After five years outdoors, my daughter's swing seats cracked and broke in half. I was left with the hard plastic seats, broken in half, swinging in the breeze, connected to steel S-loops at the end of the chains. Replacement seats were not hard to find but how do you attach the new seats to the chains? It would take a lot of leverage and strength to bend out the S-loops and cutting all of them off would be nearly impossible. S-loops are hard and tough! Without a large bolt-cutter to snip the loops in the swing chain, I needed a good alternate solution.
A quick visit to my local hardware store solved the problem. I bought a set of threaded steel loops to create the missing link between the seats and the S-loops. I quickly sawed off the remains of the broken seats from the S-loops. Now the S-loops were free at the end of the swing chains. With the threaded link's loop open, both the S-loop and the swing seat mount can easily slip into the threaded loop. When you screw back the loop's long threaded nut, the link becomes a very secure connection between the chain and the new seat. I had to shorten the length of the swing chains slightly to compensate for my new threaded link addition. A couple of quick snaps at the top of the chains and the project was complete! It was an easy and satisfying fix.
