will KMC Kool Knight Chain fit on regular bicycle sprockets?

I want to turn my regular sprockets into a sigle speed drive, for use with the cyclone 3000.

what BMX chain can I use that would be stronger than regular bicycle chain?

will KMC Kool Knight Chain fit on regular bicycle sprockets?

Or do I have to change the front and rear sprockets to fit a larger chain?


I have 8speed sprockets on my bike now. so I am not worried about the chain not fitting width wize.

KMC Kool Knight is half link chain, which is weaker than normal roller chain. Theirs is made for bashing and grinding on, which I hope you don't have in mind.

If you're only using regular 8-speed sprockets, then there's no advantage to using some special chunky chain. If you're abusing the sprockets, they'll wear quickly, and wear the chain to match. I recommend KMC X8.93 if you use a derailleur, KMC Z510HX for single speed.

If you use the Z510HX, you can switch from nominally 3/32" sprockets to nominally 1/8", which offers better longevity all else equal.

Far more important that trying to find a mythical stronger chain would be to use the largest sprockets-- highest tooth count-- that will fit your bike and give you the ratio you want. Larger sprockets mean lower chain force, more teeth engaged at a time, smaller angles of articulation.

I have the Kool knight chain on my bmx. Beast of a chain. I broke four of the strongest single speed chains in a row till I got the Kool knight. Pros, extremely stong, more adjustable than regular chain so great on a single speed bike without derailer, perfect for small sprockets, and protects chainring. Cons heavy I guess.

just listen to chalo he knows everything

If half link chain was even as good as, let alone better than, normal roller chain, industry would use it. They don't. They only care about results, not fashion.

I can tell you four $10 chains will outlast your $40 chain by at least 4X and probably more. That's decades of bike shop experience, not theory.

Chalo said:

If half link chain was even as good as, let alone better than, normal roller chain, industry would use it. They don't. They only care about results, not fashion.

I can tell you four $10 chains will outlast your $40 chain by at least 4X and probably more. That's decades of bike shop experience, not theory.

Click to expand...

Micro drives have way more leverage and torque than regular bikes. I have snapped the best single speed chains from kmx, sram, and wippermann. I haven't snapped the Kool knight. I always break them in the middle of the plate. My guess is the L shape link is much stronger than regular link.

maydaverave said:

Micro drives have way more leverage and torque than regular bikes. I have snapped the best single speed chains from kmx, sram, and wippermann.

Click to expand...

That's one of a few reasons that it's better to run 53/19 or 44/16 to get the same ratio as 25/9. Less friction, less noise and vibration, and dramatically longer lifespan are others.

make sure chalo measures everything for you before you ride your bike.

I think that the 32 front and 34 rear would give me low enough gearing. but as they will wear faster

I was thinking about using a much larger sprocket in the rear. so I can use the 44 sprocket on the front.

Has any one bolted a 52 chainring to a 34 in the rear?

I am thinking that I do not need a deraieur in the rear....do they make a single speed cassette that will fit onto an mtb bub?

Conversion Kit Fixie Bike Single Speed Shimano Adaptor....but how large of a sprocket could it hold?

To use single speed on a cassette, just take off all but the one sprocket you want, and substitute spacers for the rest of the stack. It's important to line up the rear sprocket with the chainring if you don't have a derailleur to reconcile them.

Single rear cassette sprocket are available in sizes up to 50T. Or you can plunder one from a cassette.

http://www.jensonusa.com/Oneup-Components-X-Cog-Cassette-Expander-Green-44T

quantumcloud509 said:

OP, I have had nothing but good experience in 4 season riding daily with that chain on a mid drive

Click to expand...

Have you ever even measured it for elongation?

let chalo touch YOUR chain

A worn out chain can look like new. A worn out chain also wrecks your chainring and sprockets. I asked you a simple question: Have you checked your chain for elongation?

I'll add another one: Of the chains you broke in the past, did you use a master link or did you rivet them back together?

bicycles have chains on them

OK I am ready to try one as soon as I can figure out what to do about sprockets. looks like I can't put that through the derailleur. And those large sprockets for single speed are way over priced.

