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Old 05-29-25 | 07:32 PM
  #71  
Duragrouch
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Yes, the chainline is off. Pedaling forward, the rear derailleur bottom pulley compensates and straightens the chainline before the chain reaches the top (jockey) pulley. Pedaling backwards, there is no rear derailleur between the chainring and cogs, so it can't do that for you. On MY bike, I had spaced the crank 4mm out because I had an interference issue at the front derailleur cage due to a very fat seat tube (folding bike), and it was constantly dropping the chain when shifting onto the inner ring when on the low (largest) cog. I fixed the interference issue and removed the spacers so the chainrings and chainline was correct as the bicycle gods intended, no more dropping chains. If you are not suffering similar problems, you could leave things be. But you can also correct the chainline if you desire. Note: I would NOT try to space the cassette out at all; I wanted to do that because my chain would sometimes jam hard between the small cog and dropout, so I wanted to make that gap smaller, and put a spacer behind the cassette, however that greatly reduced the engagement of the threaded lockring, and small cog on the freehub shoulders, enough that I did not feel things were sound, so removed the spacer. And changing the rear derailleur from the inferior Dahon compact design to a normal RD and mounting location, cured the chain dropping off the small cog.

P.S. - My 2X chainset specifies 43.5mm as chainline, bike centerline to middle of 2X rings, which matches the middle of my 7 speed cassette on 130mm rear hub. The crank is a hollowtech 2 style so no separate bottom bracket spindle. And spacing the crank out 4mm also reduced the left arm clamp area that much and it came loose. Design specs are design specs.

Last edited by Duragrouch; 05-29-25 at 07:41 PM.
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