Pete, Harvey, All:
The common terms for the 1-3/16 bicycle chains more depended on where you
lived, and how old your mentor was.
Skip tooth, as many people thought the sprocket looked like it had every
other tooth knocked out.
Other terms: skip link, inch pitch, double link chain, then of course either
roller or block chain.
Some riders referred to the block chain as a racing chain.
The weight difference was always a factor, but the main difference was the
feel of the ride. When you feel the block chain click over the sprockets and
register that solid drive in your legs, you know it's fast. Roller chains
are smoother and quieter, but just don't have the snap. Riding a block chain
is one of those subtleties that have to be felt, It's an experience that you
won't forget. Like the whirr of the peloton coasting and it sounds like a
swarm of bees.
Riders liked the smoothness and gave up the response and snap for the
ability to git closer gear ratios and the convenience of changing ratios
without moving the wheel too much, and it was a fairly quick conversion
between about '54 and '59.
Ted Ernst
Palos Verdes Estates
CA
> From: "HM & SS Sachs" <sachs@erols.com>
> To: "Classic Rendezvous" <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>; "ternst" <
>
>> As part of getting it ready for Cirque, this morning I installed a NOS
>> Wipperman chain on the '38 Paramount, replacing the "modern" inch-pitch
>> roller chain (Thank you again, Ted ERnst, for digging deeply into your
>> reserves for the chain!).
>>
>> The roller chain looked bulkier as I was matching lengths, so I weighed
>> them. The roller chain is 28% heavier. For the length I needed, the
>> roller was 445 gm, almost a pound, and the block chain was 3.5 oz (98 gm)
>> lighter.
>>
>
> Harvey,
> Is inch pitch "skip link" chain the same as the roller chain you refer to?
> Just got introduced to this stuff through an off topic very old bike I
> picked up recently.
>
> Pete Geurds
> Douglassville, Pa