I got a good price on a chain and sprockets, and figured i'd fit them tonight. What I thought was going to be a 20 minute job took all night, and I still haven't finished.
First off, took the back wheel off and put the rear sprocket on. Too easy... waaaaay too easy. The calm before the storm!
Got the angle grinder out and cut the old chain off. 1 x old chain in the bin.
Remove the front sprocket cover, went to take the front sprocket off and... holy shit, that's a BIG NUT!!! OK, umm... vice grips? Nope. Hmm.. OK. A quick message to Mark and he tells me his dad has a socket that should do the trick. He lives about 2 minutes away so around I go.
I pick up the mammoth socket, get it home and... shit, the nut just wont budge! Who the hell put this on? The Hulk??
After a considerable amount of time I give up. I'll leave the old one on until I can find someone with a rattle gun. Besides, Mario tells me that the chain is supposed to stay on whilst trying to remove the nut. I doubt that would have made any difference with this sucker...
Right, timefor the new chain. Take the new one out of the packet, wrap it around the sprockets, work out which one I need to cut it down to. Grab the angle grinder (at 9:30 in the evening... sorry neighbours!) and cut away. Grind the pins down (no, I don't have a chain tool) and pop them out.
Grab the new link piece, put it in, and... For those that don't know, one side of the link has 2 rods (the rollers) attached to it. There is a flat plate that snicks over the rods at the other end and the plate gets pushed on until two little groves are showing for the circlip to clip onto.
The plate will not go onto the rods far enough for the groove to show. I try pliers, vice grips, a hammer and screwdriver. The bastard plate just will not go on.
After rooting around trying to make it fit I decide to cut a plate off of the excess links I had cut off earlier. Out with the angle grinder again, cut the plate off, and what do you know, it fits perfectly. The holes in the freakin plate that came with the link piece aren't big enough. No amount of reasonable force was ever going to get it on properly. *sigh*
OK, so, now that I have a piece that fits, I put it together. Out with the circlip and... FARK!!! The circlip WILL NOT go on. This is starting to become a joke. In the end I force the bastard on with a pair of pliers, a hammer and two screwdrivers. In the process I squeeze a small amount of skin on my finger in between the pliers, jump around and yell and swear alot. Two blood blisters coming right up.
Finally the bike is back together and I realise I should have cut one more link out of the chain. For fucks sake! Anyway, it's staying the way it is until it gets serviced next weekend.
Not a job I will bother trying again...
