Monday, February 16, 2009

Big-Boy Single Speed Chain Tensioner

Two pieces of aluminum, two pieces of steel, three bolts, and a derailleur pulley.

Once upon a time in South Minneapolis, discarded bikes were as thick as the spray paint layers on the garages they lay in front of, and I wanted to build single speeds. Most old steel road bikes only needed about 8 pounds of componentry removed and some tweaking, but many others – mountain especially – could not achieve the necessary chain tension without lots of ring-and-cog-swapping trial and error – and often not even then. The NEW Surly Singulator worked perfectly but cut too deeply into the profit margin. The solution – three bucks worth of metal, a drill and a tap: the Queasyfish Big-Boy.

4 comments:

Jared said...

The Big-Boy is very cool.

queasyfish said...

Hey, save the bragging for your own blog... oh, wait, you mean... um thanks.

ESTONBACH said...

That's pretty cool John! Do you attach a spring to it to add tension? I remember your setup on your green FSR (Great Bike) is it kinda similar to that? G-Dawg just got his hands on a laser engraver, maybe you could customize it, that would be kinda cool! Are you going to be designing anymore bike frames?

queasyfish said...

No, I'm pretty much tense enough as is.

The green bike was fully geared of course, what that was, was also a sort of chain-tensioner but it pulled the derailleur back, to supposedly reduce the likelihood that the chain would fall off of the front rings when bombing across rough terrain. Sort of a poor-man's chain guide. Not sure if it really worked...

G just got something else new too didn't he?...