the cables, no slippage at the shifter. 

Swapped the chain for another chain, the problem was worse! At the time, I didn't check the chain for stiff links. Still not sure what was wrong with the chain I broke. 

With that long Appaloosa wheel base I had to mate two chains when I replaced the old one. I didn't seat the pin correctly and that resulted in a stiff link. 

I tried adjusting it a few times with my chain breaker tool, to no avail. Perhaps I should have used one of my drift punches. I was pretty miffed by this point so I didn't put very much time into my attempt at fixing the chain. Mechanical malaise. 

I ordered one of the long 9-speed KMC "e-bike" chains like the ones Riv sells. Removed a few links to get it to the correct length, installed and no more skips. 

I wanted to share this experience so that others might successfully troubleshoot a jumping chain in the future. The last time I had an ongoing chain skip issue it was due to a loose cassette lock ring. 

Happy riding, everyone. 

Cheers!

Eric 

[Chris Lang]

Great advice!  Thanks for sharing. 

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[Patrick Moore]

I used to encounter this very frustrating experience all the time, even when, as I thought, I’d very conscientiously examined the chain for a stiff link. It was pure frustration that eventually led me to rotate the newly reinstalled chain backwards through my fingers, which would catch the stiff link when all other methods of examination failed to do so.

But that was decades ago. For the last 20 years or so I’ve been using masterlinks that avoid this problem, which I guess you could do even when splicing 2 chains together.

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Patrick Moore

Alburquerque, Nuevo Mexico, Etats Unis d'Amerique, Orbis Terrarum

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[Dan]

Hi Eric,

Nice to hear an update of your Appaloosa. Your build was one of those iconic Covid-era bikes that influenced me a lot. It's nice to hear where it is now!

How are you finding the 'narrow' 50mm tyres?

I had a similar stiff link issue with my Appaloosa when it was new. Symptoms for me included the chain falling off if I backpedalled when in a small rear cog, i.e. when I was going top speed. Scary stuff! Once addressed, however, it never happened again, thankfully. Glad to hear you resolved your issue too.

[Dorothy C]

Eric, I broke a chain on my Cheviot shortly after building it in 2019. Not only did it break the chain, but ripped the derailleur cage in half and twisted part of the chain's links 90 degrees to the rest of the chain. Luckily it happened on a quiet side street with no other traffic around. 

It was my first time building a bike, and I was using a 9 speed chain where I had reinserted a pin to lengthen it. I don't know if that exactly caused the issue, but I have since heard, and always followed the advice, to lengthen 9 speed chains (and presumably above, though I never use those) by adding a piece at least a few links long and joining it in with an additional quick link. That is so the quick links are not right next to each other. Then I adjust to the final length by shortening the complete end of the chain to fit.

I too had a lot of ghost shifting with the pin reinserted chain which cleared up with the new chain installation.

As to housings, I like the black Jagwire that Analog Cycles sell. I buy the 5mm shifter housing they sell  so the whole bike can use 5mm brass ferrules.