Laugh at my misfortune, but please, give me some advice on how to succesfully jury-rig a geared duallie to get home when a rock jumps up and attacks your rear mech!
Vegetable and I did the 6' track in the blue mountains yesterday. Epic, awesome singletrack all the way to the Cox's River and then two of the biggest climbs I have ever had the pleasure of cresting on a MTB. Over an hour's worth of climbing. After a short break to regroup, we were off again, destination Jenolan caves. Maybe two hundred metres later, a fist sized rock somehow got caught up with the path of my rear wheel and took out the rear mech. Oh joy.
Now for the interesting part...After removing the damaged item, the gear cable etc.. We tried to jury rig the Dawg to get back to the car, about 20Km's away. At first we tried to shoprten the chain to a 32/28, but couldn't tension it enough to stop it shifting. Eventually, after much frustration, we settled on a 44/16 or something equally stupid. It worked OK on the first descent, but somewhere jumped a gear at the rear and was so tight that it made peddling almost impossible. I have never seen a chain have so much tension on it, it was rather disquieting to say the least. Upon approaching some climbing, I decided to try the granny ring, hoping I could get a 22/28 going. More shortening of the chain, some faffing around vainly experimenting with the broken rear mech as a tensioning device (very hard when you've only got one cable-tie, Doh!) Got it working with no tensioner in 22/28, climbed OK for about two minutes, until I tried to negotiate a rut, the suspensions sinks, chain moves....Crunch.
From then on, lots of pushing, and one last vain attempt to ride, this time with the chain skipping from the 30/32 at the back until the tension bent the 32's teeth at 90 degrees to the rest of the cassette. Oh well, I am a male after all, denial is one of my strong points, "I will get this thing to work if I just stomp HARDER". The chain tension was like a guy rope on the Harbour Bridge by this stage, had to break the chain, because we couldn't remove the back wheel to get any slack. Nearly took out my face with the chain when it finally gave way.
I had to walk the final 15km's except for the ball-tearing second descent, the lovely, flowing singletrack turned into a lug>trip>stumble>hoik uphill nearly all the way back to the car.
So, any suggestions on how to jury rig said bike to get home? Oh and just for my own vicarious enjoyment, if you want to post your worst ride experiences as well, it would make me feel a lot better!
I have attached a few pics of said jury-rigged action.
Cheers,
Vegetable and I did the 6' track in the blue mountains yesterday. Epic, awesome singletrack all the way to the Cox's River and then two of the biggest climbs I have ever had the pleasure of cresting on a MTB. Over an hour's worth of climbing. After a short break to regroup, we were off again, destination Jenolan caves. Maybe two hundred metres later, a fist sized rock somehow got caught up with the path of my rear wheel and took out the rear mech. Oh joy.
Now for the interesting part...After removing the damaged item, the gear cable etc.. We tried to jury rig the Dawg to get back to the car, about 20Km's away. At first we tried to shoprten the chain to a 32/28, but couldn't tension it enough to stop it shifting. Eventually, after much frustration, we settled on a 44/16 or something equally stupid. It worked OK on the first descent, but somewhere jumped a gear at the rear and was so tight that it made peddling almost impossible. I have never seen a chain have so much tension on it, it was rather disquieting to say the least. Upon approaching some climbing, I decided to try the granny ring, hoping I could get a 22/28 going. More shortening of the chain, some faffing around vainly experimenting with the broken rear mech as a tensioning device (very hard when you've only got one cable-tie, Doh!) Got it working with no tensioner in 22/28, climbed OK for about two minutes, until I tried to negotiate a rut, the suspensions sinks, chain moves....Crunch.
From then on, lots of pushing, and one last vain attempt to ride, this time with the chain skipping from the 30/32 at the back until the tension bent the 32's teeth at 90 degrees to the rest of the cassette. Oh well, I am a male after all, denial is one of my strong points, "I will get this thing to work if I just stomp HARDER". The chain tension was like a guy rope on the Harbour Bridge by this stage, had to break the chain, because we couldn't remove the back wheel to get any slack. Nearly took out my face with the chain when it finally gave way.
I had to walk the final 15km's except for the ball-tearing second descent, the lovely, flowing singletrack turned into a lug>trip>stumble>hoik uphill nearly all the way back to the car.
So, any suggestions on how to jury rig said bike to get home? Oh and just for my own vicarious enjoyment, if you want to post your worst ride experiences as well, it would make me feel a lot better!
I have attached a few pics of said jury-rigged action.
Cheers,
