The Street > The Bike Shop

converting bike with gears to single speed?

<< < (3/3)

ediotism:
maybe he should just do footjam nosepicks to stop

paranoidmexican:

--- Quote from: ediotism on August 04, 2019, 12:05:20 AM ---maybe he should just do footjam nosepicks to stop

--- End quote ---

got the brakes worked out. funny enough, i really only use my front brake to stop lol

jonathan:
are you still interested in converting to single speed? if the dropout does not allow room to move the axle, you can do one of two things:
find a "magic gear". play around with the cogs on the rear wheel until you find one that works with the front chainring and keeps the chain tight. this is a ghetto, temporary solution. it only works a chain that is worn to exactly the degree to which the current chain is. when the chain wears more or you replace it, it won't work anymore.
chain tensioner. there are a ton of these on the market. A Shimano Aline tensioner might work, but if you remove the cable from a derailer and adjust it such that it cannot move laterally, you've made a ghetto tensioner that will work just fine.

the front rings and rear cogs on a bike that was designed to shift won't hold the chain in one place very well, especially if the chainline is not spot-on.

adjusting shifters and derailers is not difficult. you just have to take a few minutes to understand how to set the two limit screws, set the cable tension so it effectively pulls the derailer across all the gears, and set the b-screw so it spaces the jockey pulleys from the cassette. this is all very simple after a few Park Tool videos.

if the drivetrain is old or out of whack in any way, things won't work so smoothly. you might need to replace cables, housing, or drivetrain parts- a worn out cassette, chain, or chainring won't shift well. make sure the derailer hanger is straight and perpendicular to the center of the bike.

you might be able to remove the left shifter and lock out the front derailleur by cinching down the limit screws on it until the derailer stays in one place, keeping the chain there, probably on the center ring.

all this trouble with front triple chainrings is why most modern mountain bikes have only one front chainring and very few other bikes have more than two chainrings.

for an old road bike with a thread-on freewheel, you can get the chainline close enough to work by rebuilding the rear wheel. replace the freewheel with a single-speed freewheel and swap the axle around so the drive side spacers are on the opposite side of the hub. this will throw the rim off-center, so you'll need to dish the wheel. you might be able to pull this off by adjusting the spoke tension, but you might end up with too much nipple engagement on the right side and not enough on the left. the answer to that is to rebuild the wheel with the spokes on the opposite side of the hub. this is time consuming, but if you're used to building wheels, its no big deal.

if your rear wheel has a freehub designed for a multi-speed cassette, you should buy a single-speed cog (Surly!) and some spacers to line it up with the front chainring. if you can get a hold of some old cassette spacers from a worn out cassette, you can use those too. in a pinch, a carefully selected range of PVC pipesegments will do most of the spacing.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page