Shiny New Sram Chain

A. Dillon came by again today, to make sure I knew how to size a chain for my bicycle. It's different from the 9 speed on my Giant OCR2, in fact. For one, it unfortunately does not come with a link that remains removeable - once locked, it's locked for good. (I'd been really hoping for that to avoid having to use the chain tool. Oh well)

So, first break off the old chain. Chains should be broken as few times as possible because each time wears it down. Shimano chains come with one different looking link that you can push through and break off the end of to the correct size for warranty issues: if some other part of the chain breaks, then the factory messed up, but if it's that one different chain link, you're on your own.

To size the new chain, wrap it around the 2 largest gears on the bike, and then add 2 links (male and female). The power link is a male link, meaning it fits over 2 female ones. Thread the chain through the pulleys in the derailleur properly, put on the powerlink. On this one, I actually had to pedal to get the link to close.

Derailleurs, once again: since the limits were changed in order to prevent myself from mangling my derailleur, hub, wheel, everything (thank you, Vesselin), we changed that back. To review: line up the outermost (smallest) gear with the exterior female link on the pulley on the derailleur. This is way easier to show using a simple diagram - maybe this is why I spoke so late as a child.

Also: I used a Sram chain rather than Shimano 105 because for some odd reason, my bike came with a Sram cassette. Why would you mix a Sram cassette with Shimano 105 components? Financial reasons? I would have thought that keeping everything in the same group would be better since they're designed to go together. Anyways, on a Sram cassette, I heard it's better to have a Sram chain (even with other Shimano parts) so I'm giving it a try.