Ryan Cousineau said:In article <[email hidden]>, Don Wiss <donwiss@no_spam.com> wrote:
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:The chain on my Batavus is 100% enclosed in a plastic chain guard. So I'm not sure just what
advantage a chainless drive shaft would have.
You don't have to change the chain periodically. You never have to adjust the chain tension.
Fully enclosed bicycle chains have very little maintenance issues, though. With the essentially
single speed nature of the crank/chain/cog, the system can deal with a *lot* of wear before being a
problem, as well as lack of chain tension. I regularly see bikes here that have lost their
chaincases (it's a student town..), and quite often the chain is a link or three to five too long
(probably from stretch), heavily rusted, and at least a decade old. Works fine, though. Ones that
have kept their chaincases (typically a sure sign of not-entirely-incompetent-service (as in
tyre/tube changing etc.) throughout its life) work even better.
It seems to me that the single-speed style cogs, with the really tall rounded off teeth (derailer
cogs typically have teeth reaching about to the midpoint of the rollers, single speed cogs go about
to the top of the rollers), wear much less with worn chains as well.
I wonder if shaft drive will do as well after two decades of neglect and being left out in the
acid/salty rain, plus with the extreme nonstandardness of the parts, if you do have to do some
maintenance it might not even be possible.
Jasper
