Luigi de Guzman said:OK, cycling comrades.
I'm back from Chicago, and my little brother and I have
been working on the Follis.
We finally got the tires and tubes, and got them mounted
without much drama. Got the chain on it, and Mom was
reasonably impressed--"looks like a new bike!"
Rode it around the block a few times; the chain keeps
derailing. There is no front derailleur, remember--I'm
waiting on that.
if the chain keeps derailing, should I eliminate a few
links from the chain and increase tension that way?
Is that a new chain? Or did you clean and lube the old one?
In any case, I think there's something wrong that does not
involve the absence of a front derailleur. AFAIK, my front
derailleur does nothing much to keep the chain on a front
sprocket. It doesn't, for example, rub against the chain
unless it's literally derailing it. And five speed bikes,
when they were common (early '70s) had no front derailleur,
yet did not drop their chains.
You might check how often, and under what conditions, it
drops. It could be a bent chainring tooth, or perhaps the
entire chainring is bent. (Be sure they're running straight
and true.) It could be a stiff link in the chain. (When you
install a chain, you must loosen up the link you fastened
with the chain tool.) It could, I suppose, be derailleur
pivots in need of lube and/or cleaning. (Mostly, I'm
thinking of the pivot for the jockey pulley cage.)
Chain length should be enough to handle the "big-big"
sprocket combination, with not much excess.
Quoted message said:
Also, the plastic spoke protector seems to be rubbing
against the chain, or freewheel, or both.
Hmmm. You need to look more closely at that to see exactly
what's happening. You may need to remove it. If the
derailleur is adjusted absolutely correctly, it serves no
purpose. But if you're not confident about the derailleur,
you may need to replace that protector. Unfortunately,
replacing it requires removing the freewheel...
Quoted message said:And it seems that the freewheel turns with the pedal
both forwards *and* backwards.
... which may mean you've got to remove the freewheel
anyway! If your freewheel isn't freewheeling, that's _got_
to be fixed. (And perhaps that's connected with throwing
the chain?)
First thing to try is this: Take out the rear wheel. Clean
all the grunge off the outside of the freewheel, especially
the right side of
it. Lay the wheen down on lots of newspaper, freewheel side
up. Look for the tiny space between the freewheel's
stationary part and its rotating part. Spray WD-40 into
that crack, then spin the freewheel backwards. Repeat
many times.
You're trying to flush a few decades of dried crud out of
the freewheel. Once the WD-40 runs clean, you've probably
done that. You should feel the freewheel spin nice and
smooth, not gritty.
Let it drip dry, then run just a little motor oil in there.
Wipe off excess liquid (keeping it well off the braking
surfaces) and reinstall the wheel.
If the freewheel doesn't free up, it needs replaced. Visit
your bike shop with the wheel. They should have the rather
uncommon tool used to remove the old freewheel.
Quoted message said:But my brother likes the bike.
Well, he should! It sounds like a cool bike!
--
--------------------+ Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove
rodent and vegetable dot com, replace with cc.ysu dot edu]
