I made the mistake of choosing a an old French bike for my first major project. Surprisingly, this wasn’t too bad and I had help from the local bike co-op.
I got greedy with the rear cassette and chose a 9-speed out of the parts bin, where the smallest gear has 9 or 10 teeth.
I noticed that the chain was rubbing against the frame (near the dropout) at the smallest gear. To solve this, I created a bit of clearance with the help of an axle spacer (the silver nut in my picture). However, this halved the length of the axle contacting the drive-side dropout.
Main question: am I right to assume that this isn’t safe? Or is the compression from the skewer doing some kind of magic that decreases the load on the axle?
No need to read on if you’re bored.
My alternatives from most-to-least appealing are as follows:
1) replace cassette or cogs such that high gear is 11 or greater, which should increase the height of the chain on high gear
2) install a chain guide, if this is a valid application
3) replace the bb skewer with something that will improve the chain line (I don’t want to do this)
4) downgrade to 7 speed (I’d have to buy a chain, shifter, and cassette, albeit at co-op prices, and then redo a bunch of other things – I really don’t want to do this)
by Easy_Phase