How to Fix Cross Chaining on Bicycles

Video Transcript

I often get complaints about noises in particular gears. Many times it is a gear you shouldn't be using. There are gears called cross chain gears on any bicycle. Todays bikes often have three rings on the front and up to ten cogs in the back, so awful lot is expected of a chain to operate over a wide range of angles. Now, if you look at this chain here you can see it is running at a pretty severe angle going from this large chain ring to this large cog on the back. This is a gear you should not use, the manufacturer is not intending this gear to be used even though the bike can shift into it. It is not going to run quietly or well in it and will prematurely wear out your chain because you are putting load on it while it is at an angle and it will really wear it out. Conversely there is this cross chain which also is very noisy. Now the chain is running at this kind of angle. It will always rub on the front dérailleur. On rougher roads the chain will be bouncing. In the case of a mountain bike you run the risk of wrapping your chain up in the frame down here because it is bouncing around so much because this dérailleur is not exerting enough pressure to keep it still. So this is another cross chain gear. You have three gears up in the front and up to ten in the back. The best combinations of these gears is if you are on the small ring on the front which is you call one, it should be with one, two, three, or four, maybe even five on the back. If you are in the middle ring on the front, you can run all the middle gears quietly, so that would be nine through two in the back. The object of the game is really to get the chain to run at a straight angle or a least amount of angle you can possibly run at any time. The outer ring in the front is really intended just to use with the smallest for the gears in the back, probably ten through four. Start getting here, the chain angle starts to get steep. There are better ways to achieve that ratio, it is not that you are missing that gear, it is that you could find it or a ratio like it probably here and achieve a much straighter chain line.

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