Setting trialtech tensioner's tension

[Herbertlemon102]

Probably something to go in the beginners chat to be honest- 

ive never in my life had anything other than Cams or integrated, and I've not come across this sort of system before. 

(It's a double sided) 

what it looked like to me was that I undo the pinch bolt, and wind the silver rod around and then do it back up. But that's a haphazard guess. 

Its currently just a tad too loose to use. Not a clue what that grub screw does either.

simply put, I don't want to be ham handed and break it. But couldn't find any info anywhere

Edited April 22, 2017 by Herbertlemon102

[dimosts]

Hello,

I had the same tensioner. If I understand correctly, the silver protrusion is connected which the cage and is there so that you can make sure the tensioner sprockets are in line with the the wheel sprocket (silimar to the h-l limit screws in a standard derailleur). What I did was unbolt the screw (the pinch bolt), shift the cage to make sure the all the sprockets line up and re-tighten the pinch-bolt. No major forces go through that direction, so hand tight (at leas for me) should be enough for this. I am not sure about the double-sided thing. Hope I helped a bit.

Cheers

edit: Forgot smth, if I remember correctly, the same mechanism, apart from the alignment, controls the amount of tension that the tensioner puts to the chain. With the pinch bolt untight, you can rotate the cage up/down, leading to higher/lower tension respectively. 

Edited April 22, 2017 by dimosts

[Herbertlemon102]

3 minutes ago, dimosts said:

Hello,

I had the same tensioner. If I understand correctly, the silver protrusion is connected which the cage and is there so that you can make sure the tensioner sprockets are in line with the the wheel sprocket (silimar to the h-l limit screws in a standard derailleur). What I did was unbolt the screw (the pinch bolt), shift the cage to make sure the all the sprockets line up and re-tighten the pinch-bolt. No major forces go through that direction, so hand tight (at leas for me) should be enough for this. I am not sure about the double-sided thing. Hope I helped a bit.

Cheers

Hey dude, yeah I've got it all lined up, it's just not actually providing a huge amount of tension  I loosened it and rotated the cage 90 degrees and did it back up, it seems to be a bit better now. 

[LEON]

Undo the 4mm bolt, unclip the spring end. Rotate that and the silver protruding bar down to about horizontal, do bolt back up tight then bend the spring back up and clip the end back into its groove. It'll feel quite strained but the spring is really strong.

Edited April 22, 2017 by LEON

[niconj]

11 minutes ago, LEON said:

Undo the 4mm bolt, unclip the spring end. Rotate that and the silver protruding bar down to about horizontal, do bolt back up tight then bend the spring back up and clip the end back into its groove. It'll feel quite strained but the spring is really strong.

Or get a Rohloff.

[LEON]

f**k that. I couldn't even use a Rohloff on my bike, I couldn't adjust it side to side, so you're stuck with one position, which wouldn't work, then the cage was too short to use anything but a BMX size sprocket. I thought mine was pretty shit, the Trialtech one is 10x better.

[niconj]

27 minutes ago, LEON said:

f**k that. I couldn't even use a Rohloff on my bike, I couldn't adjust it side to side, so you're stuck with one position, which wouldn't work, then the cage was too short to use anything but a BMX size sprocket. I thought mine was pretty shit, the Trialtech one is 10x better.

I've got one and haven't had any problems with adjusting it side to side (using the included washers). I use it with a 16T sprocket. No problems whatsoever and the tension is way better than with the Trialtech one.

[LEON]

But I use bigger sprockets on 26" so it just looks terrible when the arm has to point down before the cage rises back up, even with a 16t yours has to bend down to clear the sprocket before the cage rises back up because of the chain length.

This is how a tensioner should look.

That's a 19t on there, the arm is all the way up in line with the chainstay and there's still no clearance issue. No need to shit around with spacers and all that crap. Yours is only a 16t and you still have to bend it down out the way, if anything hits your tensioner gently your jockey wheel is touching your sprocket. It's too small for your setup.

