ss chainline

i'm rather puzzled by this whole chainline business - sheldon brown's page seems overly complicated. At the moment on my singlespeed the freewheel is further from the centre line of the bike than the chainring. It's noisy (well, not silent!), and pisses me off big time because i can't have my chain as tight as i'd like.

Any ideas to get it straight? I'm not sure if it's possible to simply put spacers between the chainring and spider, I need to have another look later on. I've got Bontrager GXP cranks.

Tom

if you have external bearing bb's are there spacers on each side? if so you can move them from one side or to the other otherwise you can get chainring spacers.
you could always ditch the freewheel and fit a cog :-)

chainring spacers would be an easy solution

as long as we aint talking, like 5mm+

otherwise longer BB axle

hmm. i'm not sure if i can even get any chainring spacers onto the cranks, there is this chain guard on the outside of the spider and then chainring attached to the spider on the inside:

so it's a hollowtech style set up?

can you not do some shit with the spacers like what Smithy said up there ^^ ?

you might be able to ditch the bash gaurd and put the ring on that side of the cranks, but that's not always possible as there are ramps on the crank arms that locate the rings..

try it

maybe buy an outer ring and some short chainring bolts, ditch the guard, check that the new chainring position is going to be good for your chainline before trying this.

are there any black spacers inside of the bb cups? you may be able to move them from the left to right side if there are any there? you need the hollowtech II install tool to do this.

i've spent a bit of time this afternoon tinkering with the outer ring and bash guard - on the crank arms there is a slight ramp so it won't mount properly.

i whipped out the ol' vernier callipers and gave it a measure anyway, it's about 6mm out :( so i'm going to take smith's original advice and ditch the freewheel :) well, as soon as I have the money...

prob go for the surly 130 mm fixed/free hub. the chain line on that is 42mm, and my crank chainline is 41mm so should be ok. Phil Wood hubs look nicccceee but the price is crazy, and they'd look bloody weird on a roadrat i reckon.

ta for all replies.

have a look at the goldtec, the chainline is 45 on that

chainline aside, what would you go for? surly or goldtec?

i can't decide. the surly looks nicer :P

Goldtec

G'tec

very durable IME

goldtec. or the condor version which is a weird conical shape in black. nothing against surly but their bikes seem overpriced for what they are and although they come across as some cool brand from a shed in the usa it's all taiwanese built straight out of the hub factories catalogue and a bit 'industrial'. not very good reasons not to buy their stuff but i like the fact that goldtec are made over here (i do actually have a surly stainless chainring on my ss mtb)
either hub would probably serve you well

here's mine:

ok, cool. i'll try and have a look physically at a goldtech hub at some point rather than just tinker about online.

ta.

Mr Smith, your bike is very shiney

it was about 3 hours old when i took the pics.