Reality catches up...

As I said in my last post (I think it was my last post, anyway...), my chain tensioner on the SST bit it last week. I also, way back in February, predicted the demise of the cheapo Nashbar tensioner, but that's not the point. The point is that last night I ordered a snazzy new Surly Singleator to revive my rig. Thanks to the miracle of ebay, I scored one for $31. Not too shabby. Hopefully the thing I ordered is actually what I'm expecting, but we'll have to wait a few days to see. If, in fact, a Singleator actually turns up at my door, and also includes the "pushing up" spring, I'll be able to rig up a much smoother, more stable drivetrain than what I was running before. The shorter chain I've got going wraps at least twice as far around the cog as it used to (before the link removal last week) and so the bike is pedalling significantly more smoothly. Remember the idea of building a singlespeed on the cheap? Yeah, me too. And soon I'm going to need to buy a wheelset for it...

Thanksgiving is coming up, so it'll be a short work week. I'm travelling with my Kona for Turkey Day, so hopefully I'll get some good, fun riding in towards the end of the week. The life of JZ has been somewhat, uh, confused lately, so I'm looking forward to four days of family, food, riding, hopefully some surfing, and most importantly, no work.

And in other news... At last, a comment on my blog that's not from a machine! How exciting! Anyway, I've received a gentle reminder that the "mission statement" (ha!) of this blog includes consideration of stuff other than bikes... Right. I had forgotten. No, that's not true. I've not forgotten, but I definitely have not motivated to write about much else. I'll get on that soon...

Finally, anyone want to donate a digital camera to The Cycle? It sure would spice up the content here...

Cheap crap...

This past weekend I thought it would be a good idea to take a link out of the chain on my singlespeed. I've been having problems with the chain skipping and it looked like the chain wasn't grabbing enough teeth on the rear cog. The other reason for this project is that I can't leave well enough along. Anyway, seems simple enough, right? Just take a link out of the chain and off we go. Not so easy, as it turns out.

Shortening the chain meant I needed to fiddle with the spring on the chain tensioner. Since I've been using a cheap NASHBAR tensioner that came with no information on spring adjustments, I was working somewhat blindly. Well, let's just say that I'm really lucky that my newly shortened chain fits perfectly with my 36-16 chainring-cog setup with no tensioner needed. At least for now. In trying to adjust the chain tensioner I managed to totally break it such that it exerts no pressure on the chain. Great. For now, and at least as long as it takes for the drivetrain to wear further, I'm running no tensioner. It actually feels really nice, somehow crisper to ride. Unfortunately, as the parts wear it'll start to get sloppy and I'll have to throw a new tensioner on there. This time I think I'll lay out for a Surly Singleator, not least because they provide much better tech support for their products than our friends at NASHBAR.