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I’ve been thinking that it’d be nice to have a single speed bike to ride, but I didn’t want to acquire one this way.
Today I ate a very large breakfast then set out with the intention of riding to Lake Orion and back, then to Metro Beach and back, hoping to break 90 miles today. After riding just about four miles and getting to the intersection of 23 Mile and VanDyke, just when I was feeling warmed up, something felt odd when shifting. Looking down I saw that my rear derailleur was canted to the side with the chain coming off of the top jockey wheel. As soon as touched the assembly to try and reposition things the derailleur came off, as seen here.
I ended up doing an emergency single speed conversion by shortening the chain, tensioning it up as I could, then riding carefully home. I had to make a total of three adjustments to the chain, because I found that if I had the chain on anything but the smallest rings it would drop off and skip around.
Even after settling on the two smallest rings I had to be very careful because occasionally the chain would bounce a bit and climb up one gear, putting so much tension on the chain (and BB) that it was nearly impossible to pedal. When this happened I’d have to remove the rear wheel, re-seat the chain, then keep going again. This had to be done at least six times in the four miles home. Eventually I found that if I pedaled gingerly, never pedaled when going over bumps, didn’t apply much force when going uphill, and coasted as often as possible I was generally fine. I could
Now to figure out what to do… The Shimano SLX group is tempting, or maybe the SRAM X.9 stuff. One thing I know I won’t be doing for a while is riding my bike.