How to Replace a Bike's Chain Rings

Video Transcript

"Hi this is Jeff with The Two Wheeler Dealer. Today I'm going to show you how to replace your chain rings. First step is to remove the crank set from your bike. This requires a special tool which if you don't have this tool you need to take it in to your local bike shop and have them remove it for you. Once you get it to this point where it's off of the bike you can then proceed with removing the chain rings. Most chain rings are held together with chain ring bolts. There's either four or five of them. They usually, typically have a 5 millimeter or a 6 millimeter allen screw in them. So you just need an allen wrench to remove them. Start with, on this particular case, the triple. You can start with the inner ring. I'm just going to loosen these screws all the way around the outside. Now that you have your inner ring removed you can proceed with removing the outer and the middle rings which are held together with a two sided bolt. Usually you can get them off with just one side. Same process. Just loosen them. And on these ones you have to hold the back of them to unscrew the two pieces. And they'll come apart in two halves. Now that you have all of those out both rings should be free from the spider and you can then replace whichever ring needs to be replaced. To reinstall them it's basically the opposite of the uninstallation. However you do have to make sure the rings are lined up in the proper orientation to their location on the spider. The outer ring will usually have a peg which goes behind the crank arm. And the middle ring will typically have a little tab as well which goes behind the crank arm. And the middle ring is going to be kind of one sided. It should be labeled. The labeling should face towards the inside. And you can see on this particular one there's a little tab right there next to the label. So that will go behind the crank arm as well. Then take the two halves. You want to apply grease. Which these particular ones are already greased but definitely make sure you grease the threads, and proceed to torque them back down. You begin replacing the bolts, torque the bolts down to the proper torque spec and at that point you can replace the crank back on you bike. You should be ready to run. And that's how you replace your chain rings."