New Bike Gear

I’m another one of those periods again where some of my sporting gear is wearing out.  Most of that nice, quality bike stuff that I bought 16 years ago is slowly being replaced. Yesterday’s damage came to $150 at MEC.  I needed to get a new chain ($10), some new cool weather gloves ($60) and a new bike pump ($50).  The bike pump was strictly needed, I still have my old Silca pump.  The Silca continues to impress me - I’ve never even replaced the rubber gasket that clamps to the tube valve.  I just shove the the end onto the valve and pump away.  However, it is getting harder and harder to get a good seal with the Silca.  On top of that, I’m not every confident in the accuracy of the pressure gauge anymore.  The kicker is that new pumps have ends that automatically adapt between presta and schrader valves.  Since I’m often pumping my kids’ tires, this is a welcomed feature.

The chain was a different matter.  Last week I decided to replace the chain on my commuter bike. I measured the stretch to be 1/8", which typically means that the cog likely needs to be replaced too.  I was fine with that, since I wanted to try running a 20T cog on the back instead of an 18T.  My commuter bike uses the Shimano 8 spd Alfine internal hub, and using the 18T cog I almost never went into gear 7 or 8.  So I figured I would get better use with the 20 T.  Anyways, I went to a LBS (local bike store), Bikes on the Drive.  They sold me a BMX chain which they said would work fine on the Alfine.  On the back of the packaging the chain was listed as being good for BMX and single speed, so their recommendation seemed reasonable.  After using the new chain for a week though, I noticed some pretty big problems. I don’t actually know what exactly was happening, but every 3 minutes or so the chain would feel like it was skipping or catching on something.  A couple of times it really seemed to jam.  I looked into things a bit more and measured the chain - it was a 1/8" width chain.  A few searches on the internet suggested that 1/8" on the Alfine is too wide.  The Alfine needs a 3/32 chain.  That matched my observations - I thought there seemed to be a lot of play with the chain.

Long story shot: put a 3/32 chain on the Alfine.  I now have a SRAM PC-830 and I hopefully it will get the job done.