It sounds like a tight spot on his chain.

Heres a couple pics.



Upside down.

your chain is too long. You have nice horizontal dropouts. If you are still trying to figure out your gear ratio, then keep your tensioner until you have picked your cog. Once you are happy with the cog, you can remove your tensioner and shorten the chain until its fully tight around your cog and chainring when the wheel is pushed all the way back into the dropout. Then you can back off the chain tension and run the bike w/o any tensioner.

But as is, you are only engaging *maybe 4-5* teeth which is not enough.

shorten your chain by at least 3-4 links, then have the tensioner push up on the chain. You won't have any skipping problems after you do that.

see these examples on how a tensioner should be set up:



pushing up:

Yea, I didnt think I needed the tensioner but I wasnt sure so I just put it on to see what was up. I am taking it off tomorrow.

What about my Biospace cranks/ chainrings? Is the elliptical chainring messing me up?

I would get rid of the biopace. I like Salsa Chainrings as they are well machined and pretty round meaning you should be able to get consistant tension. You could run the biopace, but you would have to play with chainlength a bit. Its not really worth it to keep and provides no benefit other than to save $35.

Cool. I will have to wait until Saturday to get the chainring now! Ugh. I wish I just wouldve not listened to them and bought it while I was down there. I wouldnt normally care but the shop is like 25 minutes away.

FWIW, I used to run a beater fixed gear with a Biopace chainring without problems. (Sheldon Brown, rest his soul, would attest to this) In fact, that bike was the quietest, smoothest drivetrain I've had yet.

Your Biopace shouldn't be a problem if you're running a tensioner. But, as Hirohsima mentioned, your chain is definitely too long.

-Erik

I've had the same problem on my SS conversion and have also had a junk biopace crank...

1. Do as someone said before and setup the chain length/tensioner such that you have minimum slack in chain with the wheel pushed all the way back into the drop-outs. Tighten the shizzle out of the skewers, as a good amount of pushing up hills in clipless pedals has pulled my rear wheel side-ways on more than on ocassion, in turn causing my chain to come off, unless I *really* tighten the thing. In a nutshell, everything has to be aligned very well and good chain tension/engagement to keep it together.

2. Biopace front ring will *only* work with the tensioner (as someone said before, due to the always-changing chain take-up). If you can live with the tensioner, you'll save the hassle of swapping front rings.

Keep it up, looks like a very unique SS setup.

Thanks everyone. I actually went back and bought the chainring. Its actually a good thing I bought it today and not yesterday b/c I know the owner and he was there today and he sold me the ring for $20 instead of the $35 the other guy was going to charge me. So, I am going to go change it and take the tensioner off and see what happens.

OMG! This bike is so annoying! I was so happy to get my new chainring and go and put it on thinking Im one step closer to being able to ride, but no, it could never be that easy for me. The old damn chainring bolts are stripped!!!! UGH!

So, I finally got things fixed! After all this, the whole problem was the chainring. I finally got the stripped bolts out w/ a screwdriver and took the chain tensioner off and shortened the chain a link and everything works perfectly now. Im running 46- 16 now. No skipping, nothing. Now it just feels like im riding a damn horse. Its way too big for me. My uncle got it for me as my first road bike about 10 years ago, I havent ridden it in probably like 6 years and forgot how huge it really was... Oh well. I may be getting a Pista soon. Thanks for all the help fellas! Works great now!

My head hurts

It should feel better now. Things are working!