Am I risking permanent damage by runninng the stock chain?

Wow.... never seen a kit that comes with a 36T sprocket, there is only one drive sprocket size for the china 2 stroke engines which im assuming you have, in my experience, the 36T sprocket on a 26" bike should give you a fairly comfortable ride at 28-30mph without the vibes being to bad.

there are folks here that will disagree, but I find that most any chain is OK if installed right

I ran the stock el cheapo chain for a while, until I had to keep fixing it.
Then I bought a Bell chain, that ran well until yesterday, went KA-BOOM.

Only had to fix the Bell chain once in 225+ mi.

I use the stock chains and never had a problem. Except once. Forgot the dang clip on the master link.

Laughed at myself all the way home.

I dunno if it is that I am cheap or lazy (read both) but seldom upgrade anything on a kit build.

I concur with the others... Stock chains are fine as long as you install the sprocket (& engine) correctly.

I've built hundreds of bikes using the stock chains, & I've had very few problems with them.

I had a stock chain get a stiff link pretty quickly after using it. Could've been that it wasn't lubed well enough, or that I had the sprocket misaligned at the time. I replaced it with a $10 #41 chain from a tractor supply store, and that's been running well for 2000+ miles.

HI,

Stock is chain is fine but if you need more clearance due to wide tires I have heard of some folks using quality BMX chain.

Andrew

I use high quality HD KMC bmx chain. Its great! But I have also used the kit chain a number of builds without too many worries. After they do their primary stretching they are pretty strong.

Moto said:

I use high quality HD KMC bmx chain. Its great! But I have also used the kit chain a number of builds without too many worries. After they do their primary stretching they are pretty strong.

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I agree, only issue I ever had with stock china chain was one that I ordered from a vendor here on the forum, it was advertised as a Heavy Duty 415 chain, needing an extra I ordered it, to my surprise when I gor it it was undoubtedly the sorriest and junkiest made 415 chain I had ever seen..........! Problem was that it was so loose it would almost bend the same in any direction and the link rollers were the width of the roller on a 410 chain but this was a 3/16" wide chain, I guess I could have just sent it back but figured I'd just end up with another one just like it, the vendor I got it from is a very good fella and I know he would have made it right but for $12 I wasn't gonna put either us through the hassle and just threw it in the lesson learnt pile and bought a KMC 415HD Chain for $6 bucks more and was done with it, my oldest bike still has the kit chain on it and its been going for over 2000miles now, it has stretched quite a bit over this time but still looks pretty good.

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