On Thursday, September 7, 2017 at 8:26:26 AM UTC-7, wrote:
On Wednesday, September 6, 2017 at 5:25:33 PM UTC-7, Doug Landau wrote:
On Wednesday, September 6, 2017 at 1:29:59 PM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-08-28 15:59, AMuzi wrote:
On 8/28/2017 4:28 PM, wrote:
On Monday, August 28, 2017 at 1:59:20 PM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-08-28 13:43, sms wrote:
I replaced the chain that I broke on Saturday with one I had in my
garage that I must have purchased five to ten years ago.

It has a connecting link and it says "Taya" on it. It's for 6,7,8
gearing. It seems okay, but I think that this is the first time I've
used a chain with a connecting link since childhood. I looked up Taya
and it's a big Taiwanese chain manufacturer.


I still have a Sachs-Sedis 7-speed chain on my road bike which I bought
from a friend as NOS, for $6 which was the old sticker price (the
sticker had already turned brownish). No link, mounted with hammer and
anvil as usual. To my utter amazement it doesn't show any measurable
stretch after over 2000mi and sometimes I really put the coals on
because of our hills. Even the old Wippermann chains could not rival
that. I am very religious about chain cleaning and lube though.

The old 5-6-7 speed Sachs chains wore out three days after the bike
was junked.


The Sedis (later Sachs-Sedis) material and Delta hardening process was
not only exceptional but unsurpassed down to today except for possibly
Record chains. That ended with SRAM.


Why is that? In the automotive world such an advance in technology is
kept and further developed, not rescinded and chucked back into the dust
bin. Well, usually.

Simple - the motor runs quieter, and consumers buy it more readily. Hence we saw plastic teeth on timing gears.

In this case, the non-hardened chains make less noise, 'cuz the edges go 'ting' less, and consumers perceive this as better shifting. ;-)

Doug, some woman came around the corner, dropped her water bottle (so she says while clutching her smartphone to her breast) fished around for it and ran into the back of my parked car turning it into a pile of scrape metal and plastic. Looking for replacements I find 5 year old cars with 200,000 miles on the original motors and not only said to be running smoothly but still getting good mileage. That isn't being done with plastic gears. I picked up a 2007 with 50,000 miles on it and expect it to last my lifetime with only normal maintenance.

I'm talking about the automotive scene in the 1970s, Tom.