Vintage Middleweight Bicycle Chains & Sprockets

Video Transcript

"All middleweight cycles are going to have a chain guard, they all came with chain guards. This is a nice looking chain guard, again it's got the space age style you'd find on a middleweight cycle. It swoops back, up to a point, kind of reminiscent of the fins of the cars that were produced in the same era. Now, if you'll look at this chain ring, this is called the chain ring, it's huge, it's fifty two teeth. This greatly effects the gearing of the bicycle. It's a single speed bicycle, but a chain ring like this, gives you a gear ratio that is like you're in a higher gear. So, a bike like this going up hill was probably kind of hard, but on a flat or going down hill, the kid on this bike was probably the fastest kid around. The chain works just like a standard chain on todays cycles. It's a standard size, you can still buy this sized chain. You see it comes around to the back sprocket here, this is a twenty tooth sprocket. Again, the thing that really surprises me in looking at this particular middleweight is the gear ratios, it's geared very high. Another way to identify bicycles, sometimes you'll get a bicycle and there won't be any identifying marks on it, maybe somebody has spray painted it or whatever. You can look at this chain ring and there are data bases on the web that show different variations of chain rings, but you can determine the manufacturer of this bike, just based on this chain ring."