So I bought a new groupset for my bike and all exited at the prospect of actually being able to use more than 3 gears I set it all up in about 10 minutes without measuring up the chain and end up with it too long.

Now when on the granny ring i can oly use half the casette before it starts doubòing over on the mech.

It’ a new 10 speed sram 1051 chain and i can’t get the powerlink back open to shorten it, tried wrapping a gear wire round it and pulling till it hurts with gloves but no luck, any ideas/tricks?

just bought a pair of khs pliers from wiggle work fine on sram – under chain spares – need only the ones that open the chain – fantastic tool

9x out of 10 with sram links fine by hand its the 1 in 10

try squeezing in the side plates with pliers as you push the links together?
edit gently

I think the 10 SPDs links are single use only, so save yourself the hassle and get another link, split and join somewhere else on the chain.

apologies – 9speed etc always billed as single use but with sense can be reused if just setting up
as Scapegoat says 10speed are single use, not removable so don’t waste money on the pliers

interesting link here – ignore the headline somewhere in the post it shows how to use a chain tool to remove one – but then again probably easier just to split chain elsewhere

http://road.cc/content/news/6414-sram-recalls-10-speed-powerlock-chain-connector-links

New 10 speed powerlinks will be fine to undo and reuse. Ive done it many times without any problems.

yep seen plenty of people split and reuse the 10sp links, you just can’t get them by hand. The pliars would be a good addition for 9sp stuff to reduce the faffing.

Ditch the SRAM one. Buy a 6 pack of KMC missing links online cheap, and use them instead. And you’ll have some spares for a trailside repair or new chains later on.

Thanks to everyone, split the powerlock with a chain tool (cheers for the link antigee :-)) and will be at the LBS tomorrow for a new one, or a box of KMCs if they have them!

IME, a 6 pack of KMCs online was about the same as 2 bought separately…

YMMV, though,