Pedal Strike

Yup, this might be wayyyy too much information, but things just weren’t feeling right these past couple of days.

Going up hills felt sort of heavy. There was just general uncomfortable-ness. And then there were the sounds.

My bike was grinding. Pushing the pedals at certain points felt like I was working a pepper mill. It was either rock salt or my bottom bracket. With two winters under my bike’s belt, I was pretty sure it just wanted to poop out the bottom bracket.

So it was off to therapy again. This time for a real reason though [and for my bike, not me].

But it wasn’t my bottom bracket. It was these:

The bolts and screws that held my chainring were way too long, which meant that my chainring wasn’t exactly stable. Which meant that my chain ring got slightly warped which is why my chain was hopping. The grinding sound was the unfortunate result of my chainring nearly rubbing against my chain stay.

The chainring got shorter bolts and was put on the outside of my crank. There’s actually more than 1mm between my chainring and the chain stay now, and the hopping’s mostly gone. My bike is positively purring.

I could marry the IBC staff. Like for realz.

Tags:   boston · bottom bracket · chain ring · international bike · pepper mill3 Comments