Mountain Bike Chains for Dummies

Mountain bike dropout

Our staffers have noticed over the years that some of the questions answered by eHow.com contributors don't make a lot of sense, which is why the "answers" they get often make even less. No one ever got rich at eHow by saying, "You can't do that." Instead, they'd pretend to have an answer or, in some cases answer a question that's close (but no cigar). In the case of the LiveStrong.com article (now at SportsRec.com), "How to Adjust the Chain Tension on a Mountain Bike," self-described "expert in various extreme sports" Philip Foster combined the two tricks to pick up fifteen bucks.

Foster shouldn't have been paid, however, because his answer was bull. The real answer? Well, it depends on what the OQ was really asking: if he wanted to keep from dropping the chain all the time, Foster should have discussed front and rear derailleur adjustment with the limit screws and/or checking derailleur alignment. If the chain was too long, Phil should have talked about chain sizing and replacing a chain. But his answer? Naaaahhhh....
Foster had two "answers," one of which he got from an article about fixies (which aren't mountain bikes, BTW). That was to,

"Slide the wheel axle backward in the rear dropouts to increase the tension of the chain."

Phil's problem is that the dropouts in most frames aren't oriented backward-forward, they're oriented up-down (see image). Some expert, eh? The lying sack of shit cited an article he called "chain tension on one-speed bikes," whose actual title was "chain replacement: single speed bikes." His second solution was to adjust the B-tension screw. Sorry, Phil, that only moves the derailleur cage up and down a couple of millimeters.

We had to laugh at Foster's production, however: of some 200 words of "instruction," 90 are about how to place the bike in a repair stand. Plus, there's this puzzling comment embedded in his bull about the B-tension screw:

"Lift the release lever of your mountain bike brakes to disconnect the correlating cable. Raise the quick-release lever located in the middle of your rear wheel."

Now, we get it that Phil thinks he's telling you to loosen the quick-release lever so you can slide the wheel forward or backward in the dropouts (except that fore-and-aft dropouts and quick-release don't mix); but we'd think that an "expert" would know that lifting the release on the brakes doesn't disconnect any cable...
No, this is just another time when some freelancer (with a creative writing degree!) claimed expertise and some J-school graduate content editor lapped it up. Unfortunately, the answer is bullshit, hence Foster's well-deserved Dumbass of the Day award.

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