I gotta find an old steel cassette with some thing large on it. or maybe I can find a sprocket made for ebikes that I can force onto the old cassette? (even if it will drive me nuts.)

But I am still not understanding what the chainrings are on the kit that should be here very soon.

BMX sprockets for chainrings:
"Sunlite 1-piece Chainring, 1/2" x 3/32", 48T, Steel Chrome"

has anyone custom fit one of these to a cassette, not likely.

Wolf Tooth Components Giant Cog for SRAM
$84.95 I may as well just use the sprocket from the cheap cassette I have.

Hugh-Jassman said:

I gotta find an old steel cassette with some thing large on it.

Click to expand...

34t is very easy to find, cheap to buy, and readily salvaged in good condition. 36t and 40t a little less so, but still cheap and easy. For instance this.

There is an issue with big steel cassette sprockets that might make you reevaluate whether $80-100 bucks for an aftermarket aluminum sprocket is prohibitive. Steel cassette sprockets are only 1.8mm wide, give or take, so whatever torque you put into the hub must pass through only that much width of spline. It chews things up (notches the splines) as sprockets get bigger, which is why some of them are mounted on a wider aluminum carrier and others (like Wolf Tooth) are made from aluminum and tapered to a thicker base at the splines. This problem is only going to be more significant with the addition of motor power.

I think if you can find a way to have the Shimano cassette spline cut into the center of a BMX chainwheel, you should do that. BMX chainwheels are typically made for 1/8" chains, and are available up to 10mm thick at the center hole. The hard part is going to be finding somebody who has the very expensive single-purpose cutting tool (spline broach) that allows a machinist to put the correct splines in a round hole. Since you're in the Seattle area, I wouldn't rule it out, though.

IIRC, Thud had been able to get this done back when a number of builders were using dual chains to the rear wheel, to broach single-speed freewheels to go on a splined cassette hub.

EDIT: this is one thread I was thinking of; looks like it might've been Liveforphysics getting these done by his dad:
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=37640&p=548215&hilit=spline*+broach*#p548215


Some other threads that discuss it
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/search.php?keywords=spline*+broach*&terms=all&author=thud&sc=1&sf=all&sr=posts&sk=t&sd=d&st=0&ch=300&t=0&submit=Search

I am still trying to understand which chain to use......on my sprocket. the bmx sprockets will not fit my bike.

Howabout these chains?? please tell me if any of them will work? or what is ghere anything to be done for a stronger chain....I still have not found any bicyel sprocket that are 1/8" id. and if I did they maynot fit my bicycle. and I have to work with the sprockets that come with the cyclone kit.

I do not need to shift the rear,maybe the front to have two speeds.

1/8" chain runs just fine on 3/32" sprockets, as long as you're not asking it to run on a multi-speed cluster. Even so-called 1/8" sprockets are usually 1/10" in thickness

You're barking up the wrong tree. Roller chains are mature technology. There aren't any major improvements to be had over the plain old normal kind. It's normal because it's been refined and iterated for many generations and determined to be best that way. About the only relevant choice you have is between bushingless chain (today's default, easy to lubricate and tolerant of poor chainline), or the older bushing type chain (harder to keep lubricated but longer wearing).

If you want your single speed chain drive to be reliable, just observe these three rules:

1. Use the largest sprockets you can to get the ratio you want. This is the most important thing. It reduces tension and link articulation in your chain.

2. Use a master link or a quick link when you rejoin your chain; do not rivet it back together after breaking it. Every time a rivet is pushed in or out of a chain sideplate, it reams the hole a little wider/looser. By using a snap link, you can dispose of the chain link that has been damaged by having the pin pushed through.

3. Use a chain checker occasionally to monitor your chain's elongation due to wear. If you swap to a new chain when the old one reaches 0.5% longer than its new measurement, your sprockets will stay healthy for a long time, and that helps keep the chain healthy in turn.

