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Monday, November 14, 2016

Emergency Mountain Bike Repair


Houston, we have a problem.


During a ride, my rear derailleur had a piece that bent, and chipped out a part of the hanger.  Nothing I could do to fix it... it wouldn't stay put with any force at all on it.  It's toast.

We had just started our ride, though, and missing a weekend of fall mountain biking wasn't an option.

So to salvage the day... we removed the rear derailleur (entire thing, including hanger).  Picked a gear that would get the job done for the day.  Shortened the chain to fit that gear perfectly... and converted the bike to a temporary single speed.

Look ma, no gears!

It worked out really, really well. With no tension it had to be pretty snug on the gear it was on - we had it very, very snug... maybe too snug, even, I noticed the wheel was being pulled a tad off center... but still worked!

As with any single speed, I was grinding at very low cadence sometimes, other times spinning like a gerbil in a cage... but it was solid and fine, even set a few PRs on Strava segments out there.


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