 

Edited April 22, 2017 by LEON

[ogre]

i can't remember if they spec the pin near the bolt where it meets the hanger. but remove that, and the washers around the bolt that mounts it to the hanger (and get some washers to take out the slack in the bolt) then it can sit parallel with the chainstay. then undo the pinch bolt and rotate the swingarm so it sits more vertical (without one to hand it's hard to be specific) then when it rotates clockwise to hold the chain it'll have more tension and you'll be all good.

[Mark W]

The TT tensioners don't have the locator pin that tensioners like the Tensile, Neon or Rohloff have for that exact reason.  The higher up you can get the first arm, the better tension you'll get, the less you'll have to hit and the less likely you are to break stuff if you do hit it. 

When you've got the spring under a lot of tension it does tend to ride back on the boss that it pushes against a bit, but that's not the end of the world.  The easiest way I found to set the tension in mine was to pop the chain off the front chainring/sprocket, and have the chain around the BB shell.  Once it's there, you can set the fixed arm nice and high against the stay, then loosen that 4mm bolt and rotate the lower arm back and around until it's pulling the chain tight.  Nip the 4mm bolt up, then put the chain back on the chainring/sprocket.  Usually worked fine for me.  One thing that does help is making sure you've got as many links out of your chain as possible as that'll help out in the long run.  As you've got a K710 or K810 on that bike, if it's old then it'll probably have stretched out a shitload too (becauseKoolchain) so that might not be helping too much.  If that's a Fourplay and you've go 22:16 you shouldn't need to mess around too much with the tensioner from personal experience.

[Herbertlemon102]

Thanks all. I understand them now. Turns out id broken the spring at some point, which helped nothing. Which led me into the fact I've hit it at least 3 times on its first ride- I'm quite the basher.

so to eliminate tensioner problems, I eliminated the tensioner. Much prefer it like this, looks cleaner in my books too. 

Edited April 24, 2017 by Herbertlemon102

[jeff costello]

best thing you can do! 

[niconj]

On 24.4.2017 at 9:32 PM, Herbertlemon102 said:

Thanks all. I understand them now. Turns out id broken the spring at some point, which helped nothing. Which led me into the fact I've hit it at least 3 times on its first ride- I'm quite the basher.

so to eliminate tensioner problems, I eliminated the tensioner. Much prefer it like this, looks cleaner in my books too. 

I did that when I broke the derailleur hanger on my 2012 4play. @isitafox said that he runs his without one as well. It worked fine for two rides but then the chain (KMC Z610 HX) started to stretch and hit the chainstays. Pretty annoying so I got a new hanger and put the Rohloff back on.

[Herbertlemon102]

4 minutes ago, niconj said:

I did that when I broke the derailleur hanger on my 2012 4play. @isitafox said that he runs his without one as well. It worked fine for two rides but then the chain (KMC Z610 HX) started to stretch and hit the chainstays. Pretty annoying so I got a new hanger and put the Rohloff back on.

put a bolt through the mech hanger hole, and a snail cam on the axle sorted  

[niconj]

8 hours ago, Herbertlemon102 said:

put a bolt through the mech hanger hole, and a snail cam on the axle sorted  

How's that supposed to work with vertical dropouts? I'll probably get the Arcade, so I don't have to run a tensioner anymore.

Edited April 27, 2017 by niconj

[jeff costello]

29 minutes ago, niconj said:

 I'll probably get the Arcade, so I don't have to run a tensioner anymore.

Pssst! Mark will make fun of you if you buy a new bike because the tensioner annoys you. 

[niconj]

2 hours ago, jeff costello said:

Pssst! Mark will make fun of you if you buy a new bike because the tensioner annoys you. 

And I will have fun buying a new frame. Win - Win.

[Herbertlemon102]

3 hours ago, niconj said:

How's that supposed to work with vertical dropouts? I'll probably get the Arcade, so I don't have to run a tensioner anymore.

Ah. Forgot to mention I did a small amount of modification to the dropouts. Nothing serious, it all lines up pretty nicely.