Broken chain link

My £60 Trek Antelope wasn't much loved by its previous owner, so I've learnt to replace gear cables which have snapped within the shifters housing, know what it feels like when a crank arm is about to fall off and cleaned a lot of gunk off the cogs which look suspiciously cracked and worn.

No surprises then when the chain gave in earlier this month, though it was only one side of a link, which was somewhat of a blessing as it took a couple of days of commuting with my pedal-stroke feeling a bit 'weird' before I had a closer look and saw the link sticking out like a broken arm.

Fast forward to mid-November and with a handy Protools CT-5 chaintool purchased and a Sunday morning spare, we attempted a repair job, with this video serving as encouragement that the task ahead would be a piece of cake.

In reality the old pins really didn't want to budge but with a bit of brute force (Justin) and encouragement (me) we pulled off the broken bits of chain and reattached the slightly shorter chain, even having time to read the instructions for our new tool which showed how to loosen the chain links after reattaching.

Clever eh, and we didn't even leave grease on the living room floor.