I wasn’t going to change anything on my TT bike for the new season. However, a week or so ago I accidentally hit the front shifter in the middle of a particularly difficult VO2Max interval which resulted in a horrible crunching and grinding noise followed by the chain coming off. As it was I’d delaminated at least one of the teeth on my Fibre-Lyte 56t carbon chainring and it had also pinged a shifting pin off as well. On closer inspection many of the teeth were wearing It’s been a great product with almost 5000 miles of racing (i.e. at high loads) as well as hundreds of hours on the turbo.
Anyway, I decided that as I was doing it anyway I might as well go 1x and replace the chainring with a 58t – it’s not like I ever used the small ring out on the road. I bought an aluminium one from Drag2Zero.
Removing the crankset was pretty easy – there are plenty of videos and guides on Youtube. Anyway I cleaned it up and took off the front derailleur. I could have pushed the cable back into the frame for a cleaner look but it would be really difficult to get it out again should I ever need to.
The solution was to just tape it against the frame with a bit of gaffer tape. Doesn’t look great but would be hidden behind the chainring once the crankset was back on.
I then fitted a chain guard from Aerocoach. In theory it shouldn’t need one but Cheshire roads aren’t the smoothest and I’ve heard plenty of horror stories of people shipping chains during races. Plus I wasn’t sure about chain length. I followed the standard Park Tools sizing instructions using the chain I’d removed. That seemed to be the correct size even though I’d increased the size of the front chainring. So I decided to add a link or two to the new chain and it looks about right – no slack and the rear derailleur angles look sensible enough.
Another week of training on the turbo and then the season starts – unless there’s yet another storm due to come in!
