So before I started riding this season, I cleaned my chain with WD-40 with 'synthetic chain-guard' something i picked up from a dealership pretty often. Anyway, ive been wanting to tighten my chain but:

1. When I press down on the chain to measure the tension it's within normal ranges.
2. When I press up on the chain there are inches of slack.

I've ridden decently hard at least 4 times in the past month, but it's always been like that. Still rides the same which is great, or what I think is great. I only bought the bike a couple months back so I haven't tightened the chain before

It's got a 520 sprocket/chain conversion.Also, when Itake the chain gaurd offthe chain looks straight as can be... What gives?! Thanks!

 

dave you have to measure tension by checking chain slack via pushing the chain up, not down.
it's not accurate to check it via pushing down cause of gravity.

 

Should you check chain slack when there is a load on the bike? (ie. someone sitting on it)

 

no...no load on the bike other than it's own weight!
if you load the bike, you'll see that the chain gets tighter....so you'll almost always be within or under spec.

 

that makes sense, thanks! So, in the Clymer manual and owners manual where it says to measure the distance between when you push down and when you pull up, even though (i think the owners' manual's) illustration shows an equal distance between pulling up and pushing down, it may be that only 25% of your measurement is pushing down while 75% is pulling up?

How does that fare when you tighten it--would it be ok for there to be just about no slack pushing down but an inch pulling up?

Sorry for the (dumb?) questions, never needed to tighten a chain before until now. Thanks again

 

just worry about the pulling up part.

see if the chain is very loose, the weight of it would make it sag. since it's already sagging, you can't get it to stretch much more pulling it down, but you can get it to go up much more you get what i mean?

so just measure from where the chain sits and how muchyou're able to push it up and set the tension according to the up. don't worry about the down. they will be very close to being the same but since your chain is very loose right now, they seem way off.

how many miles do you have on your chain?

i'm not sure what the spec is for your bike but just set it accordingly and you'll be fine. but just measure the up part. don't worry too much about the down part.

 

I'm actually not sure, I'm going to shoot the previous owner an e-mail right now...either way the chain and sprocket look to be in good condition for now--i need to get my hands on a better tool kit. Thanks again for all the help!