The bicycle chain is a very crucial part of the bicycle, without it, your bicycle won’t run because it is the part that connects the crank to the wheel. In order for the bike to perform at its optimum best, the bicycle chain should be at the right tightness. If your bicycle chain is loose and you want to do the tightening yourself, here’s how you do it.
In order to get better access on your bicycle chain, you need to turn your bike upside down. Make sure that the bike is placed on the ground firmly so it won’t wiggle around when you work on your bike. A single speed bicycle is the easiest to fix because the chain assembly is quite not complicated. The chain just goes around a sprocket located between the seat. It is just firmly placed around the rear wheel’s center. The chain’s other end then goes around the sprocket that is located at the general area of the seat tube. This sprocket is a part of the bike’s crank set (which is also where you’ll see the crank arms and pedals).
The rear wheel axles have notches that has a bolt. This bolt is what hold the rear wheel in between the axles. In order to tighten the bicycle chain, you need to loosen this bolt first and pull back the rear wheel until the bicycle chain begins to get taut. When you have reached your ideal tautness you can tighten the bolt again so that the wheel stays in place. When you tighten the bolt check that the wheel is aligned and sitting straight between the bike axles.
A multi-speed bicycle will pose more of a challenge for tightening the bike chain because there are more gears to contend with. With this setup, you can only tighten the bike chain by removing one or two of the chain links. Removing the chain links will require using a special chain tool that will be used to pop out the pins connecting the plates. This is a useful tool that can be easily found in bike shops. Using the tool is quite easy, just put the chain in between the slots of the tool, and turn the handle in order to remove the pin. When the pin has been removed, wrap the chain around the sprockets so you can determine how many links should be removed to achieve the level of tautness you want. When you’ve determined the number of links, remove it from the chain and then reattach the pin again to join the links of the chain.
Photo from chain-manufacturer.com
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