Uh-oh

Keep your fingers crossed for me please. I'm not an especially adept kind of fellow when it comes to, well, much. Nonetheless, I'm foolish enough to give things a go and hope they come out right. Well, I'll do it when it's not my stuff anyway.

Kirby Girl's bicycle was in need of a new chain (we're very slovenly when it comes to changing chains and need a good slapping for it) and I thought I may as well order a chain and replace it myself. Of course, it's only replacing a chain. Even I couldn't possibly get that wrong, could I? One SRAM/Sedis/Sachs chain, from Geoffrey Butler Cycles, later and I discovered I could indeed bugger up even the most simple of processes. For starters, getting the old (filthy) chain off was tougher than I imagined. I remember splitting a link and taking a chain off last year being so much easier than it was with Kirby Girl's bike. After lots of lining up my little chainbreaker and a hell of an amount of force, the rivet eventually popped out to the extent I could take the offensive old chain apart and remove it from the bicycle.

At this point (not really knowing what I was doing) I thought lining the two chains up against one another would be a good idea. That way, I could take a few links off the new chain so they were of around the same length. I was a little confused at this juncture as the old chain and new chain didn't seem to match up completely link for link. Assuming this was from the old chain stretching a little, I rounded down a link with the new chain and (after losing a fight with the tensioning arm, or whatever the hell you call it) put it on Kirby Girl's bicycle. Spinning the pedal (she's missing a crank at the moment as she needs a replacement), everything seemed fine but changing gears wasn't quite what it should be.

I'm hopeful it's only a matter of a little derailleur adjustment here and there but that's not something I'm experienced in (other than screwing up and having to bring it into the shop anyway). It's something which should be simple enough for even me to be able to do but I reckon I'll have a go on some dodgy old bikes we hardly use before trying it on our main bicycles.

So, there finishes the overlong and drab tale of my chain replacing. Can someone please assure me I've done the right thing? If I haven't, eeek!