FlanderFlop's Full Review: Park CC-2 Chain Checker
Background
Before I review this tool I thought I'd give a little background on what it is for. If you already know, skip this section. You may have heard people talk about chain "stretch" but a more apt term is chain wear. As a chain gets older it will actually get longer. This is because the friction between the links eventually wears away at the metal and makes each individual connection a little looser which will in effect lengthen the chain. So who cares? The problem is that if you let your chain "stretch" too much it will cause the teeth on your cogs to reshape themselves to fit the chain which is fine until you put on a new chain. When you put a new chain on worn cogs the whole system stops working and you have to replace the whole drive train. Because of this it is typically easier and less expensive to periodically change your chain before it causes this abnormal wear on your cogs. How do you know when it it time to change your chain? Well you use a chain checker.
The Park CC-2
There are a number of tools out on the market which are used to measure the wear on a chain. While they all have a slightly different way of doing it, they basically all just measure the length of a section of chain and determine how far off that length is from the length of that number of links in a new chain. I have friends that actually just measure a set of links with a ruler and then use some formula to calculate chain wear, but this is a pain and prone to error.
The CC-2 is much simpler. This tool is basically just two pins that insert in the gaps between links. You can then move one pin on a little swingarm that gives a reading of the percentage of chain wear. The process takes about two seconds and you know roughly how much longer you have on the chain.
Footnote: I would actually change the chain before the chainchecker tells you to. If you change the chain to early, no harm done, but if you let it go even a little too long you are out your cassette at a mimimum and possibly some chain rings.
Problems
As of yet I have not had any problems with this tool, but there is a warning that if you are too aggressive with pushing the pins apart, you can actually bend the pins. Once the pins are bent their checker will no longer read accurately and you will need a new one. For similar reasons this one of the few tools that I own that doesn't just get tossed into the toolbox. It has its own place on a shelf so it wont get bent accidentally.
All in all this is an easy to use tool that will pay for itself quickly if used properly and regularly.
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