Fresh Products Tensioner, Lack Of Adjustment

[Fish-Finger-er]

went to set up me ashton yesterday, with a fresh products tensioner, and 18-16 gearing. got the chain with the least amount of links i could in it, tensioning it up, it was still as loose as anything.and tensioning down it was rideable, but still way too lose for my liking.as half links generally aint my thing.realised it would be easier, cheaper,and stronger just to modify the tensioner.

guess other bikes and other ratios may have this problem. so could come in useful.

first pics: chain as it was before.

note: even at extreme of adjustment, theres still a large amount of slack in chain.

get a 6mm allen key,remove the jockey wheel.

grab a drill and a bit the same size as the bolt.(i used an a/f sized drill,just slightly smaller than the drill,so i could place a thread in the tensioner.but using one the same size as the original hole will do the job just as well). if you look at the tensioner,theres 3 large holes below the main one which had the bolt through it. get your drill, and drill out the middle one of these holes out to the same size as the original bolt hole.

note: the aluminium is very soft, even using a hand drill, and taking pics midway through, the hole took only a couple of minutes to drill.

now get the bolt, and place it in this hole(if like me, you intend to screw the bolt into this hole,then you should go and get a tap and die, however,if like me, and its raining, and your taps are in the shed.the bolt is harder than the tensioner, so i cut the thread in the tensioner using the bolt)

now slacken off the bolt that goes through the mech hanger, and loosen the quick release, move the tensioner up, and reattach the jockey wheel,using a spanner to screw it on from behind if theres now a thread in the hole, otherwise,just tighten the allen key up.

and tension the chain as you usually would be moving the arm down, and tightening the mech hanger bolt and the quick release.

now the chain is nice and tight,and theres still a small bit of adjustment on the tensioner before it runs out.

hope this is of use to some people, seems fairly simple, took me 20 minutes to do with searching for tools, taking pics etc.

[JonMack]

Did you try running it like this too?

Edited January 4, 2007 by MonsterJ

[dave85]

Put your brain in Jon, the bottom run of chain would be somewhere up near the brakes if you did that.

[Matthew_Gibson]

Take a link or 2 out of your chain

[TomR]

But thats limited by the lentch of the links, which can mean its too short and wont connect or too long.

I run a 22-18 and use a gusset tensioner which works quite well tensioning outwards, thats with a KMC Kool.

[shamus]

how bout the half link chains used in bmx? like the shadow conspiracy one and many other follow ups.

you can use them to get a very close tension before having to use any tensioners

but when i rode one on my bmx i do seem to remember a tendancy to peel the outer (?) plates away where they join the next link