Sale Bikes - Road Conditions - Shop News
Sale Bikes - Road Conditions - Shop News
Let's start with the latest bike we've put on sale!
Save $500 on all '105 11-speed Trek Domane SL 5 road bikes in stock, with the latest Gen 4 frame! Sale price $2999.99! This is the most-popular style of road bike Chain Reaction sells, with clearance for 38c tires (wider-tires = smoother ride and yes, lots of dirt road and gravel options around here where a 38c tire will be wonderful!) and very easy (low) gearing for the steep stuff. 34 tooth in the front, 34 in the back. And the Gen 4 frame is considerably lighter than the Gen 3.
For a complete list of road bikes on sale, click here.
Road Conditions- Last winter was really hard on our local roads, with many still damaged and being repaired. Stage Road, Old LaHonda, West Old LaHonda, Highways 9, 35, 84 & 236, Kings Mtn, Higgins, and Dirt Alpine. Click here for the details.
Shimano Ultegra & Dura-Ace 11-speed crank recall- These cranks are manufactured using multiple pieces that are bonded together, and sometimes the bonding fails, causing the crank to pull apart or crack. It's a real thing; we've seen something between 10 and 20 failures ourselves, over the past 10 years. Shimano asks that you bring in a bike with a suspect crank and, after verification that it falls within the date code range, you will be leaving your bike, hopefully for just 24-48 hours, and we will remove it from your bike, remove the chainrings from the crank, and carefully inspect for any signs of damage or delamination. In most cases we won't find anything and will reassemble and show you what you should be paying attention to down the road, since we can only tell you the crank looks good at the time we inspect it. It could still go bad later on. In the event we do find something, the crank is shipped to Shimano for further inspection and, if warranted, a new crank will be sent out to replace it. That process could go quickly (take as little as a week) or it could take longer, if Shimano doesn't have a replacement readily available.
We will perform this service, at no charge, regardless of brand or where your bike was purchased. Here's the info from Shimano, which will help you figure out if your crank is in need of inspection or not. If you need help figuring out if your crank is affected, take photos of the back side of each crank arm, showing the top 3 inches around the pedal hole, and send it to bikes@chainreaction.com and we'll be happy to assist you.
Shop News- (Repairs/The break-in/Staff addition) Whatever you need, we've got! The shortages during the pandemic are largely in the rear view mirror now. And, assuming we don't again get hit with Covid (which is definitely making a comeback), our backlog on bike repairs should continue to improve. Best of all, the doom and gloom stories about the bike industry crashing after then pandemic? We're not seeing that.
The break-in we had a few months ago wasn't fun to deal with though. You can see the story NBC did here; we also put one of the videos up on Facebook. Watching the videos showing 5 guys breaking into the shop and leaving with $50,000 worth of bikes was not easy, especially when one of them went right up to the camera and gave it the finger. Waking up to an alarm call at 4:30am and seeing that video... fortunately, they did catch two of them. The insurance company took care of our immediate losses, but the question is how much our insurance will be going up next year, or if they might even drop us. We got more than our 5 minutes of fame on the news when it happened, but we'd rather get it some other way!