Very nice Iab, thanks for the pics.
Originally Posted by
63rickert
Inch pitch sounds different and it feels different. You will never be in any doubt which chain you are riding. The chain has a lot less lateral flex than 1/8" or 3/32" chain. Really a lot less flex than modern 12.7mm eleven speed chains. You want very good or perfect chainline, sorta kinda good enough for most purposes chainline will probably work but it will be loud and snatchy.
Inch pitch works best on stiff bikes. Any track bike qualifies. If you're converting an old road bike or if you have a very vintage road/path be prepared for a failed experiment. I'm not saying your attempt will fail, just that it might. Are you planning to ride this on the road? Be prepared for what happens on hills. You are on a single fixed gear, you can't shift down, so you start grinding up that hill. During high torque grinding everything is going to flex and get out of line. And the chain will complain. You get used to that but it never feels quite right. The only available tactics are to gear low and spin like mad everywhere except that hill, or you just have to go full attack on every hill and keep your speed up.
I rode a few years on an old Gloria (decades before anyone knew they were collectible) that came with a Magistroni inch pitch. There's nothing wrong with Magistroni cranks and I would love to have some again. Certainly the Magistronis have been used in high level competition by riders much stronger than I ever was. Every hard acceleration and every hill above 1% the chain popped and snatched and acted angry. Then I got a set of Campy inch pitch cranks and it was like a new bike. Hills I would've avoided were suddenly fun. Simply because the Campy crank and ring were so much more rigid.
Bikes I've ridden briefly since then that have inch pitch there are always details of bike design or setup that give the drive train a unique feel, little things that would blur out of existence on regular chain matter more with inch pitch. This is a good thing in my mind. No matter how you set up your bike it will be like no other. Just be prepared to do some tuning.
Unless you hit a perfect gear combination on the first try you will need both chainrings and cogs to get a choice of gears without really huge jumps between them. Most people change cogs with a vise, the cog teeth are big enough to take it. If you prefer a chain whip you get to make your own.
Great info and what I was looking to learn, some lessons that I don't have to go through the hard way. It is a track frame and I live in a valley surrounded by mountains, but not much in the way of hills that are paved.