Originally Posted by
hobbsc
I've got a 2019 Fit PRK that I've been riding for a while now and I've had to swap a couple of tubes, a tire, true up the rear wheel, and I put some Merritt pegs on the drive side of the bike. All standard stuff. I've had a couple of issues come up that have perplexed me and one question about gyros.
First off, the front wheel seems to not be centered in the fork any longer. It's learning slightly away from the peg. It looks like it's properly seated in the fork all the way and it's plenty tight. Loosening the bolts and re-tightening leaves it in the same position. The wheel is true and not rubbing on anything. What might be going wrong here?
The next issue is the chain never seems to stay tight. It slacks up over time. I've been using a socket wrench to tighten the rear wheel but eventually, after a couple sessions or a long ride, the chain is just floppy again. This didn't happen until the first time I removed the rear wheel. The only addition is a peg on the drive side and a new tire. What might I be doing wrong and how might I set it up so it retains the chain tension?
Lastly, this bike has a gyro on it. I don't intend to throw bars anytime soon and I'd like to simplify my brake a bit with just a single cable. I've never worked on a BMX bike before (most of my wrenching was on road and mountain bikes) so gyros are pretty foreign to me. Is it possible for me to simply remove the gyro without causing any trouble with the headset/fork/etc? Will I need any special tools beyond your average bike tools?
Thanks a ton in advance for any advice!
Ugh, ok, I’ll try, one at a time:
1. Front wheel not centering in form, but all else seems ok: *maybe a bent front dropout?*
2. Chain goes slack: when you installed the peg, was there a washer that also went on? Try taking off the peg and remounting the rear wheel the way it was originally. Ride & see what happens. I know you won’t be able to test grinding, but at least you’ll know there’s not something bigger like a bent axle or something. Maybe you’re just not getting good bite on the dropout on one side from the axle nut?
3. Gyro to straight-cable: short answer is no, you can’t just remove everything & ride. The top of the gyro is part of what’s keeping things in place between your fork steerer tube and your bike’s frame and you would need at least a washer and spacer as you need the same stack height. If it’s braking ok now, I’d say hold off on this until you sort out the bigger issues in Q1 & 2. If you DO eventually remove the gyro, try to just get a new headset that works with your frame and that way you’re sure to have things correct , and you have the separate gyro full setup if you want to switch back. Getting rid of a gyro is not necessarily gonna give you better braking.
Finally, start reading & asking questions on vitalbmx .com forums. This has been covered before. And looking at diagrams of how these front ends are constructed AND search for YouTube videos of people doing this. Good luck!