Broke my favorite chain whip last Tuesday and honestly it was kind of my fault

I was trying to get a stuck lockring off a fixed gear hub (a Phil Wood, if you're curious) and I got impatient. Instead of grabbing a breaker bar like a sane person, I just kept leaning harder on the chain whip until the handle snapped right off at the weld. I know everyone says to use the proper tool for the job, but I figured with 15 years of experience I could muscle it. Turns out I was wrong (obviously). I ended up having to drill the lockring out, which took like 2 hours and ruined a perfectly good hub shell. Has anyone else ever had a tool fail in a dumb way like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

clairepark1mo ago

Your Phil Wood hub? That's rough but honestly you're making it sound like a bigger deal than it is. Chain whips break all the time if you lean on them wrong, especially the cheaper ones. I've snapped two myself and just ordered a new one the same day. Drilling out a lockring is annoying but it's not the end of the world. You could have saved the hub if you'd tapped the broken pieces out instead of drilling through everything. Fifteen years in the game means you should have known better than to brute force it.

jana_davis901mo ago

So @clairepark, are you seriously saying you've never had a lockring weld itself to a hub body from aluminum galling, or do you just fix those with a prayer and a hammer too?