I have just upgraded one of my bikes to 10 speed with a clutch mech and I was wondering if there is anything different than I’ve been doing for years due to the extra spring tension in the clutch mechanism? It is a hardtail so there isn’t going to be any chain growth to worry about. I’m running three rings up front too.

I was wondering if there is anything different than I’ve been doing for years

What have you been doing?
Round biggest cog front and back, through the rear mech and add a link will be right.

That is how I have always done it before but with the increased tension in the arm on the clutch mech is it still the same formula?

sic_nick – Member
That is how I have always done it before but with the increased tension in the arm on the clutch mech is it still the same formula?

Yes.

Round biggest cog front and back, through the rear mech and add a link will be right.

Is what works for me.

Slight hijack, but is there a detriment to running the chain longer?

More chain slap and loose chain in little-little

On my latest build a santacruz chameleon I did the normal measurement of biggest rings plus 3 full links just to be safe. Turned out it needed the plus 3 and plus 2 would be too tight. I’m running 34 front with 11-34 rear with a medium cage xtr rear mech.
I’m glad I didn’t go for my usual plus 2.

I’m running 11-34 on the back too, long cage XT and triple on the front (44-32-22)

Wow, I have about 6 links overlap on my hardtail. It seems fine and allowed me to run a 40T with a 34T chainring on a short cage mech.

Using the same length chain with an 11-36 cassette and the 34T at the moment. It seems fine but the chain line is not great.

It’s a single ring hardtail- fit the chain in the lowest gear, make it as short as you can without overstraightening the mech, simple. You don’t need to account for suspension or shifting so no rules of thumb, X+1 etc required, you can see exactly what it’s doing.

Likewise with a full suss, just take the air or spring out and cycle it all the way through the travel too.

Air out of the rear shock so you can see what it requires at full length?

curoiousyellow I’m running it on a hardtail.

curiousyellow – Member

Air out of the rear shock so you can see what it requires at full length?

Aye, exactly- because unless you’ve run it in linkage or it’s a really simple design, the longest point might not actually be where you think it is. No reason to overthink it when it takes moments to squash it through the travel

(not in this case obviously!)