Hatebreeder, Check this bike shizzle out.

[TooSicKs]

I have been fighting a battle of properly tensioning my chain for singlespeed stock drivetrain setup on my GT. I have vertical dropouts so I need some kind of chain tesioner. First I just adjusted the chain length by removing links till it fit nicely with my 22/18, until i bent my axle, now as the wheel turns it would get tighter and looser. I got a new axle and frankenstened an Lx hub together with spacers, my 18t cog and mounted my rear deraileur a'la ghetto singulator style, used an inch of blocked cable and barrel adjuster to get it perfectly lined up, yep, perfect chainline, until i broke the barrel adjsuter off. A few strategically placed nylon wire ties got my chainline resembling a line again. about 10 minutes later ibotched a drop and hooked my deraileur, sheared off my deraileur mount at the dropout flange. 17 dollars, a few turns of the 5mm and i had a new one, and the last one my LBS can get since GT got Pacific'ized and i had my deraileur back, for about 5 minutes.

By this time i was pissed to say the least, and i tried to run the chain direct but found i bent another axle so that wouldn't work. I went to work with what was left of my beat, battered, twisted, abused, deformed and discombobulated deraileur with a package of wireties and zipped it right down to my chainstay. it kinda worked but the deraileur was so bent that the chainline was way off straight no matter what, it rubbed, slipped, skipped, shifted moved, and got really anoying after a few rides.

Tonight i got home and tried somehting else, just cause i heared about it but didn't believe it would work. I found the biggest rear cog i had, about 26ish teeth, bigger than my 22 in front, i took the ghetto deraileur off and shoved the big cog right up in the chainline, teeth meshing top and bottom. The chain tensioned right up and it locked in and floated right where i put it. After a bit of back and forth adjustment i ended up wit this:

www.geocities.com/toosick...omgear.jpg
(Check out the brand new sheared off GT der. mount)


The singlespeed geeks call it a phantom gear, i call it pretty cool, i went out and rode for an hour , bent axle and all (until i get my new surly hub in the mail) and not once did my entire driveline make a sound, bind, slack,or otherwise complain and alert me of it's presence.

This actually works, and so far seems to be bombproof compared to all the other fairly useless and annoying high maintenace crap like fragile deraileurs and other stuff to break. Think about it, how can you break a cog? Impossible the way it's used here, there's minimal stress on it, no torque applied, and is free floating so the whole chain floats right into a perfect chainline with nothing to adjust and it only weighs as much as, well, a large MTB cog haha!

Best of all it was free cause i had to take it off the cassette to make it singlespeed anyways.

I like it, and i'm gonna ride it till it breaks, if it ever does, if not, it may be the last chain tesioner i ever ride.

Peace