Feedback Sports Chain Keeper

The FeedBack Sports Chain Keeper is an expensive, beautifully made tool designed for a single purpose – to quickly, securely and single-handedly pick up your chain and replicate its position in the highest gear on your bike. This it delivers on, in CNC-machined spades.

• Pros: Does what it says on the tin, with a speed and feel that is a joy to enact
• Cons: It's £50, you can't shift gears once fitted, and you might lose the adapter bits if you aren't careful

Back in 2014 TR reviewed the Daddy of chain keepers, the Butter B1. Impressed as TR was, in old money it was still expensive at £31.50, meaning a 3.5-star score. A few years on, Colorado's FeedBack Sports purchased the design from Butter and took what was an already-nifty design and improved upon it.

Along with the change to a rotating Delrin bushing to reduce wear and chain friction, FBS took the QR-axle-only threaded clamp of the B1 and added in the 12mm thru-axle adapter of the B2, to give you two keepers in one. So what used to be two separate purchases from Butter with two separate keepers in your toolbox/cleaning kit is now one purchase from FBS. What FBS didn't do was pick up the third option – to fit the Focus bikes-specific RAT through-axle standard.

The original Butter B1 and B2 are still $40 from inventor wearebutter.com, and still made in Colorado. Thanks to the wonders of transatlantic currency, $40 for the double-duty FBS version stateside translates into 50 British pounds, about which I'm certain There Will Be Letters.

Pricing shenanigans aside, if you have a bike fleet including QR and thru-axle hubbage, the made-in-China FBS model would be the better bet for the same money, for sure.

The Chain Keeper features CNC-machined and anodised all-alloy and stainless steel components with a hefty Delrin bushing that the chain spins on. In other words, it's beautifully over-engineered and is going to look and work great for decades. This is a Cyclist's Significant Birthday Gift if ever there was one.

In the traditional QR mode I found the angle and length of a few hangers mean the rear mech pivot body snagged on the 'nut' on the outside of the dropout, meaning the nut had to be wound quite a long way out to then sit properly home in the dropout after clearing the mech. This is less Feedback's fault and more the bike designer's – I'm looking at you, Merida. Most bikes I tried it on, the QR nut cleared the rear mech no problem. The inside shoulder of the nut is square, to prevent it rotating in the dropout as you tighten the larger body.

This sounds like a bit of a faff, but in practice it's easy to put the Keeper in place with your left hand, collecting the chain on the Delrin bushing, manoeuvring the outside nut into the dropout, then twisting the inner to tighten in place.

Once in place, the chain runs really smoothly, spinning the Delrin bushing and making cleaning/lubricating a breeze. The one drawback inherent in this design is that you can't change gear inwards to get deep into the rear mech for cleaning, or to shift it more inboard to protect from transit damage. This is an inherent compromise of the design.

The thru-axle adapter's expanding wedge works in an even simpler way. You insert it into the 12mm axle hole on the inside of the right dropout and give it a twist to make it expand to grip the hole. There's a teardrop-shaped profile that prevents the expanding wedge rotating as you tighten, so again the act of securing the Keeper is single-handed and fast.

Swapping between the QR and thru-axle adapters means you have a few extra loose bits floating around to lose, and presents the only real foible of the FBS design. The small conical washer that expands the wedge isn't captive and more than once I was on my hands and knees hunting for it after swapping over. If you dropped it in a muddy field, likely forget it. I used an M6 nyloc nut hand-tightened over the threaded end of the TA adapter, to ensure the washer or expanding section didn't get lost. It would be great to see FBS come up with a solution here.

For years I've thrashed a Park Tool Dummy Hub DH-1 – which has a major benefit over the FBS Chain Keeper in that you can shift through the full range of gears to get access for cleaning inside the cage, and also to protect the mech during travel by leaving it parked fully-inboard while maintaining chain tension. It's definitely a two-handed operation to fit, mind.

> How to fly with your bike

The downside of the Park DH-1 for thru-axle bikes is that you have to remove the black bushing and slot it over your own 12mm axle after you've passed it through the left-hand dropout. This is fine for securing the chain and mech shifted inwards for travel, but if you are cleaning or using in a workshop regularly it would become a faff, as opposed to the single-handed split-second install of the FBS Chain Keeper.

Quality-wise, the now-£20 Park Dummy Hub is definitely looking a bit worse for wear, the anodising having long since worn off and the pulley looking a bit beaten too. Based on my extensive experience of other Feedback products, I believe the Chain Keeper will retain its CNC-machined glory for decades.

There are various other dummy hub options out there, the one most likely to be cited in correspondence from Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells CC being the Morgan Blue Chain Keeper, a cheap and cheerful £6 job that only works with QR bikes, not thru-axles, and is a two-handed wingnut-unscrewing faff to fit and remove, that requires four gear shifts up to fit after removing your wheel, then down to re-install. I'll get in ahead of the baying price-sensitive pack here and again restate that the FBS Chain Keeper is a premium bit of kit that is beautifully executed, with a price tag to match.

So who's the Feedback Sports Chain Keeper for? Predominantly they need to be happy with not being able to shift the mech inwards – this may or may not be a deal breaker, depending on your fetish level for cleaning or desire to avoid damage in transit – particularly in a soft bike case. Admittedly, with Shimano's Shadow technology becoming common in road bike rear derailleurs, this is less of an issue.

Ultimately they have to be someone with £50 to burn, who sees the value and relishes the joy of using a top-shelf tool designed for a single task, fine-tuned to deliver that function quickly with single-handed operation, manufactured from materials designed to last a lifetime.

For everyone else, Other Chain Keepers Are Available.

Verdict

A beautifully designed tool for quickly getting your chain retention sorted that will most likely outlive you