Bicycle Mechanics - vibrationi and momentary chain skip

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Carusoswi
08-20-06, 05:09 AM
Experienced this for the first time during my ride yesterday. I hit some - well, I guess you might call it - severe road turbulence of the type that caused the bike to literally rock back and forth (just like a kid's rocking horse) as first the front wheel and then the rear became momentarily airborne due to repeated bumps in the road.

No serious danger of damage or of taking a spill - just a momentary rough ride.

I noticed that the jarring action caused my chain to momentarily disengage with the rear cog causing me to skip until the RD was able to take up the slack.

Is this normal or is some sort of adjustment in order?

The bike is otherwise operating at its optimum.

FWIW, I run a double chain ring with a 9-speed cassette.

Caruso

moxfyre
08-20-06, 12:00 PM
If you can remove a few links from your chain, this will help, because there will be less slack in it. Stock chains usually are a few links longer than needed.

However, make sure that the shortened chain is still long enough to accomodate the large chainring-large cog combination by testing it on the workstand before you take it out on the road!!! If you shift into a gear that the chain is too short for, you'll probably bend the derailer and bind up the chain, causing a crash. But you shouldn't be using the large-large combination anyway :)