Sprocket center and premature chain wear

Well the stock chain has finally given up. No matter how much lube and chain tensioning I have performed in the last few thousand miles the chain has reached the point where it is stretched beyond what can be adjusted and is full of stiff links.

I have just under 12 thousand miles on the bike. I anticipated this and ordered a chain and sprocket set from sprocketcenter.com and got the did vx2 chain and rivet master link in gold color a while back. Well first item shipped was a standard steel chain and not the gold color ordered. After emailing them and explaining the wrong item, a replacement was sent in the correct gold color.

Pretty sharp looking I might add.

Well after having the chain jump off the rear sprocket the other night, I limped it home and put her away. After determining that no more tensioning could be done and all the stiff links I took Saturday off at a loss of about $450 overtime wages and started to disassemble the bike to get to the sprockets and chain. Well surprise, surprise as I swap out the sprockets easily enough and put the new chain on, I have the adjusters all the way in to the point the jam nuts are not even on and trying to align the rear wheel I notice that its getting very difficult to adjust the tensioners, when I look at the chain with the bike now sitting on it side stand, there is absolutely no slack whatsoever.

Not good!

So I have sent another set of emails to sprocket center and see if they can possibly overnight a THIRD correct chain in the configuration that I ordered and I will have to break the new chains master rivet link and start over again.

I hate doing things more than once, and in this instance I believe that sprocket centers aim for superfast shipping has led to these oversights.

I will post an update when and if this issue is resolved. As for now I will have to drive the trailblazer which will add an extra two hours of cummute time and 5x's the fuel cost to about $60 per day for my 140 mile daily commute which will probably only give me about 1.5-2 hours of time to sleep until I can get the correct chain on. Hopefully only a day or two until its fixed.

Not a happy camper right now!

Well how about that! Less than an hour after emailing sprocket center I received a personal phone call from them after he was looking through his emails. He said tomorrow he will overnight a new chain the correct size and include another rivet type link and I should receive it Tuesday. Hopefully third times a charm and all will be made correct. I don't know how often they send out incorrect orders, but it really shows what a company is made of to try and correct their mistakes quickly and make sure the customer is aware of what is going on during the process.

it almost sounds like there are too many links in the chain. I remember being very concerned about ordering the correct # of links for the DID VX2 gold chain.... same as yours. I confess I do not now remember the correct # of links for the NC700x.
I did the riveting myself, and it's been worry free ever since.

The stock chain gave me about 16K miles before the links started "kinking" and not straightening themselves out easily as they travel around the sprokets. I'm hoping for at least the same 16K miles out of the DID VX2.