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Hello All
With an average of 3 chain-offs occurring every ride I feel it is now time to properly address the issue. I am running a 1x10 system, 11-46 Sun Race cassette, XT M786 Shadow Plus 'Dynasys' derailleur medium cage with clutch and a Renthal chainring.
The chainring advertises itself as 'narrow/wide' but it doesn't look very narrow wide to me.
I have tried two different seat tube mounted chain guides (from above) - neither have worked. I don't really want a 'full on' gnar chain guide - it's not as if I am doing anything mad.
The chain length has been checked at the bike shop and apparently it is fine.
While writing this I did some checking and found my rear derailleur is a 2014 model - could this be the issue? If so which new XT model should I order to best rectify the problem? I have an XTR bling shifter also quite old. But I love it.
Any help appreciated.
Is the clutch working and/or adjusted properly? If the ring looks a bit shit then that won’t be helping, Renthal stuff should be fine unless it’s worn out thought
Are your narrow wide teeth corresponding with the narrow and wide links in the chain?
The clutch does not do much when compared to the chain ring. I have used narrow wide with a non clutch mech and did not drop chains even on rocky stuff
As above. Either the clutch needs tightening or the chainring changing.
Unless you have an odd foot position where you knock your own chain off
Rental do both N/W and normal chain rings, if you are not sure what type, can you rotate the crank 1 tooth at at time? If it’s N/W it will only work every other tooth.
Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear. I checked back at my years old order for the Renthal chainring. It is not in fact narrow wide. Silly me. My apologies. Thank you or all the help though and for making me think twice about it!
I'll get my coat...
Try tightening up your mech clutch. Video below should help.
Note that apparently the SRAM clutch in their mechs is non adjustable.
An old worn chain can also cause this.
"Clutch's"
I kind of missed out at the start of the whole clutch thing, so its only really my current rear mech that's set up with one.
On a personal wondering note, given what its for and what it does, is the clutch something that now causes premature wear to the main spring 😕
Just a thought. Cynical as i am.
TBF clutches do very little for chain retention on single ring- as everyone who got the old XT mechs where the clutch always failed after a few months learned. It reduces chainslap and noise, and I reckon it helped retention on a double or triple since that could stop it flapping onto a shifting tooth, but it's the narrow/wide that does probably 95% of the work.
As per Northwind, it's all about the chainring.
Even if you've not got a narrow wide chainring, you ought to be able to sort chain retention with a chain device/guide.
It's what we did on downhill/jump bikes in days of yore before all this narrow wide stuff came in.
I've not used a full on chain guide in years now but one with top and bottom guides should sort it. Might even be cheap second hand seeing as not so many folks use them these days.
I used to run a Der guide which was brilliant......if I remember 🤔
