Chainlift offers an extra helping hand (and keeps hands clean) for home & pro mechanics alike. When it’s time to work on or clean your bike, or any other time you need to pop the rear wheel out, this will make life easier. The small US-made gadget folds your derailleur body back and lifts the chain away from the cassette, removing chain tension from the rear wheel so it’s easier to remove or reinstall the wheel.
Chainlift’s “extra hand” bike chain management tool
Developed by a product design & engineering company in South Florida, Chainlift is a special application bicycle tool created to take the mess & hassle out of dealing with your chain. Pulling the rear derailleur and chain away from the cassette, Chainlift removes chain tension from the rear wheel, simplifying thru-axle use and easing removal & reinstallation of the rear wheel. It also has the added benefit of keeping chain grease off your hands.
How does it work?
Three simple steps lift your chain away from the wheel, once you set it up for your derailleur by installing the correct mounting pin. Assorted pins are included for wide derailleur model compatibility.
First, slide the centering pin into the mounting bolt of the rear derailleur. Next, rotate the entire Chainlift clockwise to push the derailleur body back, and fold the front arm up to lock the rubber stop against the chainstay. Finally, loop/rotate the hook under the chain, then when you rotate the top half of the Chainlift back counterclockwise, it lifts the chain completely away from the cassette. Ta daaaa.
The entire process works best when you start with the chain shifted into the smallest chainring up front and to the middle of the cassette (unlike shifting to the smallest/hardest cog in the back, as we normally do to ease wheel removal.)
But why?
Surely, you don’t really need the Chainlift. We’ve all been taking wheels out for a long time, right?
But for anyone who takes their rear wheel out regularly – whether to swap race & training wheels, to mount the bike to an indoor trainer, or just to transport it in the trunk of your car – Chainlift will make life easier once you get the hang of it. And greasy fingers should be a thing of the past.
But wait, there’s more…
An additional bonus, disengaging the cassette allows you to spin the rear wheel silently, making alignment of a noisy rear brake rotor a simple task. Another is that with the wheel out, but the chain still taut and the derailleur extended, it’ll be a lot easier to get in and clean some of those often neglected nooks & crannies inside the rear triangle… and to clean those grimy pulley wheels!
Chainlift pricing & availability
Chainlift is available now direct-to-consumer for $79, with free US shipping. That price includes the engineered plastic Chainlift tool itself, with the six different stainless steel insert pins (stored inside the gray cap) to make it work with most modern Shimano & SRAM rear derailleurs. Campagnolo derailleurs are not compatible, but Chainlift says they are working on an all-new Campy version too.
The Made in the USA Chainlift is built tough to last, and comes with a lifetime warranty against failure in normal operation. What do you think? Would you use this?