You do not need a special chain if you follow the above listed practices. It's painless to swap in a new chain whenever you need one if it's cheap to replace. If you get some silly-expensive chain like Wippermann, you'll be tempted to squeeze the maximum life out of it, and you'll wear out your chainring and rear sprocket as you do so. A worn and elongated chain that fails to mesh properly on its sprockets is much more likely to break than a cheap but reputable chain in decent condition.

I ran some BMX half link chain for a while and it worked fine. Super heavy stuff.

https://www.amazon.com/KMC-HL710L-Half-Link-Chain/dp/B003UPZF7A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1523798570&sr=8-1&keywords=bmx+half+link

Well I am convinced that I should just buy a spool of cheap chain and accelerate slowly to keep it from snapping. And change the chain every five hundred miles or so. Unless someone can show me with several photos how they set up the kool knight chain for their mid drive.

I would like to use the Kool Knight but I can't use a spring type tensioner on it,right?? Maybe if I build another frame with a bolt tensioner I could use it. (my next cycle-truck will be much stronger even if does take years)

I may have another way to turn a BMX chainring into a cassette sprocket, hand filing is not as hard as it seems in the machine age. I would be willing to spend many hours hand filing one to make it fit, but I need to know how large the center hole is. And yes tapering the sprockets 'just-so' seems daunting, but to me it would still be better than spending about one hundred dollars on a fancy machine made aluminum disposable device.

quantumcloud509 said:

I have had nothing but good experience in 4 season riding daily with that chain on a mid drive just like you intend to do and it never slipped off, or broken, unlike the industry standard everyone else is told to use which I had to replace links on constantly and replaced whole chain multiple times a year. KMC Kool Knight is a really good chain for middrive.

Click to expand...

OK I understand this part well, even if I have had success reusing pins on my slow non motorized bike.

Chalo said:

If you want your single speed chain drive to be reliable, just observe these three rules:

1. Use the largest sprockets you can to get the ratio you want. This is the most important thing. It reduces tension and link articulation in your chain.

2. Use a master link or a quick link when you rejoin your chain; do not rivet it back together after breaking it. Every time a rivet is pushed in or out of a chain sideplate, it reams the hole a little wider/looser. By using a snap link, you can dispose of the chain link that has been damaged by having the pin pushed through.

3. Use a chain checker occasionally to monitor your chain's elongation due to wear. If you swap to a new chain when the old one reaches 0.5% longer than its new measurement, your sprockets will stay healthy for a long time, and that helps keep the chain healthy in turn.

You do not need a special chain if you follow the above listed practices. It's painless to swap in a new chain whenever you need one if it's cheap to replace. If you get some silly-expensive chain like Wippermann, you'll be tempted to squeeze the maximum life out of it, and you'll wear out your chainring and rear sprocket as you do so. A worn and elongated chain that fails to mesh properly on its sprockets is much more likely to break than a cheap but reputable chain in decent condition.

Click to expand...

do these also push up?

My real life input is useless, chalo has lots of theories you can read about in his book.

I was working on a basket case of a bike within the last couple of days, and it was equipped with a half link chain. I was reminded of one distinction of half link chains: all of them have full bushings. So they do have the same advantages and disadvantages as traditional bushing chains, just with less structural integrity due to their bent sideplates.

In a bushing type roller chain, which is the old/industrially standard kind, the inner sideplates are held together with small tubes (bushings), and the chain pins run inside these tubes. That gives a chain the maximum possible load bearing surface, which is good.

Such chains have been superseded by bushingless chains for most bicycle applications. These have inner sideplates that are formed with protuberances on them that serve the same function as tubular bushings. They have less load bearing area than traditional tube bushings, but they allow lubricant to flood the entire chain from wherever it's applied, and they allow the chain to flex sideways much more freely than traditional bushings do.

Bottom line is, bushing chains (like Kool Knight and other half link chains, along with industrial style roller chains) tend to have longer wear lives, but are trickier to lubricate, more likely to develop stiff links, and unsuitable for use with derailleurs or with poor chain alignment. You don't have to use half link chain to get full bushings, but that's one way to get them.