Simplifying my drive train
WZ2358 is the product code at The Bolt Shop in Archers Rd for their 3/8 x 5/8 x 16g Flat washer steel zinc, recorded here in case I need to do it again, and because they were as exact a fit for the longer chainring bolts I needed to let me move the new chain ring over to improve the chainline …
OK, One thing at a time.
The Shimano Deore XT front derailleur was a dog on my bike, even though Jill has an identical bike and hers works perfectly.
Mine once needed to be physically ground to shape to let it move far enough to move the chain to the granny gear, and it would never stay adjusted for long, even when I did manage to get it working. It didn’t matter mostly, because I spend far more of my time in the high gears anyway, so I decided to scrap the whole thing.
I rode a few 100 km using only the large ring to test the idea and it worked fine with a 38 tooth ring at the front, although very noisy in the lower gears, so I looked for my options. Since I already had an FSA crankset with a 104BCD spider, I opted for the custom made FSA Megatooth wide-narrow 38 tooth, but it would need to be offset towards the centerline of the bike, midway between the two rings in the original crankset..
For my set up I needed the slightly hard to find BBT18 toolto remove the crank set, so that I could get to the chainring bolts with my
BBB BoldGrip Chainring Nut Wrench BTL32L from Wiggle.
Part of me quite likes owning tools that are specifically for one job only.
Chainline!
Our bikes have Boost axles so the chainline needed to be a few mm further from the center line than with a regular axle, 52mm according to , so I had to hunt down the above-mentioned washers. It only took an hour or of trial and error to get it right, 3 on the inside and one on the outside because the bolt was 1mm too long. The Ask A Bike Mechanic group on FB assured me this was going to be OK, but I’m carrying around that little wrench in my toolkit for the next 1000km or so.
