E-Bikes & Bikes Customised to You
Hey guys, Peter from Sixthreezero is here. Easy one today, how to tighten your chain on a single speed.
Hey there, you only need three tools, maybe two, really. You need a Phillips, most likely, a 10 millimeter and a 15 millimeter, or just a Crescent wrench. All right? Maybe, Nate, you can come in and get some details. This is a Sixthreezero from a long time ago that I custom painted, actually. It's in my garage, painted a picture of my wife and my son there on it, but anyway, the first thing you got to do, there's going to be a coaster brake, and so you just want to loosen that.
We'll stick the Phillips in there and the 10 millimeters here, just loosen it. You don't want to take it off all the way, just loosen so this part can slide back and forth in this slot here, and then go right over here. Then all we do is just go ahead and loosen the two-axle nuts, these are 15 millimeters. Once they're a little bit lose, there we go, about finger loose there, we can move it with your finger.
The wheel will slide in and out of these slots, they're made like that so that the chain can be adjusted. What I like to do is you can pull it back, like this, but I like to use my hand in the front to make sure that I have it centered because the wheel can tilt to the right or the left, so you need to do what's called floating it, just make sure that it's centered. It's really easy to do, but yeah, just to tighten it, all you need to do is just move the wheel back some more, so I'm just going to pull it back, put some tension on it here with my right hand, feel the tension.
The chain should deflect about maybe half an inch up and a half an inch down, so about an inch total, more or less, is a pretty good thumb rule. Then what we'll do is once we've got it tightened and I'm holding it there with my right hand, and I'm tightening with my left hand, there are some other tricks too, if you want to get it extra tight, you can tighten one axle nut, and then just kind of like walking the wheel back and forth, alternating the axle nuts, but that's a little more of a complicated operation, but if you're having a hard time tightening it, that can be done too.
I'm not going to show that in this video though, but basically what you do is just, you'll tighten one, move the wheel back, then tighten that one to hold it in position, then loosen the other one, and then force the wheel back and just keep walking it back until you get the tension that you like. Here we are finishing up tightening the axle nuts. Make sure they're nice and tight. We don't want those loose at all.
Then finally, we'll go back to secure the coaster brake arm, over here in its little slot. Just use the Phillips and then you can also use the wrench to tighten it down. There you go. That's really all there is to it. That's nice and tight. All right. Thanks for watching. I really hope that was helpful. If you need any more help, please don't hesitate to contact us at (310) 982-2877 or theteam@sixthreezero.com. 630 is spelled out S-I-X-T-H-R-E-E-Z-E-R-O. Also, subscribe to our channel and remember, it's your journey, your experience, enjoy the ride.