While moving drivetrain components over to my new Surly Big Dummy Blacktacular frame, I noticed my old Military Green Big Dummy frame had the wrong tensioner bolt attached and inadequate spacers for its chainline. The Military Green Big Dummy has a new chainring set up, which unfortunately I goofed up its chainline distance by leaving its old tensioner bolt (Rohloff Part Number 8253) in place and not enough spacers to reach a 58mm chainline. With the Blacktacular frame, I will get it right.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, I already had the spacers and the 8255 tensioner bolt in my bag of Rohloff parts, so I installed them. With a proper 58mm chainline in place, I also noticed the tensioner jockey wheels were trashed after only a year of use – operating them at a 54mm chainline certainly didn’t help. I’ve faithfully purchased Rohloff jockey wheels, but it bugs me that they are expensive, plastic, and come a long distance to the U.S.<\/p>\n
Time for a jockey wheel replacement and here’s my latest workaround. I purchased these 10t jockey wheels<\/a> on eBay. The wheels are aluminum and have removable dust covers, which is key. I removed the dust covers and drilled through them with a 1\/4-inch drill bit. Take care to drill slowly and keep the drill bit straight and center. After you fully penetrate the dust cover, you’ll need to ream the whole out by running the drill bit at angles, which I did in a circular motion. Reaming the dust cover with the 1\/4-inch bit will make them large enough to slide over the tensioner’s axle and you’ll only need to do this for the upper pulley. I’m sure Rohloff has a good reason for using different size tensioner axles and the lower axles narrower diameter allows it to work with stock 10t jockey wheels.<\/p>\n After replacing the dust covers on the 10t jockey wheel and installing both on tensioner, it’s back in business and works great. Not to mention it looks good. After drilling out one set of dust covers, I’ll be able to move these dust covers to my next set of jockey wheels when the new ones wear out, which could be as soon as next year?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While moving drivetrain components over to my new Surly Big Dummy Blacktacular frame, I noticed my old Military Green Big Dummy frame had the wrong tensioner bolt attached and inadequate spacers for its chainline. The Military Green Big Dummy has … Continue reading